Siegfried Sassoon

Background
by Anne Aufhauser
A well-educated, wealthy young man when he enlisted in the military at the eve of World
War I, Siegfried Sassoon had the background of a budding modernist. After dropping out
of Cambridge, Sassoon dabbled in poetry until oining the military in !"!#, where he met
and e$changed ideas with %obert &raves and Wilfred 'wen, both of whom would
become fi$tures in the modernist cannon.
An e$amination of Sassoon(s war poetry complicates an understanding of it as purely
modern. Soon after meeting Sassoon at Craiglockhart, a military hospital for shell
shocked )nglish soldiers, Wilfred 'wen giddily wrote his mother, *I am held peer by the
&eorgians+ I am a poet(s poet.,
-!.
While 'wen himself credits Sassoon(s friendship with
influencing a dramatic shift in 'wen(s/and eventually the public(s/modernist
e$pression of World War I, there is more to 'wen(s !"!0 statement than a pithy phrase
about shared poetic sentiment. )ven as Siegfried Sassoon(s war poetry revolutioni1ed
conceptions of appropriate poetic vocabulary, imagery, and form, it betrayed a deep
nostalgia for the &eorgian past as much as a modern break from it.
Sassoon and the War
by Anne Aufhauser
Sassoon fully understood his generation(s uni2ue historical and literary position. 3uch of
Sassoon(s work, including *4he 5athers, and *4he 6ero,, contrasts an older generation(s
romantic understanding of the War with its bloody reality. In his essay on Counter-Attack
and 'ther 7oems, Andrew 8aras discusses Sassoon(s employment of *altered allusions,
to reshape poetic tradition through *the tor2ue of intense e$perience.,
-9.
According to
another critic, 7ericles :ewis, Sassoon(s war poetry contributed to a modernist reection
of conventional *poetic diction.;
-<.
%eecting more than pure diction during the course of
the &reat War, Sassoon landed himself at Craiglockhart when he published his *Soldier(s
=eclaration,, a self-described *willful defiance of military authority, condemning the
war aims. A year after leaving Craiglockhart, Sassoon published Counter-Attack and
'ther 7oems. 5ollowing the Armistice, Sassoon again published a collection of war
poems, but soon turned his attention to the novel, publishing the first of three fictional
memoirs in !"9>. Sassoon(s war e$perience also inspired political activism, and he
briefly edited the socialist newspaper 4he =aily 6erald.
In light of the success of Sassoon(s later work, his choice of poetry as a wartime medium
warrants e$ploration. :ike many of his contemporaries, Sassoon e$pounds on societal
disunction and an inability to achieve a universal understanding of e$perience in a new
modern age. %obert &raves, a contemporary poet and military friend of Sassoon,
remembers the two defining *the War in our poems by making contrasted definitions of
peace.,
-#.
Sassoon especially establishes a dichotomy between combatants and
noncombatants, a reflection both on the War(s creation of rifts and on Sassoon(s own
*curious kind of elitism, privileging the soldier, his words, and his e$periences.
Sassoon(s !"!> poem *Suicide in the 4renches, captures his contempt for
noncombatants?
@ou smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by
Sneak home and pray you(ll never know
4he hell where youth and laughter go.
-A.
While Sassoon bitterly delineates the growing chasm between civilian and soldier life, he
also turns a critical eye to the soldier(s world and its contradictions. By highlighting the
dissonance of words( meanings and sound in his poetry, Sassoon mirrors the War(s
destructive effect on language.
7erhaps inspired by the copy of Shakespeare(s Sonnets he carried with him to the front,
Sassoon works discord into the structure of the poems themselves, manipulating the
sonnet form to reflect the War(s violence and tensions.
-C.
Sonnets give Sassoon his most
compelling medium for a 2uestion that plagues him throughout the War, that of
reconciling the past with the radically different present. In its thematic, verbal, and formal
disunction, much of Sassoon(s war poetry suggests not a reection of the past but rather
an awkward and futile attempt to return to it. An e$amination of Sassoon(s treatment of
time in his sonnets suggests that, while he envisions a world moving forward post-war, he
2uestions his ability to advance with it.
Counter-Attack and Other Poems
by Andrew 8aras
Siegfried Sassoon was born into a prosperous )nglish family and spent his youth engaged
in pastoral pursuits befitting a young )dwardian gentleman of privilege/writing old-
fashioned verses, playing sports, and, especially, fo$ hunting. Sassoon was, in short, the
type of young man %upert Brooke might have envisioned marching gallantly off to war in
*!"!#?, one *whom )ngland bore, shaped, made aware, D &ave, once, her flowers to
love, her ways to roam, EA-CF. Indeed, a patriotic Sassoon enlisted in the military even
before )ngland formally entered the &reat War, but he broke his arm and had to
recuperate before seeing active service.
