The Old Lie: "Dulce et Decorum Est"

[Scylla Rhiadra]

 

 

 

"Dulce et Decorum Est"

Wilfred Owen (d. 4 November, 1918, near Sambre, France)

 

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

 

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

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;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

 

I hope you will take a moment today to remember all of the victims of war, and give some thought to how we might best celebrate them, and give meaning to their sacrifice.

Edited November 11, 2018 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Phorumities]

sometimes war is necessary to preserve our culture, our values, and our heritage. Whoever refuses to fight for them deserved to lose them when the darkness overtakes them.

We honor those that fell by not refusing to give up the fight for what those that died gave their lives to preserve

Edited November 11, 2018 by Phorumities
fixed a word

[Fionalein]

23 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

...and give some thought to how we might best celebrate them, and give meaning to their sacrifice.

There is no glory being sacrificed as a pawn in some game of dominance... if you want to make their deaths something other than meaningless start mourning them instead of glorifying their "sacrifice". Most had no choice. Do you even realize that most were conscripts and not willfully participating in "your" wars they died in?

Your ignorance makes kitty angry, folks!

Edited November 11, 2018 by Fionalein

[Scylla Rhiadra]

3 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

There is no glory being sacrificed as a pawn in some game of dominance... if you want to make their deaths something other than meaningless start mourning them instead of glorifying their "sacrifice". Most had no choice. Do you even realize that most were conscripts and not willfully participating in "your" wars they died in?

Your ignorance makes kitty angry, folks!

Well, yes. I actually agree. The best way -- maybe the ONLY way -- to give their deaths significance is to end the conflicts that are killing them.

Did you read the poem?

[Phil Deakins]

At the start, hoards of Brits volunteered to fight the war that 'would be over by Christmas'.

It's right that we don't celebrate much about that and other wars. It's good that we remember their sacrifice. Sadly, their sacrifice means little because the same thing happened again 20 years later, and wars have started all over the world at frequent intervals since then.

If anything can be celebrated about it at all, it's that they successfully put a stop to one nation subjugating others - both times.

Edited November 11, 2018 by Phil Deakins

[Fionalein]

2 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Did you read the poem?

Yes but your lines below it just add salt to the wound - maybe I am reading them wrong, but to me they do not sound like fitting the spirit of the poem.

Then again I live in one of the few nations where we mourn both victims of war: those of us killed in conflicts and those killed by ours... I can highly reccomend adapting that remembrance culture.

[Phil Deakins]

These days, Rememberance (11th hour on 11/11) is for remembering of the fallen in all wars, on all sides.

The poem is about WWI of course, which is where the symbol of rememberance (the poppy) came from.

Edited November 11, 2018 by Phil Deakins

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Just now, Fionalein said:

Yes but your lines below it just add salt to the wound - maybe I am reading them wrong, but to me they do not sound like fitting the spirit of the poem.

Then again I live in one of the few nations where we mourn both victims of war: those of us killed in conflicts and those killed by ours... I can highly reccomend adapting that remembrance culture.

Well, again . . . I wear a white poppy, to commemorate civilians as well as military victims. So yes.

I don't think, personally, that their deaths -- all of them, civilian and military, on all sides of the conflict -- should be dismissed as meaningless. I think we need to attach meaning to them. And that means making our mourning, and our commemoration, and our celebration of their lives (not their deaths) a means to put an end to war. THAT is meaningful.

I don't think we are at all in disagreement, actually.

[Fionalein]

9 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

These days, Rememberance (11/11) is for remembering of the fallen in all wars, on all sides.

The poem is about WWI of course, which is where the symbol of rememberance (the poppy) came from.

The poppy symbol is due to LCol McCcae's famous poem: In_Flanders_Fields

Edited November 11, 2018 by Fionalein

[Phil Deakins]

Yes - WWI.

Edited November 11, 2018 by Phil Deakins

[KT Kingsley]

Intriguingly, Christopher Eccleston's reading has the last line of the first verse as "Disappointed shells that dropped behind", while the text in the OP reads "Of gas-shells dropping softly behind", and a quick google turned up yet another version: "Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind".

Any ideas as to why the variance?

[Scylla Rhiadra]

3 minutes ago, KT Kingsley said:

Intriguingly, Christopher Eccleston's reading has the last line of the first verse as "Disappointed shells that dropped behind", while the text in the OP reads "Of gas-shells dropping softly behind", and a quick google turned up yet another version: "Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind".

Any ideas as to why the variance?

I don't know the full textual history, but these (and Owen's other war poems) were published posthumously. We only have his original drafts in manuscript. I am guessing that particular editors have chosen variants from these that, for whatever reason, they prefer.

