Combat Gnosticism: The Ideology of First World War Poetry Criticism Author(s): James Campbell Source: New Literary

History, Vol. 30, No. 1, Poetry & Poetics (Winter, 1999), pp. 203-215 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057530 Accessed: 08/06/2009 03:44
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Combat

Gnosticism:

The

Ideology of First World War Poetry Criticism

James Campbell
The war hastened in everything?in politics, in behavior?but it started nothing. George Dangerfield1

economics,

In

The Romantic Ideology, Jerome McGann that famously proclaimed H. in M. of literary Romanticism of Abrams the criticism (that was more of with the worldview concerned promulgating particular) it to rigorous For McGann, main its topic than subjecting critique. stream Romantic of criticism was not criticism at all, but the application a period of literary history that that period to criteria literary/aesthetic and and criticism of Romanticism "the scholarship had itself generated: a an Romantic its works are dominated uncritical by by Ideology,
absorption row McGann's in Romanticism's terms, if not own his self-representations."2 entire methodology, I want to make to bor some

into the criticism of First World War poetry. I see a inquiries this critical discourse: within the operating comparable genealogy mainstream criticism of First World War poetry, most conspicuously Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory, has formed itself around a certain set of aesthetic and ethical principles that it garners from its own in question does not so much subject.3 In other words, the scholarship similar its subject as replicate the poetry's an two in forms: aesthetic criterion ideology. ideology primarily of passivity. Further of realism and an ethical criterion of a humanism these criteria are combined more, by both the poets and their critics to create an ideology of what I term "combat gnosticism," the belief that criticize the poetry I see this which forms
combat represents a qualitatively separate order of experience that is

to communicate to any who have not under difficult if not impossible an an identical Such gone experience. ideology has served both to limit canon texts the of that mainstream First World War criticism has severely seen as legitimate war writing war and has simultaneously promoted status as a discrete body of work with almost no relation to literature's
writing.

non-war

The

critical

tradition

that I identify

as mainstream

and dominant

is

New Literary History,

1999, 30: 203-215

204
one that equates the term "war" with the term

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"combat."

As

result,

what

as war literature it legitimates is produced exclusively by combat a of is the combat for the experience; knowledge prerequisite produc tion of a literary text that adequately deals with war. This iswhat Imean
combat gnosticism: a construction that gives us war experience as a

by

kind of gnosis, a secret knowledge which only an initiated elite knows. a men of tacit course, is, (there here) Only gender exclusion operating
who that have are actively productive engaged of, in combat perhaps even have access to certain of, an constitutive experiences arcane knowl

mere military status does not signify initiation, but Furthermore, status as a combatant. It is not the label of "soldier" that is so much as the label of "warrior." privileged edge. only are The results of such a construction fairly obvious: the canonization of male war writers who not only have combat experience but represent in their texts. Siegfried such experience Wilfred and Owen, Sassoon, Robert Graves become the exemplary toward war of any particular writer
Sassoon's use of his war

figures of the genre. The attitude is less an issue than his first-hand
experience to promote a sort of

experience;

pacifism
militarism

and
are

his
seen

friend
less

Graves's
as

opposing

occasional
than contrasting

retention
uses of

of
a

contradictions

that remains essentially unaltered.4 To use (war experience) commodity the language set forth in Eric Leed's No Man's Land, combat is a liminal that sets the veteran irrevocably apart from those who have experience not crossed the ritual threshold of war.5 It can, indeed has, been seen as to manhood for the the ultimate rite of passage: a definitive coming mechanical industrial age, in which boys become men by confronting even their their essential masculinity, horror and discovering perhaps in a realm from which feminine presence is banished. essential humanity, The primary this ideology of type of literary text that generates iswhat Iwould like to refer to as the trench lyric. The combat gnosticism a formally conservative, trench lyric constitutes realistic text based on of the junior officer class. "Trench," in this the direct combat experience
formulation, calls attention to the poem's most common setting, not

of composition (in fact, few of the trench lyricists necessarily in the trenches). The trench, with wrote finished poetry while physically of its accompanying filth, shellfire, barbed wire, and so forth is of images course trench the dominant icon of the First World War. The lyric an in these distressing conditions unromantic portrays light, thus it from the more abstract and patriotic lyrics of the early differentiating as a war. The in the realistic it employs that is trench genre lyric traditional styles and dictions of English poetry, especially as used in the that was gaining cultural momentum poetry movement just Georgian as to be readily a manner to in the of outbreak such the war, prior

its scene

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a if not politically, audience conservative (that is, accepted by poetically, one with a low tolerance for avant-garde Yet it formal experimentation). uses these traditional poetic forms to portray the heretofore unknown gruesome
trench as

details
seen from

of
a

the physical
participant's

and

psychological

situations

of

the

viewpoint.