When Sassoon did get to the front, he encountered the hellish reality of trench warfare,
and he met and befriended a fellow poet and soldier, %obert &raves. 4he conunction of
these influences would transform Sassoon(s poetry+ soon the young man who, before the
war, had privately printed and distributed some sentimental post-%omantic poems would
begin producing satirical, unflinching documents of war. Sassoon included a selection of
his war poems in his !"!0 volume 4he 'ld 6untsman, but !"!>(s Counter-Attack and
'ther 7oems formed a single, sustained blast against everything Sassoon found abhorrent
concerning the war.
@et, it is far too simple and reductive merely to label the poems in this book *anti-war.,
4hough certainly intended as a corrective to the propagandistic pro-war pablum being fed
to the public by the British government, Sassoon(s poems are thematically diverse. Some
take aim at easy or obvious targets, such as incompetent commanders E*4he &eneral,F, a
complacent and self-important press E*)ditorial Impressions,F, or willfully ignorant
)nglish citi1enry E*4he 5athers,F. 'thers, however, offer more complicated assessments
of the war and of Sassoon(s own responsibilities and culpabilities, especially in light of
his commitment, in !"!0, to Craiglockhart mental hospital. Sassoon(s time at the hospital
resulted from the publication of his brief but scathing *Soldier(s =eclaration,, in which
he publicly refused to continue fighting a war he considered *evil and unust., &raves
convinced military authorities to treat Sassoon(s non serviam as a symptom of shell
shock, not an act of treason, and while *recuperating,, Sassoon met Wilfred 'wen, a
fellow patient and poet on whom he would e$ert enormous influence.
Sassoon(s conflicted feelings about his time away from the front emerge in poems such as
*Banishment,, in which the separation of a living soldier from his dead comrades is
conflated with Sassoon(s separation, at sheltered, safe Craiglockhart, from the men at the
front. In preceding poems, Sassoon unrelentingly compares the environment of the front
to *hell,, and conse2uently the reader is primed to recogni1e what now, in a poem about
dead soldiers, seems a literali1ation of that overworked metaphor? *the pit where they
must dwell, E!GF. 4his pit is the underworld, we assume/until Sassoon mentions the
*grappling guns, there, and we reali1e that while the octave of this sonnet addresses
those literally dead, the sestet shifts registers to consider the death-in-life that is war E!9F.
In what we must read as a veiled reference to his *=eclaration,, Sassoon then writes?
*:ove drove me to rebel. D :ove drives me back to grope with them through hell+ D And in
their tortured eyes I stand forgiven, E!9-!#F. *Banishment, thus leaves the reader with a
comple$ emotional map of Sassoon(s reasons for leaving and, eventually, returning to the
front. It also leaves the reader to wonder what, e$actly, has been *forgiven?, is it the
speaker(s desertion of comrades whom he left in dangerous and brutal conditions, or is it,
more broadly, his remaining alive while so many others have diedH Both seem valid
possibilities, since hell is both a figurative and a literal place in this poem.
4he rendering of hell as an actual place relates to a prominent feature of Sassoon(s
poetry? the reworking of myth to make it commensurate with modern e$perience. 3any
of Sassoon(s poems appropriate topoi from classical literature and seek their parallels in
the lives of soldiers. 5or e$ample, *4he %ear &uard,, a poem about a soldier e$ploring a
dark tunnel strewn with bodies, mimics an epic descent into the underworld, e$cept that
this soldier cannot find anyone to help him navigate the treacherous and frightening
place. In a macabre parody of the search for a shade who might glide up to lead the way,
the soldier begins talking to a corpse?
II(m looking for head2uarters.( Jo reply.
I&od blast your neckK( E5or days he(d had no sleep,F
I&et up and guide me through this stinking place.(
Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap,
And flashed his beam across the livid face
4erribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore
Agony dying hard ten days before-.. E!!-!0F
Counter-Attack and 'ther 7oems contains numerous other altered allusions, moments
when the poetic tradition is bent into a new shape by the tor2ue of intense e$perience.
Jor was Sassoon alone in employing this techni2ue+ 'wen, for instance, has his own
poem about a ourney to the underworld, and both Sassoon and 'wen titled poems after
the opening words of the Aeneid ESassoon(s *Arms and the 3an,, in 4he 'ld 6untsman,
and 'wen(s *Arms and the Boy,F.
