Out of battle

 Now that safely we seem to be "out of battle" which we fought and won quite decisively, no discouragement at all in talking about poetry that talks of the pity of war. Undoubtedly, a soldier is a braveheart. Behind that armour though is a man who is someone's somebody, right?  He is a son, a brother, a friend, a husband, a father! Indeed we should be indebted to an entire family who entrusts their (often the sole breadwinner) soul to protect (one-n-) all!

 English literature has a wealth of such sensitive poems that shore up the sheer barbarity of war which destroys  the human(e) bonds. The World War I poetry, known as the 'shell-shocked' poetry, the World War II poetry, the poems of the inter-war years which actually saw the dismally disenchanting and hence truly traumatic Spanish Civil War (because it showed how hollow the so-called liberal, left rhetoric was), these genres of poems are truly moving. So are the essays (especially by George Orwell, the conscience of an era, actually of all times) and novels. Poems, however, crystallise the feel the best. So let us talk of poems.

Wilfred Owen's "Strange Meeting" (the title of our blog comes from that poem) , for example, shows the vacuity of war as the poem is a dramatic monologue wherein two dead soldiers meet in hell to underscore "truths that lie too deep for taint".

I shall discuss "Vergissmeinnicht" some other time. Right now, let me mention "Ultima Ratio Regum".  It talks of a civilian casualty, a man "too young and too silly" who had hardly any worth "in terms of employment, hotel ledgers, news files" as he was too much a commoner to be worthy of any special notice. 

In almost prosaic lines sipped in scathing sarcasm and satire, Stephen Spender concludes his searing poem. He questions "O World, O death". He asserts,"One bullet in ten thousand kills a man./Ask. Was so much expenditure justified/On the death of one so young and so silly".

Out of battle emerges nothing. All is wasted, best of resources, and worst of all, lives  valuable to the near and dear ones, but due to the war rendered valueless!

Pratima@True, a century later, realities have changed drastically, nay, critically.  Geopolitical scenarios are brutal. Terrorism constantly rears up its ugly hood. Yet the sophisticated weaponry, too, kills both, the innocent civilians and the army (wo)men! What, and where, is the solution to the barbarity that imposes a war on us??? Which alternatives to brutal battles?