the single most Perhaps important this emphasis on personal experience. the point of view of a direct observer,

the putative accuracy the trench. Therein lies its realism, the hallmark of the trench lyric and to Wilfred its criticism. Yeats famously referred Owen's poetry as "all covers & sucked The stick."6 ideal of realism the first blood, dirt, sugar two-thirds of this formulation. The trench lyric rejects the Romantic praise of beauty in favor of an emphasis on the sheer ugliness of front line conditions in order civilian Owen's readership. sensuousness that he learned to destroy the complacence of a sheltered uses for the linguistic instance, poetry, from Keats in order to invert Keats's most that beauty is truth. The trench lyric, as the term itself suggests, gives us visions of horror

is element of the genre defining The trench lyric is written from and its legitimacy depends upon in of its representation of its writer's experience

famous poetic dictum, borderline oxymoronic that, because they are horrible, must be true. "The true Poets must be in the words of Owen's Preface truthful," (CP 535). a revision both of the aesthetic The trench lyric thus represents of lyric poetry and of a naively optimistic attitude toward the purposes conduct of the war. However, the equation of the trench lyric with war recent feminist poetry has recently come into question. Understandably, to circumvent criticism has attempted the narrow parameters of the trench lyric by focusing on previously noncombatant writers, forgotten women. The exclusive identification of war with combat especially results in a theory which would allow only combatants to write war are war. for out of the literature, only they really affected by Anyone to infringe upon the direct, unmediated trenches should not presume of those who do the actual fighting. A feminist study of war experience literature must necessarily these claims. In expanding the war question canon beyond its previous bounds, feminist critics have rediscovered an immense 1978 bibliography of First body of texts. Catherine Reilly's World War-related to the war that poetic reaction poetry demonstrates was by no means limited to combatants;7 in fact, as Elizabeth Marsland out in her book, The Nation's research makes Cause, Reilly's points unavoidable the observation poet was not a combatant primary women's poetic research, reaction expression. but that "the typical English First World War a civilian."8 With in such grounding

the question of many critics have recently reopened to war and the legitimacy and multifariousness of its For instance, Nosheen Khan's Women's Poetry of the

206

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as the impact of war on women First World War considers seriously in their poetry;9 moreover, she confronts the widely remarked expressed combatant that trope of the canonized poets, demonstrating misogynist not all women war poets were, like Jessie Pope, the jingoist specifically in early drafts of Wilfred Owen's addressed "Dulce et Decorum Est," were to men a to in hellish activists die who send eager rabidly pro-war war from which their gender sheltered them. Likewise, Brian Murdoch's the definition and Words of war poetry expands Warring Fighting Songs even into the combatant and the well beyond songs of the lyric popular
war era,10 while Elizabeth Marsland's aforementioned The Nation's Cause,

a and English war in offering study of French, German, comparative mainstream form of how demonstrates the defined, poetry, broadly a war "has criticism poetry decidedly warped language produced English image of the English First World War poetry in general, and especially of on (NC 144) by focusing protest writing" exclusively (necessarily) combatants and their simplistically masculine felix culpa represented from fervent idealism to bitter realism. Finally, Claire Tylee's The Great the effects of the First World War War and Women's Consciousness explores
on culture;11 her that Tylee's representatives In addition, representatives mainstream concerns, of war even culture, literature her title, however, covertly connote are silences. a response and a women?