4hese instances of interte$tuality prove more than that poets like Sassoon were well-read.
Somewhat ironically, these poets( transformations of tradition demonstrate their very
modernity, helping us to locate them in the landscape of literary modernism. A poem like
*4he %ear-&uard, does not simply use the epic tradition+ it makes it new, to 2uote )1ra
7ound(s modernist dictum. Sassoon and other war poets took the materials of their poetic
inheritance/Biblical and classical myth, %omantic nature imagery, even the pastoral and
patriotic confections of the prewar &eorgians/and fashioned from them representations
ade2uate to their unprecedented e$perience. Irony was the most common tool by which
such refashioning was accomplished, but it was not the only one. )ven as skilled and
cynical a satirist as Sassoon found room for sincerity in poems like *4he Investiture,,
which, by describing heaven in the traditional vocabulary of the pastoral )nglish
countryside, simultaneously acknowledges the fictiveness and the attractiveness of such a
place.
5ormally, too, Sassoon innovated within and around the confines of traditional prosody.
5or e$ample, )dna :ongley notes that *the sonnet is often a touchstone or synecdoche for
)nglish poetry,, and that therefore Sassoon(s reconfiguration of the sonnet alerts the
reader to the fact that an old genre is doing new work EC<F. Sassoon often rearranges the
rhyme schemes of his sonnets into patterns that conform neither to the Shakespearean nor
the 7etrarchan models. :ongley points out that *Sassoon(s sonnets often consist of
couplets, long geared to epigram,/Sassoon(s specialty/*and he introduces mi$ed
speakers or mi$ed speech-registers into a mainly monologic mode, EC<F. Sassoon, in
other words, was consciously altering the poetic tradition with which he was engaged.
4he relationship of the &reat War to the development of literary modernism is a vast and
contested topic, and the role of war poets like Sassoon in the evolution of modernist
poetry is similarly unwieldy and debated. Certainly, Sassoon(s poetry feels very different
from that of prewar avant-garde movements which reected the representation of reality
as a goal for art. 6owever, it is clear that Counter-Attack and 'ther 7oems remains a key
document in twentieth-century poetry, for it speaks out of a moment in which poets
struggled to accomplish the ancient task of mimesis in a world marked unmistakably as
modern.
The Experience of Disjuncture
by Anne Aufhauser
The Separation of Cii!ian and So!dier
"To #ictor$"
Before leaving for the War, Sassoon won friends and admirers with his patriotic poetry. In
*4o Lictory,, published in early !"!A, the soldier poet finds solace in imagining a return
to idyllic )ngland?
%eturn to greet me, colours that were my oy,
Jot in the woeful crimson of men slain,
But shining as a garden.
-0.
Samuel 6ynes, author of A War Imagined? 4he 5irst World War and )nglish Culture,
dryly remarks that *4o Lictory, is *the poem of a man who has had e$perience of
romantic poetry, but not yet of war.,
->.
%obert &raves, who met Sassoon in 5rance before
he saw action and read ,4o Lictory,, remembers telling Sassoon *that he would soon
change up his style.,
-".
Before he heads to the front, Sassoon creates concordance
between the battlefield and the traditional )nglish garden+ the two can coe$ist.
Crystalli1ing the harmony between civilians and soldiers, :ady 'tteline 3orrell, a
pacifist and figure in Bloomsbury circles, wrote Sassoon a fan letter after reading *4o
Lictory., Civilians/and even women, whom Sassoon would later indict in *&lory of
Women,/can understand Sassoon(s early soldier.
"The %edeemer"
4he e$perience of war radically separates Sassoon and his contemporaries from civilians,
and his poetry reflects his inability to reoin the world of which he was once a part.
Sassoon(s first poem written at the front, *4he %edeemer, E=ecember !"!AF, distances
the soldier from the civilian. 4he soldier no longer imagines himself at home in *4he
%edeemer,, but rather draws stark contrasts between himself and those in )ngland?
When peaceful folk in beds lay snug asleep+
4here, with much work to do before the light,
We lugged our clay-sucked boots as best we might
Along the trench+ sometimes a bullet sang.
4he *peaceful folk, and the soldier no longer share a common e$perience. :ater in *4he
%eedemer,, Sassoon compares a soldier to Christ?
Jo thorny crown, only a woolen cap
6e wore/an )nglish soldier, white and strong,
Who loved his time like any simple chap,
&ood days of work and sport and homely song+
Jow he has learned that nights are very long,
And dawn a watching of the windowed sky.
