
Wilfred Owen: Bugle marks centenary of war poet's death - brudgers
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-46092004
======
robin_reala
I put together a nicely formatted and public domain ebook of Wilfred Owen
poetry earlier this year for Standard Ebooks if anyone wants to read:

[https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/wilfred-
owen/poetry](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/wilfred-owen/poetry)

(bonus: vorticist cover art by Paul Nash:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Nash_(artist)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Nash_\(artist\))
)

~~~
theoh
Excuse my peevishness, but your attitude is typical of programmers who decide
to dabble in "nice formatting". I downloaded the epub book in the expectation
that the typography would be a shambles, and it was.

I get that this is a hobby for you. But the arrogance and vanity of software
folks who think they can do typographic design (without any training, eye for
type, or respect for the real skill and tradition of typography) just leads to
bad results.

This goes very much for [http://sile-typesetter.org](http://sile-
typesetter.org) as well, for example.

I probably sound completely intolerant. What I'm trying to say is: your
smugness is misplaced.

~~~
dang
Typographical passion is no license to break the site guidelines. Please
review
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
and don't attack anyone personally on HN again, even if they suck at something
and you're perfect.

If you'd like an example for how better to treat others on this site, look no
further than
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18382766](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18382766).

------
Theodores
Poetry was used by all sides during the war and the efforts to get the right
poetry were a secret government propaganda effort that wasn't known of at the
time.

There was a big fear that the Germans were trying to undermine the morale of
people in the UK so poetry was the 'big guns' for seeing off that threat.

The WW1 poets were not having to start from a blank page, a handy anthology of
poetry was provided as a starting point, this has plenty of gems from way
before the war to remind people what they were fighting for:

[https://archive.org/details/spiritofmanantho00bridiala/page/...](https://archive.org/details/spiritofmanantho00bridiala/page/n25)

There was another battle going on back on the home front, for women's rights.
Poetry played a part in this struggle too.

------
gotocake
My favorite of his poems is ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’

[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-et-
decoru...](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-et-decorum-est)

 _Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I
saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering,
choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we
flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face,
like a devil’s sick of sin..._

~~~
Jaruzel
Covered Wilfred Owen in some depth in Secondary School, although his poetry is
quite depressing compared to say, Rupert Brooke, I was always fascinated with
him due in part that I share the same surname with him.

~~~
JoeSmithson
It's common in British school to compare and contrast "The Soldier" with
"Dulce et Decorum Est".

Personally the poem which had the most impact on me was "Suicide in The
Trenches"[0]. Hit me like a tonne of bricks aged about 14, I read it every
Rememberence Day now.

[0]
[https://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~keith/poems/suicide.html](https://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~keith/poems/suicide.html)

------
hkt
It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country.

Read: it isn't. It was senseless, and the hope of many of those who lived (and
probably many of those who died) was that there would never be another war. It
is a pity their hopes for peace weren't realised in the 20th century, and an
even greater pity that they don't look likely to be realised in the 21st.

~~~
jfk13
While it's true (and tragic) that the Great War did not fulfil the hope that
it would end all wars, many of those who served (and died, or lived) would not
have agreed that their sacrifice was senseless. They saw the battle against
tyranny and for the freedom of their country as the most worthwhile thing they
could ever do.

Try John Lewis-Stempel's book _Six Weeks_ [1].

Although his poetry graphically portrays the horrors of war, and does not at
all glorify or glamorise it, Wilfred Owen _chose_ to return to the front,
though he had been invalided home and could have remained safely in Britain.

[1] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Six-Weeks-Gallant-British-
Officer/d...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Six-Weeks-Gallant-British-
Officer/dp/1409102149)

~~~
hkt
The peace movement in the UK was spawned from people returning from war who
said "never again". In the UK we've had a century of people acknowledging how
many people died and for how little, done through song and music and culture
more generally.

We don't acknowledge the fact that the war achieved little (except for
creating the conditions for the Nazis to thrive in Germany) and was generally
opposed by lots of forces around Europe who felt it was not in the interests
of workers. By way of example, there was a conference of socialists held in
Basel in 1912 which saw the war coming, and which apportioned work to the
different social democratic and Labour parties around Europe which was mostly
concerned with making sure war didn't break out.

Large numbers of people oppose the war long before it even broke out, and even
now, it is hard to say what purpose it served ("plucky little belgium"
actually being a substantial force for evil in the world at that point..).

~~~
jfk13
> The peace movement in the UK was spawned from people returning from war who
> said "never again".

And yet just a couple of decades later, the country went to war again. I don't
believe everyone had already forgotten the horrors of 1914-18; but we realised
that sometimes it was necessary, despite the cost.

~~~
hkt
The point is that the alternatives to war are hard but they are always there.
The people returning from the first world war wanted them pursued more
readily, and had they been pursued more readily in 1914, there would perhaps
not have been a war on the same scale or even at all. WW2 was the consequence
of the failure to find a rational settlement after WW2.

To say the first world war - or any other - was senseless, is to recognise
that there was no existential threat, and there was little real attempt at
diplomacy. There were alternatives that didn't involve millions of people
being marched to their deaths. At the point at which we acknowledge that, we
have to ask why so many died and what for.

Diplomacy is the natural response of normal working people, because
historically we're the ones who get mown down by machine guns at the behest of
our betters - people who start wars but don't fight in them.

If you feel WW1 was necessary and proportionate in the face of Europe's
challenges at the time, I'd be intrigued to hear why. Can you outline the case
for war?

------
barrow-rider
Everyone seems to harp on ‘Dulce et Decorum Est' \-- presumably because they
had to read it in an English class at some point -- but I always rally liked
'Futility'. It's like you can hear Owen losing his faith in God.

~~~
JamesLeonis
I have English class to thank for showing me his work. I ended up picking up a
book of his poetry soon after.

What struck me is his stark change from a Romantic poet to his Wartime poetry.
I would like to add the cynicism in "Inspection" as a companion to "Futility"
to mirror the loss of faith.