for the construc refutation of the critic who has been most responsible as mainstream of what I have represented World tion and popularization book influential War literary criticism: Paul Fussell. Fussell's immensely on the First World War, The Great War and Modern Memory, is a study of that of the War's impact on British culture. Its focus is almost exclusively is synonymous of the First World War the combatant: the experience in Fussell's of the trenches with the experience analysis. As is made to the Rear," in his section on the home front, "The Enemy evident vis ? vis the is seen only in terms of its inadequacies civilian reaction resentment is the primary, privileged trenches. The combatants' experi is represented ence, while that of noncombatants only as a foil to set off the bitter
reacted to

and
the war

legitimate
in any

irony
terms

of

the
than

front-line
wholesale

troops.
enthusiasm,

If civilians
we do

other

not know movement

no mention of a pacifist is practically involvement the of of the (outside combatant-poet qualified or the impact of the war on women, either in terms Siegfried Sassoon) or the ongoing effects of increased upon opportunities employment movement. is mentioned For Pankhurst instance, Sylvia only in suffrage to of soldiers executed inform the families with her agitation connection In the context of for military crimes that their sons had died of wounds. in a this is clearly not a good thing: it is presented Fussell's argument, on military the topic under and euphemism obfuscation paragraph it from Fussell. There

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207

sentence version

too much" "No one was to know (GW 176). For Fussell's to to mean and continues of what the First World War meant
cultures, women figure only as representatives of

English-speaking

noncombatants
combatant

and the linguistic

violence

they do

to the stark reality of literature

experi

experience.

To put
have

it in the terms of this project,

mainstream criticism's

feminist
contention

studies of war
that combat

questioned

is a direct conduit to a realm of gnosis. Iwish to make a more direct to the basic tenet of combat gnosticism, that the experience of objection a connection an to to Truth unmediated which Reality, fighting provides the liminal trauma of combat have only those who have undergone access. The canon reformation of Khan, Murdoch, and Tylee Marsland, ence
allows us to see that there is more to war literature than what commonly

goes
ways,

under
assuredly,

the title of war

but war is not masculine, by war; construct culture a

stories. War
an

affects

the civilian
and are lives

in different
thus not an even if war it

exclusively destroyed helps to

experience. involves culture,

exclusively Women's women as Fussell

combatant,

affected, and to

as well indeed

as men, seems

argue,

constructs

feminine

as well

this approach acknowledge I also wish criticism, literary cal assumptions upon which The Great War and Modern Memory "To the Memory Fussell dedicates Technical ASN 36548772 of/ / Co. F, Sergeant Edward Keith Hudson, 410th Infantry / Killed beside me in France / March 15, 1945" (vii). I do on what I take to be a heartfelt gesture not wish to cast aspersions to a victim of war. Yet I am also profoundly interested in how this dedication sets up the text that follows. Fussell is very careful to identify Edward Hudson in standard military and to place his death in language as to Fussell author and Hudson's death thus proximity authority. becomes
war, and,

as masculine I wish to subjects. So, while to questioning mainstream World War to confront more direcdy the epistemologi it rests.

Fussell's
most

way of placing
important, within

himself:
combat.

within
Fussell

the military,
has seen

within
he

combat,

death, his buddy was killed at his side: thus we are more to consider inclined the importance that he places upon seriously in the subsequent combat experience 350 pages of text. That the war in which Fussell places himself is the Second rather than the First World has
War seems not an important distinction; the gnosis of combat may alter

seen

slightly between different wars, but there is an essential core of knowl untouched that remains difference. The author edge by historical in combat he has participated (any combat): authority, so we who lack such experience should listen to the knowledge he provides.12 I do not want to imply that The Great War and Modern Memory is not in because of its iconoclastic book, primarily many ways an important

208
stance toward received

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the broad sense) it has furthered

becomes more

It is a significant piece of revisionist (in opinion. in as far as it has been influential, Nonetheless, history. the uninvestigated it is based. This myth upon which
in Fussell's second scholarly war-related text,

evident

Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War. The content of this book ismuch less literary than The Great War and Modern Memory; there is not the same emphasis on biographically based summations of more the canonical Fussell is overt much about literary figures. Instead,
reading ant the war as a text rather than reading texts about the war.

Nevertheless,
and

combat

gnosticism
is, if

still remains:
drawn

the line between

even more strongly

combat
here,

noncombatant

possible,

the breakdown of clear distinctions between combatant and despite in civilian the Second World War. Fussell turns away from combatant the combatant war memoir. In his final fiction and poetry and privileges he "The Real War Will Never Get in the Books,'" chapter, entitled their describes the best American examples of this genre as "conveying in terrible news ... by an uncomplicated delivery of the facts, conveyed
a style whose literary unpretentiousness seems to argue absolute cred

a a great extent, this kind of formalist hierarchy signals ibility."13 To for only the most unmediated further gnostic development, statements, those which come straight from the heart of combat experience without the intervention of literary or poetic form, can be trusted. Fussell wants us to apprehend to combat directiy; he wants his combat memoirists we us so to too Truth that and the transcend will directly language give
have experienced what it means to know combat.