But to the end, unudging, he(ll endure
6orror and pain, not uncontent to die
4hat :ancaster on :une may stand secure.
*4he %eedemer, soldier is very )nglish, but his )nglishness/found in his cap and in his
*good days of work and sport and homely song,/is at odds with his reality. 5or that
very )nglishness, wryly captured in *:ancaster on :une,, to survive, the soldier must be
willing to sacrifice himself. After only a few months on the front, Sassoon(s optimistic
blending of the home front and the trenches in *4o Lictory, transforms into a pessimistic
isolation. 3any readers find Sassoon(s attitude in *4he %edeemer, off-putting. Critic
Adrian Caesar, for instance, takes issue with Sassoon(s willingness to take *an elitist
pride in the poet(s special ability to suffer, and finds the *e2uation of the poetMwith
Christ, problematic.
-!G.
In contrasting the soldier with )nglishness and distancing the
soldier(s nobility from its mission, however, Sassoon deliberately draws a world at odds
with itself. While the sacrifice of a life for *:ancaster on :une, seems ludicrous, the
willingness to make the sacrifice/and its conflation with Christ/glorifies a self-
destructive fealty to )ngland. Sassoon resigns his soldiers to paying the high cost of
protecting )nglishness, but its e$pense hints at an underlying detriment to future societal
advancement. 4he poem ends with a soldier flinging *his burden in the muck,D3umbling?
I' Christ Almighty, now I(m stuckK(, Sassoon seems as stuck as his soldier, unable to see
a future past the trenches even as he trumpets the poet(s Christ-like redemptive role.
-!!.

A &inguistic 'ai!ure
"The 'athers"
As the War wears on, Sassoon(s feeling of separation from civilian life begins to corrupt
his ability to communicate with it, and he critici1es conventional communication as
stagnant. In *4he 5athers,, written during Sassoon(s time at Craiglockhart in the summer
of !"!0, Sassoon mocks the words of two *impotent old friends., 4wo fathers sit in a
club, the perfect picture of )nglishness, as they discuss their sons writing *cheery letters
from Bagdad, and *getting all the funDAt Arras with his nine-inch gun.,
-!9.
4he
discrepancy between the reality of war and the older generation(s vapid conversation
implicitly indicts them, while the e$tensive use of 2uotation, perhaps a nod to the
modernist proects of Names Noyce and 4.S. )liot, indicates a breakdown of
communication. 4he fathers( impotence further contributes to a sense of destruction+ once
the war has rendered communication impossible, regeneration of traditional )nglish
society and culture will fail.
"The (ero"
7ublished in late !"!C, *4he 6ero, also deals with the failure of communication and the
War(s destruction not only of mutual understanding, but also of the possibility of ever
reaching such understanding again. Sassoon again uses e$tensive 2uotation, this time of a
grieving mother, to undermine language and point to its break with reality?
I4he Colonel writes so nicely.( Something broke
In the tired voice that 2uavered to a choke.
She half looked up. IWe mothers are so proud
'f our dead soldiers.( 4hen her face was bowed.
While the mother has a socially acceptable linguistic response, her body language hints at
an inward battle. A person feeling pride would, most likely, hold her head high, but
Sassoon(s mother professes her pride while hiding her face. 4he officer who delivers the
news also uses language to mask, rather than to e$press, his true feelings? *6e(d told the
poor old dear some gallant lies, about her son, whom he personally considers *cold-
footed, useless swine., )choing a theme of *4he 5athers,, Sassoon again ties physical
impotence to this failure of civilian-soldier intergenerational communication? *no one
seemed to careD)$cept that lonely woman with white hair., As words lose meaning, the
only people who seem to care are too old to regenerate that meaning. Both the mother in
*4he 6ero, and the pair in *4he 5athers, seek solace in words, but the mother(s body
language and Sassoon(s derision of *4he 5athers, suggests that words, when rendered
meaningless in the conte$t of war, offer no such relief. 5urther reecting the notion of
language(s resilience, Sassoon puts words into the mouths of the old, infirm, and
impotent, closing the door on the possibility of reviving traditional modes of
communication.
-!<.

"Dead )usicians"
5inding little relief from the onslaught of war in the meanings of words, Sassoon searches
sound and lyricism for a connection to reality. In *=ead 3usicians,, published !"!>,
Sassoon laments that he no longer finds comfort in Beethoven, Bach, and 3o1art? *@our
fugues and symphonies have broughtDJo memory of my friends who died., At the end of
the poem he tries to *think of rag time+ a bit of rag-timeDMand so the song breaks off+ and
I(m alone.,
-!#.
