First World War, Poems from the Front ; une anthologie poétique établie par Paul O’Prey

"There is [...] a rawness, energy, and urgent truthfulness about the poetry written by Owen, Sorley, Gurney, Rosenberg, Borden and others, which demands our attention. Their burningly insistent messages, from the very limit of endurable human experience, are sent without time to reflect or polish words and ideas."

Paul O'Prey, First World War, Poems from the Front, Imperial War Museum, 2014.

"Such, such is Death : no triumph : no defeat : Only an empty pail, a slate rubbed clean, A merciful putting away of what has been. And this we know : Death is not Life effete, Life crushed, the broken pail. We who have seen So marvellous things know well the end not yet."

Charles Sorley (1895-1915), "Two sonnets", II, in Marlborough and Other Poems, Cambridge University Press, 1916.

« I've been wanting to read some WWI poetry again, but there's so much, so many huge anthologies. How to choose ». Cette remarque d’une lectrice de l'anthologie First World War, Poems from the Front, figurant sur un réseau social permettant d'évaluer ses lectures, interroge a contrario sur la grande rareté des publications poétiques autour de la Première Guerre mondiale en France. Hormis chez quelques bouquinistes, peut-être, on ne trouvera pas aisément de librairie dans lesquelles se procurer les poésies de la Grande Guerre, — poésies qui n'intéressent plus le lecteur moderne. Difficile, également, de trouver un site internet français répertoriant ce genre particulier (exception faite des quelques pages « d’amateurs », et du site de l’Université Paris Nanterre Poésie Grande Guerre, qui ne semble d’ailleurs plus mis à jour), alors qu’il existe pléthore de ressources anglaises en ligne (The War Poetry Website, First World War Poetry Digital Archive, FirstWorldWar.com, un dossier complet de la Poetry Foundation sur la Première Guerre mondiale…). Un tour au rayon poésie des grandes librairies de Londres, qui proposent pour la plupart une belle sélection d’œuvres sur 14/18, nous renverra une fois encore à nos lacunes. Pourtant, bien qu'ils soient rares, il existe quelques ouvrages français sur la question. Mentionnons Poètes de la Grande Guerre, d'Eric Labayle (Editions Sutton, 2018), ou Poètes de la Grande Guerre : Expérience combattante et activité poétique, de Laurence Campa (Classiques Jaunes, Garnier, 2020). Mais il s'agit là d'essais et non d'anthologies ; et lorsqu’on a la bonne fortune de croiser des ouvrages s'apparentant à cette dernière catégorie, ils se trouvent souvent publiés dans des éditions ou collections « de niche », difficilement accessibles au tout-venant (l'Anthologie de poèmes de prisonniers de guerre de la guerre 14-18 de Michel Reynaud, par exemple, publiée aux Éditions Tirésias, 2004). Un peu plus courants, mais que l’on peinera quand même à trouver dans les rayons, les volumes Les Poètes de la Grande Guerre, de Jacques Béal (Cherche Midi, 2014), ainsi que l'édition de poche, un peu fourre-tout, des Poèmes de poilus : Anthologie de poèmes français, anglais, allemands, italiens, russes, 1914-1918, dirigée par Guillaume Picon et publiée par les éditions Points, viennent compléter ce maigre éventail. La France, sortie victorieuse de cette vaste boucherie humaine aux vingt millions de morts militaires et civils confondus, rechignerait-elle à publier ses soldats-poètes ? Ce qui est certain, c’est que l’on délaisse aujourd’hui volontiers toute forme de poésie patriotique (celle de la Première Guerre mondiale, justement, ne l’est pas toujours dans le sens où on l’entend), que l’on pense surannée, répétitive, convenue. Pourtant, si l'on prend la peine d'y regarder de plus près, la grande richesse et la variété des vers écrits dans l'horreur du conflit se trouvent souvent bien éloignés des clichés attendus.

