Wilfred Owen | |
|---|---|
 Wilfred Owen in uniform | |
| Born | Wilfred Edward Salter Owen 18 March 1893 Oswestry,Shropshire, England |
| Died | 4 November 1918(1918-11-04) (aged 25) Sambre–Oise Canal, France |
| Genre | War poetry |
| Military career | |
| Branch | British Army |
| Years of service | 1915–1918 |
| Rank | Lieutenant |
| Unit | |
| Battles / wars | First World War |
| Awards | Military Cross |
| Website | |
| www | |
Wilfred Edward Salter OwenMC (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918) was an English poet and soldier. He was one of the leading poets of theFirst World War. Hiswar poetry on the horrors oftrenches andgas warfare was much influenced by his mentorSiegfried Sassoon and stood in contrast to the public perception of war at the time and to the confidently patriotic verse written by earlier war poets such asRupert Brooke. Among his best-known works – most of which were published posthumously – are "Dulce et Decorum est", "Insensibility", "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "Futility", "Spring Offensive" and "Strange Meeting". Owen was killed in action on 4 November 1918, a week before theArmistice, at the age of 25.
Owen was born on 18 March 1893 atPlas Wilmot, a house in Weston Lane, nearOswestry inShropshire. He was the eldest of Thomas and (Harriett) Susan Owen (née Shaw)'s four children; his siblings were Mary Millard, (William)Harold, and Colin Shaw Owen. At the time of Owen's birth, his parents lived in a comfortable house owned by his grandfather, Edward Shaw.
After Edward's death in January 1897, and the house's sale in March,[1] the family lodged in the back streets ofBirkenhead. There Thomas Owen temporarily worked in the town employed by a railway company. Thomas transferred toShrewsbury in April 1897 where the family lived with Thomas's parents in Canon Street.[2]
Thomas Owen transferred back to Birkenhead in 1898 when he became stationmaster atWoodside station.[2] The family lived with him at three successive homes in theTranmere district area of the town.[3] They then moved back to Shrewsbury in 1907.[4] Wilfred Owen was educated at the Birkenhead Institute[5] and at Shrewsbury Technical School (later known as theWakeman School).
Owen discovered his poetic vocation in about 1904[6] during a holiday spent inCheshire. He was raised as anAnglican of theevangelical type, and in his youth was a devout believer, in part thanks to his strong relationship with his mother, which lasted throughout his life. His early influences included theBible and theRomantic poets, particularlyWordsworth andJohn Keats.[7]
Owen's last two years of formal education saw him as a pupil-teacher at the Wyle Cop school in Shrewsbury.[8] In 1911 he passed thematriculation exam for theUniversity of London, but not with thefirst-class honours needed for a scholarship, which in his family's circumstances was the only way he could have afforded to attend.
In return for free lodging, and some tuition for the entrance exam.[9] Owen worked as lay assistant to the Vicar ofDunsden nearReading,[10] living in the vicarage from September 1911 to February 1913. During this time he attended classes at University College, Reading (now theUniversity of Reading), inbotany and later, at the urging of the head of the English Department, took free lessons inOld English. His time spent at Dunsden parish led him to disillusionment with the Church, both in its ceremony and its failure to provide aid for those in need.[11][12]
From 1913 he worked as a private tutor teaching English and French at theBerlitz School of Languages inBordeaux, France, and later with a family. There he met the older French poetLaurent Tailhade, with whom he later corresponded in French.[13] When war broke out, Owen did not rush to enlist – and even considered joining the French army – but eventually returned to England.[10]
On 21 October 1915, he enlisted in theArtists Rifles. For the next seven months, he trained at Hare Hall Camp inEssex.[14] On 4 June 1916, he was commissioned as asecond lieutenant (on probation) in theManchester Regiment.[15] Initially Owen held his troops in contempt for their loutish behaviour, and in a letter to his mother described his company as "expressionless lumps".[16] However, his imaginative existence was to be changed dramatically by a number of traumatic experiences. He fell into a shell hole and suffered concussion; he was caught in the blast of atrench mortarshell and spent several days unconscious on an embankment lying amongst the remains of one of his fellow officers. Soon afterward, Owen was diagnosed with neurasthenia orshell shock and sent toCraiglockhart War Hospital inEdinburgh for treatment. It was while recuperating at Craiglockhart that he met fellow poetSiegfried Sassoon, an encounter that was to transform Owen's life.