4raditional music, whether classical or rag-time, cannot soothe the wounds
of war. %esponding to this failure of music, Sassoon strives to find and create a new kind
of music in the war. In *4he %edeemer, bullets *sangDAnd drowning shells burst with a
hollow bang+, rockets *fi11ed+, and the Christ-like soldier mumbles. 4he sounds in *the
%edeemer, present Sassoon(s most compelling argument for finding a new approach to
meaningful communication. )ven *the %edeemer,, however, ends with a return to the
spoken, 2uoted word and a sense of inertia in the sucking mud.
-!A.
3usic and sound alone
cannot drive Sassoon(s poetry forward.
Sassoon*s Sonnets
by Anne Aufhauer
Sassoon attempts to fit the War into a framework that can reconcile sound and meaning in
his sonnets. 5or the large part 7etrachan, Sassoon(s sonnets, in their octave-sestet
structure, provide a structural form and forum in which warring ideas can coe$ist. 4he
lyrical rhyming structure of the sonnet leaves room both for beauty and symmetry in
sound and dissonance in meaning. 5inally, sonnets carry historical weight+ by fitting the
starkly new facts of the &reat War into a traditional framework, the poet can envision a
present and future that does not radically break with the past.
"The Poet As (ero"
Sassoon tackles the sonnet/and its potential for redefining the future without
suppressing tradition/in *4he 7oet as 6ero,, published by the liberal Cambridge
3aga1ine in Jovember !"!C. 4he octave addresses his critics, who lament the e$change
of his romantic, chivalric *old, silly sweetness, for *an ugly cry., 4he turn in the sestet
reects a romantic, Arthurian myth of the poet and of war. Sassoon says the poet is *no
more the knight of dreams and show,, and rather that his role as a poet is to revenge his
killed friends, thus creating *absolution in my songs., Sassoon e$presses the ugliness of
war/*scornful, harsh, and discontented,/in a constructive, redemptive way, and the
poem seems a testament to the sonnet(s strength as a wartime medium. 5urthermore,
*4he 7oet as 6ero, is one of Sassoon(s few poems that focuses on maturation rather than
regression. In calling his early poetry an *infant wail,, Sassoon implies that he has grown
and matured as a poet, an idea and image that challenges the impotence and white hair of
*4he 5athers, and *4he 6ero., 6ynes sees *4he 7oet as 6ero, as a radical reection of
the past, rather than as a tired return to the sonnet form? *not only had he -Sassoon.
abandoned the old style+ he repented it, and enacted his repentance in this travesty of
romantic war and its language.,
-!C.
Sassoon(s *ugly, language is emotionally cathartic,
and writing allows him to forgive himself his involvement in the War. )ven as Sassoon(s
language and defiance repent the sensibility of romantic poetry, they do so within its
framework, suggesting both the poet and the sonnet(s growth and revitali1ation.
-!0.

"Banishment"
=espite the partial success of the sonnet as a war poetry form, Sassoon gestures at its
futility in *Banishment,, written while he convalesced at Craiglockhart in !"!0.
*Banishment, addresses Sassoon(s Soldier(s =eclaration, the treasonous prose piece that
landed him in Craiglockhart? *mutinous I criedD4o those who sent them out into the
night., 4he sestet deals with the futility of his cry+ he strove *vainly, to help his fellow
soldiers. Isolated at a place he okingly calls *dottyville,, Sassoon ends the sonnet with
the acknowledgment that
4he darkness tells how vainly I have striven
4o free them from the pit where they must dwell
In outcast gloom convulsed and agged and riven
By grappling guns. :ove drove me to rebel.
:ove drives me back to grope with them through hell+
And in their tortured eyes I stand forgiven.
-!>.
As Sassoon gains war e$perience, he tempers his prior optimism in *4he 7oet as 6ero.,
6is maturation is again stymied, as he finds himself continuously driven back *to grope
with them through hell., 6is diction points to the futility of rebelling. 4he rhyme scheme
ties *dwell,, *rebel,, and *hell, to one another, implying that rebellion has only landed
Sassoon in poetic purgatory, dwelling on his failures. 5urthermore, *Banishment, seems
more an act of conformity than of rebellion. Sassoon refuses to introduce the e$plicit
violence and ugliness of his prior poems into the poem(s vocabulary, returning instead to
themes of *honour, and *pride, in the octave. 6e worries that his writing has been in
vain, and that he has shed no light on the war? *4he darkness tells how vainly I have
striven., While frustrated and subdued by the futility of his more radical efforts, Sassoon
nevertheless finds solace in writing, knowing that, despite his failures, *I stand
forgiven.,
-!".