First World War, Poems from the Front, édité pour la première fois en 2014 et réédité en 2020 par les éditions de l'Imperial War Museums, est l'exemple d'une anthologie accessible à tous, établie par les soins d'un professeur et président de l'Université de Roehampton (Londres), Paul O'Prey. Loin des travaux académiques parfois rébarbatifs, s'accompagnant d'études stylistiques alambiquées gâchant la saveur du texte original, ce livre s'attache à présenter, de manière tout à fait limpide, quinze poètes britanniques, les plus notables — ou plutôt, les plus connus —, de la Grande Guerre. Car les essais et études poétiques autour de 14/18 font souvent l’erreur de se focaliser essentiellement sur des noms d’ores et déjà familiers… En France, on retrouve donc invariablement Apollinaire, Charles Péguy ou Blaise Cendrars dans ces corpus, tandis que certains poètes fort talentueux, mais dont l’œuvre est moins dense, ou dont la personnalité et le destin sans doute moins spectaculaires, sont souvent négligés. Un exemple illustrant ce constat : le livre Quatre poètes dans la Grande Guerre, Guillaume Apollinaire, Jean Cocteau, Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, Paul Éluard, d'Olivier Parenteau, publié aux Presses Universitaires de Liège, 2014. (Qui se soucierait, en-dehors de Michel Suffran, du jeune poète-philosophe Georges Pancol (1888-1915) ? Certes, l'oeuvre est mince et l'accès aux informations limité ; mais il y aurait tout de même beaucoup à dire sur les poèmes retrouvés, les Lettres à la fiancée, ou les quelques bribes de Journal laissées à la postérité, textes annonciateurs d’une carrière littéraire qui eût pu être brillante). Dans l’ouvrage de Paul O’Prey, comme dans beaucoup d’autres anthologies britanniques, on retrouve donc les équivalents de nos « poètes de guerre célèbres » précédemment nommés. C’est ainsi que sont presque systématiquement cités des vers de Robert Graves (auprès duquel Paul O’Prey a d’ailleurs vécu et travaillé), de Siegfried Sassoon, de Wilfred Owen ou d'Edward Thomas. Naturellement, pour découvrir la poésie anglaise de la Première Guerre mondiale, il est fortement conseillé de parcourir First World War, Poems from the Front. Mais pour ceux qui s'intéressent au sujet de plus près, un travail de recherche supplémentaire sera sans doute nécessaire pour dénicher les noms de poètes-soldats britanniques que l’on n’évoque guère dans ce recueil. Malgré la qualité de ce travail, on peut donc déplorer que l’enquête n’ait pas été poussée un peu plus loin, aux confins des terres inconnues. Il faut également déplorer l'absence d'index, ainsi que la bibliographie lacunaire, puisque les dates des éditions originales n'ont pas été données et qu'ont été retenues les dates des rééditions plus récentes. Pour les besoins de cette note, suivie d'un choix de poèmes, nous avons donc recherché les dates de publications originales. Deux points forts de cette anthologie, néanmoins : la présence dans ce recueil de notices biographiques, — ce qui est loin d’être toujours le cas dans les anthologies de ce type —, ainsi que l’inclusion de portraits des poètes retenus. Accompagnant les notices, ces illustrations permettent de mettre un visage et de deviner une âme derrière ces vers si déchirants. Plus que jamais, le regard de ces hommes nous hantent, et nous rappellent à notre essentiel devoir de mémoire.

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Poèmes choisis

The Dead

Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke, 1915

These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,

      Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.

The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,

      And sunset, and the colours of the earth.

These had seen movement, and heard music; known

      Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;

Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;

      Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.

There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter

And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,

      Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance

And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white

      Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,

A width, a shining peace, under the night.

Two Sonnets

Charles Sorley (1895-1915), Marlborough and Other Poems, 1916

I

Saints have adored the lofty soul of you.

Poets have whitened at your high renown.

We stand among the many millions who

Do hourly wait to pass your pathway down.

You, so familiar, once were strange: we tried

To live as of your presence unaware.

But now in every road on every side

We see your straight and steadfast signpost there.

I think it like that signpost in my land,

Hoary and tall, which pointed me to go

Upward, into the hills, on the right hand,

Where the mists swim and the winds shriek and blow,

A homeless land and friendless, but a land

I did not know and that I wished to know.

II

Such, such is Death: no triumph: no defeat:

Only an empty pail, a slate rubbed clean,

A merciful putting away of what has been.

And this we know: Death is not Life effete,

Life crushed, the broken pail. We who have seen

So marvellous things know well the end not yet.

Victor and vanquished are a-one in death:

Coward and brave: friend, foe. Ghosts do not say

"Come, what was your record when you drew breath?"

But a big blot has hid each yesterday

So poor, so manifestly incomplete.

And your bright Promise, withered long and sped,

Is touched; stirs, rises, opens and grows sweet

And blossoms and is you, when you are dead.

Recalling War

Robert Graves (1895-1985), Collected Poems, 1938

Entrance and exit wounds are silvered clean,

The track aches only when the rain reminds.

The one-legged man forgets his leg of wood,

The one-armed man his jointed wooden arm.

The blinded man sees with his ears and hands

As much or more than once with both his eyes.

Their war was fought these 20 years ago

And now assumes the nature-look of time,

As when the morning traveller turns and views

His wild night-stumbling carved into a hill.