I am thinking here less of the rather naive a text is less overtly literary it that because assumption epistemological must lie closer to the truth; rather I am asking whether the therefore of the is direct noncombatant combat by experience apprehension to In order of combat Fussell's construction possible given gnosticism.
answer this question, I want to turn to one of Fussell's non-academic

Yet is such a thing possible?

books, Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays.14 First, we need to is not as ironic as one might that the tide of this collection understand assume: of thankful for the atomic destruction Fussell is actually the end of and Nagasaki, for he believes that they hastened Hiroshima in the the war and thus saved many lives, his own included. Moreover, the and belittles leads with his combat experience tide essay Fussell now atom ethics of of those the the who bombs, arguments question them as self-satisfied moral hypocrites because, due to age or portraying as an issue), they did not have social class (gender is not even mentioned and thus experience to meant those who explosions marks the great divide between combat cannot understand the atomic what to invade expected Japan. Experience what the atom those who understand

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209

and those who, "remote from experience," really meant idly about them. is the experience combat that counts, philosophize Clearly, the only experience are worthy of the word. Other kinds of experience bombs
not experience at all.

can we benefit from Fussell's combat gnostic experience? Solip sism remains a constant threat in such a position. Initiates like Fussell But
may or may not choose to enlighten noncombatants; moreover, it may

not ultimately for them to do so. If understanding be possible is truly based merely on experience, it remains impossible to tell others of one's own experience unless these others have also undergone identical an war Thus about becomes experiences. talking exclusionary activity in which only those who already know can speak to each other. Those on cannot learn; whatever the outside, without experience, experience they do have lacks validity. Those on the inside, on the other hand, cannot anything they did not already know. is a form of presence sense (in the poststructural experience of the term): presence in combat gives one an aura of knowledge, the (literary) form, the exclusive ability to know and ability to speak without to tell the (extratextual) truth. Yet, as is the case with presence, there Fussell's
remains always a trace of what is excluded, in this case civilian experi

tell one

another

ence.
access

That women in mainstream have no voice criticism is due to the exclusive it grants primacy
to experience and presence. To put this in

World War to a mythical

psychoanalytic

literary direct
terms,

combat is phallic: it allows one to speak while those without the phallus must is not to demolish here the validity of stay silent. My purpose combat experience but to suggest that it is not the phallus, or that if it is, as other it functions to make phallic discourses: appear to be something whole. Combat experience cannot itself tell the whole by story: it cannot make any one speaking the monolithic subject authority who controls what atomic bombs really mean, what language really means. It is simply an experience a other voice among among experiences, (gendered) other (gendered) voices. Yet how did we get the idea that it was the only voice, that it was to valid? I wish a position that the of such suggest exclusively genealogy rests on the literature around which the discourse first formed. Modern war criticism it was the first war began with the First World War because a which included among its combatants number of educated significant writers with access to means of publication. I am thinking mostly of the
two poets whose names are synonymous with war poetry, yet who

considered Both direct

themselves

Siegfried combat

poets well before they became combatant Sassoon and Wilfred Owen wrote poetry which experience populace whose ostensible of brutal realities purpose it would

officers.

ignorant

civilian

privileges an is to educate to prefer ignore,

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in an epistemological trap: they yet both poets also become caught an basis for who inform audience lacks the experiential cannot truly an can audience and the their work, acquire only way understanding such a basis is to experience combat, at which point they are no longer
the noncombatant audience the poetry assumes. I am not saying that

runs tension their poetry, invalidates only that this inevitable more objectionable texts. most is the is their What of famous all through on a such of of uncritical knowledge acceptance paradigm problematic this poetry. the part of critics who have addressed Mainstream criticism of First World War poetry has been primarily has tended to result in a in Such an approach approach. biographical criticism that implicitly (or occasionally argues for its subject. explicitiy) so war much read its subject in In other words, poetry criticism has not as it has presented a critical manner various apologies for its subject, that war poet. Like Sassoon and subject being both the war poem and the to make an effective protest on the Owen going back to the trenches the sufferings of behalf of their men, war poetry critics have protested At least since Bernard themselves. and Owen their subjects, Sassoon in Britain in 1965, critics have Bergonzi's Heroes' Twilight, first published war poetry on its own terms.15 A poetry of of for the acceptance argued a poetry of political protest in Jon (the latter especially prevalent pity, in 197216): this is what war poetry Silkin's Out of Battle, first published criticism has offered us. But most of all, trench lyric critics have stressed to the slaughter of the Western of the poet as witness the importance this
Front, the man whose biography text remains important because he was

actually
the tide

there and can thus provide

of Desmond Graham's

us with
on the

the Truth
subject17).