Whilst at Craiglockhart he made friends in Edinburgh's artistic and literary circles, and did some teaching at theTynecastle High School, in a poor area of the city. In November he was discharged from Craiglockhart, judged fit for light regimental duties. He spent a contented and fruitful winter inScarborough, North Yorkshire, and in March 1918 was posted to the Northern Command Depot atRipon.[17] While in Ripon he composed or revised a number of poems, including "Futility" and "Strange Meeting". His 25th birthday was spent quietly atRipon Cathedral, which is dedicated to his namesake,St. Wilfrid of Hexham.
Owen returned in July 1918, to active service in France, although he might have stayed on home-duty indefinitely. His decision to return was probably the result of Sassoon's being sent back to England, after being shot in the head in an apparent "friendly fire" incident, and put on sick-leave for the remaining duration of the war. Owen saw it as his duty to add his voice to that of Sassoon, that the horrific realities of the war might continue to be told. Sassoon was violently opposed to the idea of Owen returning to the trenches, threatening to "stab [him] in the leg" if he tried it. Aware of his attitude, Owen did not inform him of his action until he was once again in France.
At the very end of August 1918, Owen returned to the front line. On 1 October 1918, Owen led units of the Second Manchesters to storm a number of enemy strong points near the village ofJoncourt. For his courage and leadership in the Joncourt action, he was awarded theMilitary Cross, an award he had always sought in order to justify himself as a war poet, but the award was notgazetted until 15 February 1919.[18] The citation followed on 30 July 1919:
2nd Lt, Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, 5th Bn. Manch. R., T.F., attd. 2nd Bn.For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty in the attack on the Fonsomme Line on October 1st/2nd, 1918. On the company commander becoming a casualty, he assumed command and showed fine leadership and resisted a heavy counter-attack. He personally manipulated a captured enemy machine gun from an isolated position and inflicted considerable losses on the enemy. Throughout he behaved most gallantly.[19]
Owen was killed in action on 4 November 1918 during the crossing of theSambre–Oise Canal, exactly one week (almost to the hour) before the signing of theArmistice which ended the war, and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant the day after his death. His mother received the telegram informing her of his death onArmistice Day, as the church bells in Shrewsbury were ringing out in celebration.[10][20] Owen is buried at Ors Communal Cemetery,Ors, in northern France.[21] The inscription on his gravestone was modified from his poetry by his mother, Susan; she omitted the trailing question mark which questions faith to present Owen as more pious:"SHALL LIFE RENEW THESE BODIES? OF A TRUTH ALL DEATH WILL HE ANNUL" W.O.[21][22][23]
Owen is regarded by many as the greatest poet of the First World War,[24] known for his verse about the horrors of trench and gas warfare. He had been writing poetry for some years before the war, himself dating his poetic beginnings to a stay atBroxton by the Hill when he was ten years old.[25]
The poetry ofWilliam Butler Yeats was a significant influence for Owen, but Yeats did not reciprocate Owen's admiration, excluding him fromThe Oxford Book of Modern Verse, a decision Yeats later defended, saying Owen was "all blood, dirt, and sucked sugar stick" and "unworthy of the poet's corner of a country newspaper". Yeats elaborated: "In all the great tragedies, tragedy is a joy to the man who dies ... If war is necessary in our time and place, it is best to forget its suffering as we do the discomfort of fever ..."[26]
The Romantic poetsKeats andShelley influenced much of his early writing and poetry. His great friend, the poet Siegfried Sassoon, later had a profound effect on his poetic voice, and Owen's most famous poems ("Dulce et Decorum est" and "Anthem for Doomed Youth") show direct results of Sassoon's influence. Manuscript copies of the poems survive, annotated in Sassoon's handwriting. Owen's poetry would eventually be more widely acclaimed than that of his mentor. While his use ofpararhyme with heavy reliance onassonance was innovative, he was not the only poet at the time to use these particular techniques. He was, however, one of the first to experiment with it extensively.[27]
Anthem for Doomed Youth
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds.
His poetry itself underwent significant changes in 1917. As a part of his therapy at Craiglockhart, Owen's doctor, Arthur Brock, encouraged Owen to translate his experiences, specifically the experiences he relived in his dreams, into poetry. Sassoon, who was becoming influenced byFreudianpsychoanalysis, aided him here, showing Owen through example what poetry could do. Sassoon's use of satire influenced Owen, who tried his hand at writing "in Sassoon's style". Further, the content of Owen's verse was undeniably changed by his work with Sassoon. Sassoon's emphasis onrealism and "writing from experience" was contrary to Owen's hitherto romantic-influenced style, as seen in his earlier sonnets. Owen was to take both Sassoon's gritty realism and his own romantic notions and create a poetic synthesis that was both potent and sympathetic, as summarised by his famous phrase "the pity of war". In this way, Owen's poetry is quite distinctive, and he is, by many, considered a greater poet than Sassoon. Nonetheless, Sassoon contributed to Owen's popularity by his strong promotion of his poetry, both before and after Owen's death, and his editing was instrumental in the making of Owen as a poet.