What, then, was war? No mere discord of flags

But an infection of the common sky

That sagged ominously upon the earth

Even when the season was the airiest May.

Down pressed the sky, and we, oppressed, thrust out

Boastful tongue, clenched fist and valiant yard.

Natural infirmities were out of mode,

For Death was young again; patron alone

Of healthy dying, premature fate-spasm.

Fear made fine bed-fellows. Sick with delight

At life's discovered transitoriness,

Our youth became all-flesh and waived the mind.

Never was such antiqueness of romance,

Such tasty honey oozing from the heart.

And old importances came swimming back —

Wine, meat, log-fires, a roof over the head,

A weapon at the thigh, surgeons at call.

Even there was a use again for God —

A word of rage in lack of meat, wine, fire,

In ache of wounds beyond all surgeoning.

War was return of earth to ugly earth,

War was foundering of sublimities,

Extinction of each happy art and faith

By which the world has still kept head in air,

Protesting logic or protesting love,

Until the unendurable moment struck —

The inward scream, the duty to run mad.

And we recall the merry ways of guns —

Nibbling the walls of factory and church

Like a child, piecrust; felling groves of trees

Like a child, dandelions with a switch.

Machine-guns rattle toy-like from a hill,

Down in a row the brave tin-soldiers fall:

A sight to be recalled in elder days

When learnedly the future we devote

To yet more boastful visions of despair.

I Stood with the Dead

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), Picture-Show, 1919

I stood with the Dead, so forsaken and still:

When dawn was grey I stood with the Dead.

And my slow heart said, "You must kill, you must kill":

"Soldier, soldier, morning is red."

On the shapes of the slain in their crumpled disgrace

I stared for a while through the thin cold rain…

"O lad that I loved, there is rain on your face,"

And your eyes are blurred and sick like the plain."

I stood with the Dead... They were dead; they were dead;

My heart and my head beat a march of dismay:

And gusts of the wind came dulled by the guns.

"Fall in!" I shouted; "Fall in for your pay!"

Demobilised

Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy (1883-1929), Peace rhymes of a padre, 1920

Out through its curtain of dark blue mist,

Glittering gold where the sun has kissed,

Out till it reaches the shining sea,

Stretches the land that is home to me;

Valley and hillock and wooded copse,

Promise of wealth in the fresh green crops.

Mother of Mothers that gave me birth,

Bone of my bone is thy rich red earth,

Flesh of my flesh is thy land to me,

The land that ends in the shining sea.

Mother, I come from a wounded land,

Where the earth is torn and the poor trees stand

Like naked masts, black — stiff — and stark,

Over the grave of some gallant bark;

Where peasant's cottage and nobles' halls

Are heaps of brick or the four bare walls,

With lonely graves in a maze of wire,

Where stood the church with its peaceful spire.

Out of the ruin I come to thee,

Hail, Mother mine, by the shining sea.

Dear to me ever thy country-side,

But dearer now for the men who died,

Robbed of the richest of youth's long years,

Steeling their hearts to a mother's tears,

Fighting their way through a thousand hells,

Bearing a cross like a cap and bells,

Jeering at death as a last good joke.

My thanks go up with the thin blue smoke,

Marking the cottage that's home to me,

In the dear safe land by the shining sea.

Home

Edward Thomas (1878-1917), Poems by Edward Thomas, 1917

Fair was the morning, fair our tempers, and

We had seen nothing fairer than that land,

Though strange, and the untrodden snow that made

Wild of the tame, casting out all that was

Not wild and rustic and old; and we were glad.

Fair, too, was afternoon, and first to pass

Were we that league of snow, next the north wind.

There was nothing to return for, except need,

And yet we sang nor ever stopped for speed,

As we did often with the start behind.

Faster still strode we when we came in sight

Of the cold roofs where we must spend the night.

Happy we had not been there, nor could be.

Though we had tasted sleep and food and fellowship

Together long. 

"How quick" to someone's lip

The words came, "will the beaten horse run home."

The word "home" raised a smile in us all three,

And one repeated it, smiling just so

That all knew what he meant and none would say.

Between three counties far apart that lay

We were divided and looked strangely each

At the other, and we knew we were not friends

But fellows in a union that ends

With the necessity for it, as it ought. 

Never a word was spoken, not a thought

Was thought, of what the look meant with the word

"Home" as we walked and watched the sunset blurred.

And then to me the word, only the word,

"Homesick," as it were playfully occurred:

No more. 

If I should ever more admit

Than the mere word I could not endure it

For a day longer: this captivity

Must somehow come to an end, else I should be

Another man, as often now I seem,

Or this life be only an evil dream.