of War

(to borrow
war

Mainstream

the ideology of rather than critiqued poetry critics have thus absorbed to the to replicate this ideology and they continue their subject,
exclusion of other voices.

a bit more concrete the discussion like now to make I would by two particular poems by Wilfred Owen. When Yeats terms of it in placing of Owen and the other war poets to Lady wrote his withering damnation as Owen's "worst & most to he referred "Strange Meeting" Wellesley, is certainly no it famous" poem aside, (L 124). Qualitative judgments text. The anthology today is piece of choice longer his most famous one. "Dulce et Decorum is, I think, a notable Est," and the change a soldier confronts a in the it is dream vision: enemy "Strange Meeting" that any real his lost hopes he has killed and this enemy articulates a quiet is subdued, wisdom will arise from this war. The irony here in the knowledge that subsequent generations resignation trench. "Dulce et Decorum of the the from carnage nothing will learn Est," on the

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other most

to describe trench life at its least heroic and hand, allows Owen ironic: tired and dirty troops slog away from the front line when realized death of one of they are attacked by gas shells. The meticulously the soldiers, complete with "blood gargling from the froth-corrupted in which civilians are lungs" (CP 140), leads to the angry conclusion

for holding unrealistic about the war while the assumptions a war motto for is the all twisted for dead, tag, popular gravestone the irony it can muster. It is this kind of situational of which irony war criticism strongly approves. To put it mainstream simply, war poetry criticism has come to favor the realistic ("Dulce et Decorum Est") over blamed Latin ("Strange Meeting"). this shift is the epistemological of representa Underlying question tion. Does the trench lyric give us the most accurate, the most mimetic, or does it offer a particular of actual trench conditions, representation construction of them? The novelty of Sassoon's and Owen's descriptive a kind of poetry poems has led them to be seen as pieces of reportage, of witness version of
Sassoon not

the visionary

to the horrors of modern warfare. And technological them is not, of course, wrong. Yet it is limited. Owen
only represent war; in representing a variation it they on also construct

this and
it

by giving
poem such

itmeaning.
as "Dulce

The

rather

simple
Est,"

ironic meaning

produced
"reality is not

by a
as

et Decorum

war criticism's into mainstream you like to think it," fits rather effordessly metanarrative of irony ?ber alles, but some of the less obviously descrip tive pieces remain a bit more difficult. is less a "Strange Meeting" rehearsal of the horrible realities of war than an interpretation of what to those who the war means find themselves of it. Most victims in constructing encounter the war as a fantastic in hell important, two dead soldiers, Owen removes most questions between of realism,
defined as a representation of an unconstructed reality, instead con

a dream world structing realities of combat. Owen

particular representation

that
of

underlies literally and figuratively thus does not so much bear witness
the reality of combat as he constructs

the to a
a

world in which he can explore the meaning of war. The second or ethical half of the ideology foregrounds call an ethic of passive humanism. The mature trench
and Sassoon are commonly read as poems of ethical protest.

what

Iwant to of Owen lyrics

Where the

more

Blunden and Edward Thomas stereotypically Georgian war on to an aesthetic its to level, object protesting ugliness as compared the beauty of an unconstructed and undestructed and nature, Owen Sassoon object to war because cost in terms of both the of its human wasted lives of soldiers and the callous and willful of misunderstanding staff officers and civilians. As Owen in it his famous put justifiably

Edmund

212
"Above all I am not concerned formulation, the pity" (CP 535). Such statements bring trench lyric, where it cannot be ignored.

