Thanks for the Housemania. Perhaps worth noting that he was an accomplished classical scholar who excoriated lesser rivals on textual issues (perhaps patly in compensation for failing his exams at Oxford) and whose classical sensibility suffuses his English poetry. One senses it in the admiration for the mercenaries beneath the Christian overlay of the poem, in the epithets of the “rose-lipt maiden” and “lightfoot lad” in that other poem, and all throughout “To an Athlete Dying Young,” specifically in its idealization of fama gloriaque, its evocative “shades” (recalling the tonalities of umbra), the laurel, and the final scene of the strengthless dead flocking around the garlanded head.
First thing I read on Housman, years ago, was Edmund Wilson's essay on him in "The Triple Thinkers," which takes up some of his classicism — along with making Housman's same-sex desires the center of his artistic impulse, which is a little much.
In the 1930's, Kipling told a friend that these were "the finest lines of poetry written during the war" (from Andrew Lycett's bio, Kipling, quoted in the anthology Winter of the World). In 1918, Kipling wrote his own epitaphs modeled on the Greek Anthology. Here's one:
Common Form
If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.
I grow increasingly fond of poems like this--distillates of wisdom and craft. Thanks for the excellent analysis.
Although an inept attempt at analogy, I was reminded of the way Americans spurned returning Vietnam veterans most of whom were drafted and then ordered to fight an unjust, unwinnable war.
This is a poem often misunderstood: Housman's notebooks make it clear that he wrote it in praise of the British regulars who died in the first battle of Ypres, early in World War I: the poem was first published, in The Times, on the 3rd anniversary of that battle. The "mercenary" tag is him ironically appropriating German propaganda: in the early years of the First World War, German outlets attacked England for employing a "mercenary," that is, a professional, army. Housman is taking the slur and heroizing it.
Housman's poem owes something to Simonides famous epigram on the fallen Lacedaemonian (that is: Spartan) soldiers at the Battle of Thermopylae:: "Ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε/κείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι." "O strangers, take this message to Lacedaemonia that we lie here, obedient to their command."
And interestingly, Macdiarmid thought that it would be better if the Axis won the Second World War, and rejoined the Communist Party in 1956, so it was not so much the murdering that he objected to (or the dying and killing, as Hardy does in his war poems) as the fact that it wasn't done from higher motives.
Thank you for your excellent critical analyses. I have been a career English A L teacher, but you can always learn more and I'm learning masses from you.
Thanks for the Housemania. Perhaps worth noting that he was an accomplished classical scholar who excoriated lesser rivals on textual issues (perhaps patly in compensation for failing his exams at Oxford) and whose classical sensibility suffuses his English poetry. One senses it in the admiration for the mercenaries beneath the Christian overlay of the poem, in the epithets of the “rose-lipt maiden” and “lightfoot lad” in that other poem, and all throughout “To an Athlete Dying Young,” specifically in its idealization of fama gloriaque, its evocative “shades” (recalling the tonalities of umbra), the laurel, and the final scene of the strengthless dead flocking around the garlanded head.
First thing I read on Housman, years ago, was Edmund Wilson's essay on him in "The Triple Thinkers," which takes up some of his classicism — along with making Housman's same-sex desires the center of his artistic impulse, which is a little much.
In the 1930's, Kipling told a friend that these were "the finest lines of poetry written during the war" (from Andrew Lycett's bio, Kipling, quoted in the anthology Winter of the World). In 1918, Kipling wrote his own epitaphs modeled on the Greek Anthology. Here's one:
Common Form
If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.
I grow increasingly fond of poems like this--distillates of wisdom and craft. Thanks for the excellent analysis.
Although an inept attempt at analogy, I was reminded of the way Americans spurned returning Vietnam veterans most of whom were drafted and then ordered to fight an unjust, unwinnable war.
Ok, friends, thanks for more excellent commentary. You reeled me in somehow with this one and I subscribed. 😆🎉
Hooray, Carla!
This is a poem often misunderstood: Housman's notebooks make it clear that he wrote it in praise of the British regulars who died in the first battle of Ypres, early in World War I: the poem was first published, in The Times, on the 3rd anniversary of that battle. The "mercenary" tag is him ironically appropriating German propaganda: in the early years of the First World War, German outlets attacked England for employing a "mercenary," that is, a professional, army. Housman is taking the slur and heroizing it.
Housman's poem owes something to Simonides famous epigram on the fallen Lacedaemonian (that is: Spartan) soldiers at the Battle of Thermopylae:: "Ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε/κείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι." "O strangers, take this message to Lacedaemonia that we lie here, obedient to their command."
Well, that certainly puts it in a somewhat different light. I always wondered who he was talking about. A killer poem, still.
And interestingly, Macdiarmid thought that it would be better if the Axis won the Second World War, and rejoined the Communist Party in 1956, so it was not so much the murdering that he objected to (or the dying and killing, as Hardy does in his war poems) as the fact that it wasn't done from higher motives.
MacDiarmid was a piece of work, wasn't he?
He gives mercenaries a majesty. I'm a bit awed by this poem - the daring and concision.
Agreed--"awed" is not too much.
Yes, great commentary this morning. Thank you.
Thank you for your excellent critical analyses. I have been a career English A L teacher, but you can always learn more and I'm learning masses from you.
Thanks — but what's "English A L"?
Advanced Level exam at age 18 in UK
Thank you for your fine comments. The last two lines of this great poem cut one to the heart.