Dead Man's Dump

Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918), Poems by Isaac Rosenberg, 1922

The plunging limbers over the shattered track

Racketed with their rusty freight,

Stuck out like many crowns of thorns,

And the rusty stakes like sceptres old

To stay the flood of brutish men

Upon our brothers dear.

The wheels lurched over sprawled dead

But pained them not, though their bones crunched,

Their shut mouths made no moan.

They lie there huddled, friend and foeman,

Man born of man, and born of woman,

And shells go crying over them

From night till night and now.

Earth has waited for them,

All the time of their growth

Fretting for their decay:

Now she has them at last!

In the strength of their strength

Suspended—stopped and held.

What fierce imaginings their dark souls lit?

Earth! have they gone into you!

Somewhere they must have gone,

And flung on your hard back

Is their soul’s sack

Emptied of God-ancestralled essences.

Who hurled them out? Who hurled?

None saw their spirits’ shadow shake the grass,

Or stood aside for the half used life to pass

Out of those doomed nostrils and the doomed mouth,

When the swift iron burning bee

Drained the wild honey of their youth.

What of us who, flung on the shrieking pyre,

Walk, our usual thoughts untouched,

Our lucky limbs as on ichor fed,

Immortal seeming ever?

Perhaps when the flames beat loud on us,

A fear may choke in our veins

And the startled blood may stop.

The air is loud with death,

The dark air spurts with fire,

The explosions ceaseless are.

Timelessly now, some minutes past,

Those dead strode time with vigorous life,

Till the shrapnel called ‘An end!’

But not to all. In bleeding pangs

Some borne on stretchers dreamed of home,

Dear things, war-blotted from their hearts.

Maniac Earth! howling and flying, your bowel

Seared by the jagged fire, the iron love,

The impetuous storm of savage love.

Dark Earth! dark Heavens! swinging in chemic smoke,

What dead are born when you kiss each soundless soul

With lightning and thunder from your mined heart,

Which man’s self dug, and his blind fingers loosed?

A man’s brains splattered on

A stretcher-bearer’s face;

His shook shoulders slipped their load,

But when they bent to look again

The drowning soul was sunk too deep

For human tenderness.

They left this dead with the older dead,

Stretched at the cross roads.

Burnt black by strange decay

Their sinister faces lie,

The lid over each eye,

The grass and coloured clay

More motion have than they,

Joined to the great sunk silences.

Here is one not long dead;

His dark hearing caught our far wheels,

And the choked soul stretched weak hands

To reach the living word the far wheels said,

The blood-dazed intelligence beating for light,

Crying through the suspense of the far torturing wheels

Swift for the end to break

Or the wheels to break,

Cried as the tide of the world broke over his sight.

Will they come? Will they ever come?

Even as the mixed hoofs of the mules,

The quivering-bellied mules,

And the rushing wheels all mixed

With his tortured upturned sight.

So we crashed round the bend,

We heard his weak scream,

We heard his very last sound,

And our wheels grazed his dead face.

Anthem for Doomed Youth

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), Poems of Wilfred Owen, 1920

What passing bells for those 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 for them from prayers and 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 good-byes,

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of silent minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

De Profundis

Ivor Gurney (1890-1937), War's Embers, 1919

If only this fear would leave me I could dream of Crickley

Hill

And a hundred thousand thoughts of home would visit my heart in sleep;

But here the peace is shattered all day by the devil's will,

And the guns bark night-long to spoil the velvet silence

deep.

O who could think that once we drank in quiet inns and

cool

And saw brown oxen trooping the dry sands to slake

Their thirst at the river flowing, or plunged in a silver pool

To shake the sleepy drowse off before well awake?

We are stale here, we are covered body and soul and mind

With mire of the trenches, close clinging and foul,

We have left our old inheritance, our Paradise behind,

And clarity is lost to us and cleanness of soul.

O blow here, you dusk-airs and breaths of half-Iight,

And comfort despairs of your darlings that long

Night and day for sound of your bells, or a sight

Of your tree-bordered lanes, land of blossom and song.

Autumn will be here soon, but the road of coloured leaves

Is not for us, the up and down highway where go

Earth's pilgrims to wonder where Malvern upheaves

That blue-emerald splendour under great clouds of snow.

Some day we'll fill in trenches, level the land and turn

Once more joyful faces to the country where trees

Bear thickly for good drink, where strong sunsets burn

Huge bonfires of glory - O God, send us peace!

Hard it is for men of moors or fens to endure

Exile and hardship, or the northland grey-drear;

But we of the rich plain of sweet airs and pure,

Oh! Death would take so much from us, how should we

not fear?