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ethics

with Poetry. The Poetry is in to the forefront of the

as a starting point: in Again we can take Yeats's objections excluding the trench from The Book lyric Oxford of Modern Verse18 in 1936, he that "passive suffering is not a theme for poetry" (xxxiv). The declaimed ethics of the trench lyric lies not only in portraying the passive suffering of the victims of war, but also in actively articulating that suffering. Owen in his last letters of pleading the case of his men, of speaks often to the trenches in order to witness and protest their trials. returning One of the standard tropes of the trench lyric is the Crucifixion, with the men to the and victim the silent willfully suffering ignorant playing the beneficiaries civilian Pil?tes.19 All noncombatants become of the to of the to the silent it trench sacrifice young men, leaving lyricist point out the immorality of the situation. The trench lyricist as ethicist, then, in order to point an accusing finger at the moral high ground acquires
those who sacrifice their sons he for their own while us. benefit. we, He the constructs noncombatant an asymmetrical audience, hear relationship: the sentence accuses on

passed

in the hands of the poet, Thus the ethic of passive humanism, the case of those silent betrays itself. In order to articulate necessarily the trench the victims of civilian complacency, sufferers who become lyricist must give up his own passivity and actively blame others. In fact, is robbed of her the noncombatant inverted: the situation becomes
voice (or occasionally, in Sassoon's case, given a few transparently vapid

the warrior inflicts punitive lines)20 while suffering for the sake of his advisedly here; as often as troops. And I am using the feminine pronoun a either benefiting of all things civilian is woman, not, the representative
from front. "Dulce et Decorum Est" can again a serve as an example. After the end a lover or son's suffering or rejecting him upon his return from the

of

the opening
and the

sonnet
poem

section,
turns

Owen

introduces
description

the
into an

second

person
If

pronoun

from

accusation.

the ideology you could see the realities of war, you would not promulgate for the that allows this to go on. By extension, you bear the responsibility on this "innocent sores" from the "vile incurable suffering passive tongue." And the officer poet is going to make you quite aware of this as anyone into. Moreover, that you have gotten yourself predicament the who has read this poem in an annotated knows, original anthology was "a certain poetess," Jessie Pope, the of the accusation recipient writer of patriotic children's war rhymes. She calls the trench poet out of his passivity so that he might confront see the harsh realities of war. her face-toface and force her to

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sense in which the hand, there remains an important as et Decorum Est" is not quite as unproblematic "Dulce of epistemology traditional war poetry criticism would seem to suggest. In fact, the poem in that the second, half of resembles accusatory "Strange Meeting" "Dulce" takes place in a dream vision. The first fourteen lines, compris a traditionally self-contained sonnet, can easily be read as straight ing if and compromising this, however, following Immediately reportage. On the other not breaking
that make the

the formal
persona's

self-sufficiency
relation to

of the first part, appear

the events themselves more

two lines
com

at me, my helpless sight / He plunges plex: own The thus in its distance poem brings choking, drowning." guttering, of the events: the text is less a "direct" from the actual experience of dreams of the soldier's death than a representation representation of events. based on the inevitable though consciously repressed memory use final lines of the twelve continues this of the the accusation Similarly, "In all my dreams, before
dream as a removal from the reality of actual experience; the persona

wants burden
dreams too

not

so much them with

such

to put his civilian audience into the trench and thus the gnosis of combat as to saddle them with the
causes: it as plainly "If in some as possible, smothering even dreams the exemplary you

that

could

pace

experience . ..." To put

poem

of trench the

realism

seeks not

only Decorum

psychological lingering Est" as a direct representation poem halfway through. this removal of the combatant Nevertheless, of the events from direct experience audience compromise
have already

to provide effects of

the experience itself, but it. To classify "Dulce et of warfare is to stop reading the and his civilian persona themselves does litde to final accusations. And as I
represents a compro

the vehemence
pointed out, this

of the poem's
accusatory

stance

if not an outright betrayal, of the passive humanism mise, upon which so is so unobtrusive, the trench lyric is based. The suffering of the men on we one the home of front will miss it unless essentially passive, that
the sufferers casts off his silence and confronts us with the truth of war.

or we will of suffering, have the experience And the persona a must be voice from the other side of the liminal dismiss his validity. His is insufficient. of combat?mere Hence the experience imagination is one that has been not so much criterion of first-hand witness, which as followed by postwar critics. Robert Graves, for instance, promulgated a poseur for writing and (professionally) Robert Nichols considered trench poetry when he lacked the experience of what he reading to work, In order for the ethics of the trench poetry the wrote.21 aesthetics must remain intact. If we are to take the trench lyric seriously, itmust enough emanate from a passive sufferer who has cast off his passivity long to accuse. Any ironic tension resulting from the trace of this

