From INTO BATTLE

[Soren]

probably too sentimental for most Pal's:

[spike10764]

probably too sentimental for most Pal's:

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no...no he says, filling up

Another masterpiece Soren, your best yet. Soft wings indeed.....

[ypres1418]

A mother's love! as she couldn't be there what better than your Angel!

Beautiful Soren.

Mandy

[Clive Maier]

probably too sentimental for most Pal's:

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Not so much sentimental as dishonest I would say. In that, it is a fair reflection of the poem which is in praise of war. It talks inter alia about the “joy of battle”. To sustain this position, it is as well to sanitise mass violent death. This is not the way people died. They were not serene, not comforted, and all too often were no longer in full possession of their limbs, their entrails or their wits. Poor Grenfell may have come to realise this himself, although he did have the relative mercy of a death in hospital and something, one hopes, to alleviate the pain. For those who died on the field there was no such relief.

[Soren]

Not so much sentimental as dishonest I would say. In that, it is a fair reflection of the poem which is in praise of war. It talks inter alia about the “joy of battle”. To sustain this position, it is as well to sanitise mass violent death. This is not the way people died. They were not serene, not comforted, and all too often were no longer in full possession of their limbs, their entrails or their wits. Poor Grenfell may have come to realise this himself, although he did have the relative mercy of a death in hospital and something, one hopes, to alleviate the pain. For those who died on the field there was no such relief.

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I fully understand what you have said Clive, it goes without saying that I feel that everyone appreciates what the reality of death and injury must have been like.

I saw this on a headstone; I simply tried to imagine the family’s interpretation of it. My brother died in a car crash, I personally do not think of his way of passing, just that he has passed, this I imagine is what those who were left behind thought of their loved ones.

[spike10764]

Unless I'm looking at the picture wrongly(or the wrong picture), I see a man with his legs blown off lying in a shell hole filling with water, on a battered battlefield. Not much sanitising there. The serenity comes via the comforting arms of an angel taking him to the land where pain is no more- a piece of imagery not uncommon for the religious or bereaved families.

The picture fits the words below it pretty well in my opinion and I can't see how it can be "dishonest".

[Clive Maier]

Soren,

I sympathise very much with your personal tragedy and understand your way of managing it.

I hope one day to know and understand more about the way those at home dealt with the war deaths. Did they take the ‘glorious dead’ viewpoint? No doubt many did, sustained by kindly letters from Pals who almost always told of painless instant death and a gallant stand. It was a communal and official view too. You often see the phrase on war memorials. I can never forget a letter to the Kent and Sussex Courier that I chanced upon when searching for news of my uncle Oscar. The writer professed to glory that his dead son had been given the opportunity of falling in the war. Implicit in these views and in Grenfell’s poem is the idea that there is another and lesser people who it is our duty to destroy. Such views breed and perpetuate war and I will always oppose them to the utmost, here and elsewhere.

But there must have been many who lost allegiance to the idea of the glorious dead, or never held it in the first place. They can’t have failed to notice those who came back. They told a different story. There was reticence of course. But there was no hiding the missing limbs, the nervous behaviour, the screaming in the night. There was plenty of this still around when I was a child. And what of the mothers with small children who had lost the breadwinner? Their hard experience is unlikely to have encouraged a ‘glorious’ view of the death. Many of the widows of the men on my hometown memorial had remarried by 1921. It must have been almost an economic necessity.

And just as Sassoon was, many men must have been shocked to find how little those at home understood of the conflict that was raging so close by. They must have felt that their tact was only fuelling the war. Many will have spoken out. I found in the Australian archives an account of the death of a man who emigrated from the house directly across the street from my birthplace. His sergeant stated baldly, “He had his head blown off by a shell. I saw it happen.” I always imagine the sergeant had finally hit the compassion fatigue wall and felt people had to know the truth of it.

[Guest The Hidden Paw]

... imagery not uncommon... bereaved families.

The picture fits the words below it pretty well in my opinion and I can't see how it can be "dishonest".

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But Soren1915's piece is not referring to what families might have thought, but to what a poet actually wrote.

It is disingenuous, and rather lazy, to extract four lines, the last stanza, from a poem and attempt to represent that without allowing the preceding nine stanzas to inform the interpretation.

I suggest that the reference to ‘soft wings’ is metaphorical, echoing the naive and, in my opinion, trite, personification of the birds – kestrels, owls, blackbirds – which have preceded it. My reading of the whole poem finds no references to angels. The ‘bright company of Heaven’ in the third stanza are clearly stars or constellations (‘The Dog star ... Orion’s belt and sworded hip’).

[Soren]

I think you are right about peoples feelings Clive, especially when WW2 loomed and it was all for nothing/or seemed to be......

The nearest I can get is my own experiences, losing a brother at 22, and seeing the devastation that it wrought, can't imagine what a death from warfare is like on a family tho.....

[spike10764]

.

The picture fits the words below it pretty well in my opinion and I can't see how it can be "dishonest".

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The key word here is below.

I was merely appreciating the drawing, I won't lie here - never read the poem before. I like the whole parts of poem/ drawing thing that Soren has been doing lately. It appears some do not... fair play to them.

[Soren]

But Soren1915's piece is not referring to what families might have thought, but to what a poet actually wrote.

It is disingenuous, and rather lazy, to extract four lines, the last stanza, from a poem and attempt to represent that without allowing the preceding nine stanzas to inform the interpretation.

I suggest that the reference to ‘soft wings’ is metaphorical, echoing the naive and, in my opinion, trite, personification of the birds – kestrels, owls, blackbirds – which have preceded it. My reading of the whole poem finds no references to angels. The ‘bright company of Heaven’ in the third stanza are clearly stars or constellations (‘The Dog star ... Orion’s belt and sworded hip’).

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HP,

I only came to the poem from a headstone inscription that I saw, and as trashy as I am I found it quite moving, I only read the full poem today and decided to stay with the experience I had when I first read it.

The main thing that any inscription makes me immediately think of is the person who chose the wording and what or how they felt.

I did not intend the figure to be an angel, but to represent night, but obviously it is and looks like an angel.

[Soren]

Anyhow traditional figurative art being controversial!!! And not a 4th plinth insight!!