Edited November 11, 2018 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Scylla Rhiadra]

24 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

The poppy symbol is due to LCol McCcae's famous poem: In_Flanders_Fields

Well, McCrae was Canadian. In theory, I should like his poem best. I really don't, though, and the last stanza exhibits just exactly the attitude you've criticized.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

"In Flanders Fields" was actually used over the last 2 or 3 years of the war in recruitment literature and on posters.

[Skell Dagger]

 

[Luna Bliss]

[Phil Deakins]

That's utterly stupid.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Arguments and discussions about the nature of war, and whether it is ever "justifiable"(jus bellum justum) or not, are obviously vitally important: they go back to Augustine and Thomas Aquinas at least. I have very strong views on this myself, which are at least hinted at by my choice of poem.

More important, maybe, in the context of this one day of all days -- Remembrance Day, Armistice Day, Memorial Day, or whatever you call it -- is the act of memory. It's about ensuring that we do not forget those whose lives were extinguished by human conflict. Whether their deaths were justified or not is relatively less important because the lives of all of those who died, on whatever side they fought, or whether they were military or civilian, had, and should still have, infinitely more meaning than is drawn from our appraisal of the conflicts that killed them.

In other words, it is their lives, not their deaths, that are ultimately most important. No one should be remembered primarily by the way in which they died: our lives are too full of meaning and importance to be reduced to that. And so this thread is about remembering and celebrating those lives, captured so vividly in Owen's poem, and in the excerpt that Skell has posted.

I'd ask that we reserve discussions about the nature of war for another day, or at least for another thread. I'd like to focus on that most important of things instead: life.

[Phorumities]

28 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

i guess when the socialist revolution is complete there wont be any more wars because all the rich people will have been eliminated

[Phorumities]

3 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Arguments and discussions about the nature of war, and whether it is ever "justifiable"(jus bellum justum) or not, are obviously vitally important: they go back to Augustine and Thomas Aquinas at least. I have very strong views on this myself, which are at least hinted at by my choice of poem.

More important, maybe, in the context of this one day of all days -- Remembrance Day, Armistice Day, Memorial Day, or whatever you call it -- is the act of memory. It's about ensuring that we do not forget those whose lives were extinguished by human conflict. Whether their deaths were justified or not is relatively less important because the lives of all of those who died, on whatever side they fought, or whether they were military or civilian, had, and should still have, infinitely more meaning than is drawn from our appraisal of the conflicts that killed them.

In other words, it is their lives, not their deaths, that are ultimately most important. No one should be remembered primarily by the way in which they died: our lives are too full of meaning and importance to be reduced to that. And so this thread is about remembering and celebrating those lives, captured so vividly in Owen's poem, and in the excerpt that Skell has posted.

I'd ask that we reserve discussions about the nature of war for another day, or at least for another thread. I'd like to focus on that most important of things instead: life.

yes its important to remember the sacrafices unless of course it involved Confederates then we must do what even the victorious North refused to do at the time, villify the losers as pure evil not worthy of any acknowledgement of their bravery.

Of course if we are eliminating every trace of the Civil War aren't we also eliminating the deeds of the Northern soldiers?

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 minutes ago, Phorumities said:

i guess when the socialist revolution is complete there wont be any more wars because all the rich people will have been eliminated

Phorumities, did you not read what I wrote immediately above?

This is how threads get locked. And I'd particularly like this one not to be, because it is dedicated to the memory of all of the incalculably valuable lives lost to war. I don't care if they are Confederate or Union, British or Canadian or German: their lives were important.

There are places where partisan bickering is not appropriate. Please respect the purpose of this thread, and take the politics, as important as such discussions are, elsewhere, to another thread?

Thank you.

[Phil Deakins]

30 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I'd ask that we reserve discussions about the nature of war for another day, or at least for another thread.

In that case, you might want to remove the Like you gave to Luna's post, as it is about the nature of war. Liking it can only encourage it.

Edited November 11, 2018 by Phil Deakins

[Phorumities]

44 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Phorumities, did you not read what I wrote immediately above?

This is how threads get locked. And I'd particularly like this one not to be, because it is dedicated to the memory of all of the incalculably valuable lives lost to war. I don't care if they are Confederate or Union, British or Canadian or German: their lives were important.

There are places where partisan bickering is not appropriate. Please respect the purpose of this thread, and take the politics, as important as such discussions are, elsewhere, to another thread?

Thank you.

tell that to luna, she posted her propaganda picture, i was simply responding.

[Pamela Galli]

Everything has to turn into a political debate, and not a good one, but a stupid middle school level one.

[Phorumities]

it is kind of ironic that you would post such an antiwar poem though... kind of like you are mocking anyone foolish enough to answer their nations call

[Selene Gregoire]

To put it simply, war is politics and vice versa.

Edited November 11, 2018 by Selene Gregoire