User:Serial Number 54129/Mem. Tab.
Background
[edit]Creation
[edit]Written around the time the Armistice was signed, along with another poem, Reconciliation.[1] Although Sassoon's biographer, Jean Moorcroft Wilson suggests that, as he was back in England by this point, at his mother's house in Weirleigh, the poem "with its references to 'sermon-time' and 'Squire in his pew' is... likely to have been inspired by a visit to the local church with his mother".[2] His mother's militarism,"
Synopsis
[edit]A dead soldier's ghost watches the squire, in church, and notes that while the squire "looks thoughtfully" at the memorial tablet, the soldier "died in hell" at Passchendaele. Following his death, his Squire religiously attends church, and spies the soldiers name on the tablet. The poem closes with the ghost "sardonically" asking what greater glory can a man have to be mentioned on a war memorial.[1]
Text
[edit]
Squire nagged and bullied till I went to fight,
(Under Lord Derby's Scheme). I died in hell—
(They called it Passchendaele). My wound was slight,
And I was hobbling back; and then a shell
Burst slick upon the duck-boards: so I fell
Into the bottomless mud, and lost the light.
At sermon-time, while Squire is in his pew,
He gives my gilded name a thoughtful stare;
For, though low down upon the list, I'm there;
"In proud and glorious memory "... that's my due.
Two bleeding years I fought in France, for Squire:
I suffered anguish that he's never guessed.
Once I came home on leave: and then went west...
What greater glory could a man desire?[3]
Analysis
[edit]The style is acerbic, attacking both the recruitment method—"Lord Derby's scheme" was effectively conscription—and the social pressure employed to make men fight by those who did not have to.[1] James Reeves compared it to the patriotism of Brooke as evinced in the latter's "Tell England", and argues that "Memorial Tablet (Great War)"satirises with contempt the valorisation of war as heroic and honourable by society’s leaders and by civilian society generally".[4]
Allusions
[edit]Poetic structure
[edit]Publication history
[edit]Illustrators
[edit]Composition
[edit]Critical reception
[edit]Legacy
[edit]In 2017 The Times described the poem as "encapsulated the traumas of a battle that began 100 years ago today and whose horrific bloodshed has shaped popular understanding not only of the First World War but of the human costs of war at all times".[5]
See also
[edit]Notes
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ a b c Sternlicht 1993, p. 54.
- ^ Wilson 1999, p. 514.
- ^ Sassoon 1919, p. none.
- ^ Reeves 1962.
- ^ Leading article 2017.
Bibliography
[edit]- Reeves, J., ed. (1962). Georgian Poetry: Selected and Introduced by J. Reeves. Harmondsworth: Penguin. OCLC 504728164.
- Sassoon, S. (1919). Picture Show (First ed.). Cambridge: Privately printed: Cambridge University Press. OCLC 228698218.
- Sternlicht, Sanford (1993). Siegfried Sassoon. Twayne's English authors. New York: Twayne. ISBN 978-0-8057-7021-6.
- Leading article (31 July 2017). "Pity of War". The Times. Archived from the original on 23 May 2021. Retrieved 23 May 2021.
- Wilson, J. M. (1999). Siegfried Sassoon: The Making of a War Poet: A Biography (1886-1918). New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-71562-822-5.