The Great War and Modern Memory influenced how future cultural historians would look back on this time and is rumoured to be one of the greatest books on WWI. This dynamic exploration is both a literary study and a historical one, examining the war that ushered in a modern era, took our innocence and changed the world through the literature of it's time. I have long been eager to read this book, but was often intimidated by the many literary references that I was unfamiliar with. However, I've done some reading since, and feel comfortable finally diving into this great literary work.
A Satire of Circumstance
When England declared war on Germany during the summer of 1914, it was expected to be over before Winter had passed. The British had naively launched themselves on a war path that would be unlike anything humankind had never witnessed before. They did not realize how significantly the industrial machine would change the art of war, and unimaginable suffering and loss awaited the worlds greatest powers.
Fussell begins by examining the irony of innocent ignorance, a theme which was popular with a few poets in the years leading up to the war, but would be come a national theme for Britain as the war dragged on. In particular he looks at Thomas Hardy's works in "A Satire Of Circumstance".
In Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave? the voice of a dead woman speaks. Hearing a scratching over the grave, her cadaver wonders who it could be. The irony being that no one, not even the dog she left behind, actually cares. Unlike Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" which suggests that the memory of the dead haunt us and it is our duty to remember, Hardy believes neither love nor blood nor hate can survive death. The world has moved on without her, with hardly a pause. A reality I noted after my first brush with death, when a dear friend was tragically taken. I expected the world to be fundamentally changed, for the ground to crack open and swallow us whole. It was almost eerie how everything simply marched on, how life continued it's steady and unfaltering motion forward. Eventually, all men are left behind.
TO BE CONTINUED...