must

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is not the kind of irony in which abandoned trench lyric passivity criticism has traditionally been interested. war poetry criticism of a failure to I am not accusing mainstream am unprepared to idly I transcend certainly per se, and ideology a as move even am to I such is whether possible. What accusing speculate it of is losing metanarrative outside of one it writes, the ideology about which itself within the to move it derives from the trench failure lyric?of ideology into any other. This failure represents not only of ideas that need to be critiqued, but also the replication of the ethics of the trench lyric. Fussell's exclusive the soldiers is of a piece with that of Owen and
of combat experience as a wholly separate

the further implicit restatement identification with

Sassoon. His

construction

realm of gnosis leads him, as well as other critics taking up the poetry of the ideology of what the First World War on its own terms, to replicate to critique. Put simply, trench lyric criticism has itself striven he purports to become the trench lyric in prose form.
University of Central Florida

NOTES
1 2 3 The Strange Death of Liberal England (New York, 1961), p. viii. George Dangerfield, The Romantic 1983), p. 1. Ideology: A Critical Investigation (Chicago, Jerome McGann, cited in text Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (London, 1975); hereafter

as GW. Hart-Davis 4 The War Poems, ed. Rupert Sassoon, 1983); Wilfred (London, Siegfried ed. Jon Stallworthy, 2 vols. The Complete Poems and Fragments, Owen, (London, 1983), hereafter cited in text as CP; Robert Graves, Good-Bye toAll That, 2nd ed. (New York, 1957). see Adrian as well as Owen's, For the limits of Sassoon's, Caesar, Taking It Like a pacifism Man: Suffering, Sexuality and theWar Poets: Brooke, Sassoon, Owen, Graves (Manchester, 1993). 5 Eric J. Leed, No Man's Land: Combat and Identity in World War I (Cambridge, 1979). Butler Yeats, Letters on Poetry from W. B. Yeats toDorothy Wellesley (London, 1940), cited in text as L. hereafter 124; p. 7 Catherine 1978). (London, Reilly, English Poetry of theFirst World War: A Bibliography The Nation's Cause: French, English and German Poetry of theFirst World 8 Elizabeth Marsland, cited in text as NC. War (London, 1991), p. 18; hereafter 6 William 9 10 Nosheen Brian Khan, Murdoch, 1990). M. Tylee, in Women's Women's Fighting Poetry Songs Ky., 1988). of theFirst World War (Lexington, and Warring Words: Popular Lyrics of Two World Wars and Women's Consciousness: Images of Militarism and

(London, 11 Claire Womanhood 12 Fussell's

The Great War Writings,

Doing Battle: Hudson's death

(Iowa City, 1990). recent autobiography, this conclusion (Paul Fussell, Doing Battle, reinforces on a It begins with an elaboration The Making 1996]). of Skeptic [Boston,

1914-64

War Second World and explains Fussell's references and continually Fussell often goes in terms of the First World War (for example, pp. 6, 63,105). experience that they perfectly so far as to use quotations from First World War sources while claiming of texts discoveries Fussell often describes his own experience. Furthermore, encapsulate

COMBAT GNOSTICISM
from such earlier wars

215
but he never as he considers that

texts might Fussell,

also

sum up his own experience, that precisely that experience be (re)constructing Understanding and Behavior

remembers

it in the

present. 13 Paul

Wartime:

in the Second World War

(New York,

1989), p. 292. 14 Paul Fussell, 15 Bernard

Thank

Bergonzi, text has been Bergonzi's third in 1996. 16 17

God for Heroes'

the Atom Bomb and Other Essays (New York, 1988). A Study of the Great War (New York, 1966). Twilight: a second in 1980 and a edition twice been revised, appearing

the Great War, 2nd ed. (London, 1978). Jon Silkin, Out of Battle: The Poetry of The Truth of War: Owen, Blunden, Rosenberg Desmond Graham, 1984). (Manchester, ed. William Butler Yeats (New York, 1936); Modern Verse, 1892-1935, 18 The Oxford Book of hereafter cited in text. 19 See, the Ancre," in The Complete Poems and "At a Cavalry Near instance, Owen, in War Poems, pp. 16-19, "The Redeemer," "The Prince of 134; and Sassoon, p. 24. p. 19, and "Golgotha," in War Poems, p. 49 and "Return of the "The Hero," for instance, Sassoon, p. 146. for p. Good-Bye to All That, pp. 295-96.

Fragments, Wounds," 20 See,

Heroes," 21 Graves,