Owen's poems had the benefit of strong patronage, and it was a combination of Sassoon's influence, support fromEdith Sitwell, and the preparation of a new and fuller edition of the poems in 1931 byEdmund Blunden that ensured his popularity, coupled with a revival of interest in his poetry in the 1960s which plucked him out of a relatively exclusive readership into the public eye.[10] Though he had plans for a volume of verse, for which he had written a "Preface", he never saw his own work published apart from those poems he included inThe Hydra, the magazine he edited at Craiglockhart War Hospital, and "Miners", which was published inThe Nation.
There were many other influences on Owen's poetry, including his mother. His letters to her provide an insight into Owen's life at the front, and the development of his philosophy regarding the war. Graphic details of the horror Owen witnessed were never spared. Owen's experiences with religion also heavily influenced his poetry, notably in poems such as "Anthem for Doomed Youth", in which the ceremony of a funeral is re-enacted not in a church, but on the battlefield itself, and "At a Calvary near the Ancre", which comments on theCrucifixion ofChrist. Owen's experiences in war led him further to challenge his religious beliefs, claiming in his poem "Exposure" that "love of God seems dying".
Only five of Owen's poems were published before his death, one in fragmentary form. His best known poems include "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "Futility", "Dulce Et Decorum Est", "The Parable of the Old Men and the Young" and "Strange Meeting".However, most of them were published posthumously:Poems (1920),The Poems of Wilfred Owen (1931),The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen (1963),The Complete Poems and Fragments (1983); fundamental in this last collection is the poemSoldier's Dream, that deals with Owen's conception of war.
Owen's full unexpurgated opus is in the academic two-volume workThe Complete Poems and Fragments (1994) byJon Stallworthy. Many of his poems have never been published in popular form.
In 1975 Mrs. Harold Owen, Wilfred's sister-in-law, donated all of the manuscripts, photographs and letters which her late husband had owned to theUniversity of Oxford's English Faculty Library. As well as the personal artifacts, this also includes all of Owen's personal library and an almost complete set ofThe Hydra – the magazine of Craiglockhart War Hospital. These can be accessed by any member of the public on application in advance to the English Faculty librarian.
TheHarry Ransom Humanities Research Center at theUniversity of Texas at Austin holds a large collection of Owen's family correspondence.
Though it has been suggested that Owen hoped to marry Albertina Dauthieu, at the time living inMilnathort, Scotland, had he survived the war,[29]Robert Graves[30] andSacheverell Sitwell,[31] both of whom knew him, believed that Owen washomosexual, and that homoeroticism was a central element in much of his poetry.[32][33][34][35] Through Sassoon, Owen was introduced to a sophisticated homosexual literary circle which includedOscar Wilde's friendRobbie Ross, writer and poetOsbert Sitwell, and Scottish writerC. K. Scott Moncrieff, the translator ofMarcel Proust. This contact, it is argued, broadened Owen's outlook, and increased his confidence in incorporating homoerotic elements into his work.[36][37] Historians have debated whether Owen had an affair with Scott Moncrieff in May 1918; the latter had dedicated various works to a "Mr W.O.",[38] but Owen never responded.[39]
Throughout Owen's lifetime and for decades after, homosexual activity between men was a punishable offence throughout the United Kingdom, and the account of Owen's sexual development has been somewhat obscured because his brotherHarold removed what he considered discreditable passages in Owen's letters and diaries after the death of their mother.[40]Andrew Motion wrote of Owen's relationship with Sassoon: "On the one hand, Sassoon's wealth, posh connections and aristocratic manner appealed to the snob in Owen: on the other, Sassoon's homosexuality admitted Owen to a style of living and thinking that he found naturally sympathetic."[41] Sassoon, by his own account, was not actively homosexual at this time, but began his first love affair just after the war ended, in November 1918.[42]
An important turning point in Owen scholarship occurred in 1987 when theNew Statesman published the polemic "The Truth Untold" by Jonathan Cutbill,[43] the literary executor ofEdward Carpenter, which attacked the academic suppression of Owen as a poet of homosexual experience.[44][45] Amongst the article's contentions was that the poem "Shadwell Stair", previously alleged to be mysterious, was a straightforward elegy to homosexual soliciting in an area of the London docks once renowned for it. In June 2022 the poem was included in the anthology, "100 Queer Poems", compiled byAndrew McMillan andMary Jean Chan.[46]
Owen heldSiegfried Sassoon in an esteem not far from hero-worship, remarking to his mother that he was "not worthy to light [Sassoon's] pipe". The relationship clearly had a profound impact on Owen, who wrote in his first letter to Sassoon after leaving Craiglockhart "You have fixed my life – however short". Sassoon wrote that he took "an instinctive liking to him",[47] and recalled their time together "with affection".[48] On the evening of 3 November 1917 they parted, Owen having been discharged from Craiglockhart. He was stationed on home-duty inScarborough for several months, during which time he associated with members of the artistic circle into which Sassoon had introduced him, which includedRobbie Ross andRobert Graves. He also metH. G. Wells andArnold Bennett, and it was during this period he developed the stylistic voice for which he is now recognised. Many of his early poems were penned while stationed at the Clarence Garden Hotel, now theClifton Hotel, in Scarborough's North Bay. Ablue plaque on the hotel marks its association with Owen.