"The Dreamers"
*4he =reamers, further puts the brakes on a radical reinvention of the sonnet as an
engine for envisioning a post-war future. 4he octave(s liberal use of alliteration captures
the sense of stopped time on the front? *Soldiers are citi1ens of death(s grey
land,D=rawing no dividend from time(s to-morrows.,:ike *4he 5athers, and the mother
in *4he 6ero,, soldiers seemed trapped in a stagnant and nonregenerative world. Sassoon
uses the first person at the turn, immediately interrupting the dreamy lyricism of the
octave and bringing the violence of the war to poem? *4hey think of firelit homes, clean
beds and wives.DI see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats.,
-9G.
:ewis notes that the use
of such imagery brings something entirely new to poetry? *4he new diction/rats,
corpses, stench/reflected a new rhetorical stance.,
-9!.
Sassoon employs this diction to
establish a contrast between the home front and the trenches, but its placement within the
poem and within such a traditional structure also suggests that this new world need not
entirely break from the past?
I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
=reaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.
While the soldiers may feel *mocked by hopeless longing,, as Sassoon seems to feel in
much of his other poetry, the very return to the theme of the octave in the sestet hints at
the possibility of the soldier(s return to the old order. 4he War(s violent diction of dug-
outs and rats remains, but its interruption stops short of destroying the structure of the
poem as a whole. In its return to octave(s theme, *4he =reamers, complicates a
modernist understanding of Sassoon(s use of the sonnet form. Sassoon challenges the
sonnet form with the introduction of war-like violence, but his longing to return to a
prewar life fails to suggest a forward-looking attitude. *4he =reamers, uses the sonnet
both to e$periment with a new, violent form of e$pression and to stubbornly force the
present into the framework of the past.
Sassoon as a )odernist
by Anne Aufhauser
Sassoon(s war poetry reflects the constant tug of conflicting desires. 6e writes about the
tension between the soldier and the civilian as well as the collision of the soldier(s desire
to return home and guilt at abandoning his comrades. 'n a linguistic level, Sassoon
strives to find a balance between rhyme, lyricism, and a new mode of violent e$pression
demanded by the realities of war. 5inally settling on the sonnet as the form most
conducive to dissidence, Sassoon e$plores the challenges of the present within a
distinctly historical structure. 3odernist poet 4.S. )liot wrote of the role of the artist and
the past?
Jo poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. 6is significance, his
appreciation is the appreciation of his relation the dead poets and artistsM4he e$isting
order is complete before the new work arrives+ for order to persist after the supervention
of novelty, the whole e$isting order must be, if ever so slightly, altered.
-99.

Was Sassoon(s e$periment an achievement of modernism, of advancing the
understanding of the War through a reinvention of and conversation with the past, or was
it a stubborn and nostalgic attempt to force the present into the familiar shapes of the
pastH
4he tension and disunction e$pressed in Sassoon(s war sonnets landed him in poetic no-
man(s land, caught between tradition and modernity. 3ired in the muck of war, Sassoon
employs the language not only of death but also of salvation to describe his role as a poet.
Although Sassoon inhabits *death(s grey land, D=rawing no dividend from time(s to-
morrows, in *4he =reamers,, he faces his none$istent future with a degree of comfort.
6e *stands forgiven, in *Banishment,, and finds *absolution in my songs, in *4he 7oet
as 6ero., 4he War forces Sassoon to transform poetic diction and form through the
sonnet, an act that harnesses a redemptive power so violent that it destroys him as a poet
while simultaneously creating new poetic possibilities for those who follow. Sassoon(s
ambivalent attitude towards time and the future, when coupled with his allusions to death
and redemption, suggests that he sacrifices his future as a poet in addressing the War. By
!"9G, Sassoon had abandoned poetry, forfeiting his poetic, &eorgian sensibility for
satiric, thoroughly modern prose.
%eferences
!. O Wilfred 'wen, Collected :etters, <! =ec. !"!0, 2uoted in Samuel 6ynes, A War
Imagined? 4he 5irst World War and )nglish Culture EJew @ork? Athenum, !""!F,
9G9.
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---. 4he 'ld 6untsman and 'ther 7oems. :ondon? William 6einemann, !"!0.
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