Sassoon and Owen kept in touch through correspondence, and after Sassoon was shot in the head in July 1918 and sent back to the UK to recover, they met in August and spent what Sassoon described as "the whole of a hot cloudless afternoon together."[49] They never saw each other again. About three weeks later, Owen wrote to bid Sassoon farewell, as he was on the way back to France, and they continued to communicate. After the Armistice, Sassoon waited in vain for word from Owen, only to be told of his death several months later. The loss grieved Sassoon greatly, and he was never "able to accept that disappearance philosophically."[50] Many years later, he is said, snobbishly, to have toldStephen Spender that he found Owen's grammar school accent "embarrassing".[51] However, in his own account of his friendship with Owen, which appeared in his 1945 autobiography,Siegfried's Journey, Sassoon writes that Owen's death created "a chasm in my private existence",[52] Sassoon expressed regret at what he regarded as his "slowness in discovering that [Owen] was to be of high significance for me, both as a poet and friend...and there was much comfort in his companionship".[53]
There are memorials to Owen at Gailly nearSailly-Laurette,Ors Communal Cemetery, near St Oswalds Church inOswestry,Birkenhead Central Library andShrewsbury Abbey.[54]
On 11 November 1985, Owen was one of sixteen Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled inWestminster Abbey'sPoet's Corner.[55] The inscription on the stone is taken from Owen's "Preface" to his poems: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."[56] There is also a small museum at the Craiglockhart War Hospital, now aNapier University building, containing the "War Poets Collection".[57]
The forester's house in Ors where Owen spent his last night,Maison Forestière de l'Ermitage, has been transformed byTurner Prize nomineeSimon Patterson into an art installation and permanent memorial to Owen and his poetry. It opened to the public on 1 October 2011.[58]
In November 2015, actorJason Isaacs unveiled a tribute to Owen at the former Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh where Owen was treated for shell shock during WWI.[59]
Benjamin Britten'sWar Requiem, first performed in 1962, makes extensive use of Owen's poetry.[60]
Owen himself has been the subject of several fictional works, notablyNot About Heroes, a play about Owen's friendship with Siegfried Sassoon byStephen MacDonald, first performed in 1982.[61] TheRegeneration Trilogy, a novel series byPat Barker, includes the meeting and relationship between Sassoon and Owen and the death of Owen as one of its main themes.[62][63]
To commemorate Owen's life and poetry, The Wilfred Owen Association was formed in 1989.[70][71] Since its formation the Association has established permanent public memorials in Shrewsbury and Oswestry. In addition to readings, talks, visits and performances, it promotes and encourages exhibitions, conferences, awareness and appreciation of Owen's poetry. Peter Owen, Wilfred Owen's nephew, was President of the Association until his death in July 2018.[72] The Association's Patrons includePeter Florence,Rowan Williams SirDaniel Day-Lewis andSamuel West;Grey Ruthven, 2nd Earl of Gowrie (1939–2021) was also a Patron.[73][74] The Association presents a biennial Poetry Award to honour a poet for a sustained body of work that includes memorable war poems; previous recipients includeSir Andrew Motion (Poet Laureate 1999–2009),Dannie Abse,Christopher Logue,Gillian Clarke andSeamus Heaney.Owen Sheers was awarded the prize in September 2018.[75][76][77]
 | This article'suse ofexternal links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Pleaseimprove this article by removingexcessive orinappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate intofootnote references.(March 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
