Strange Meeting - Wilfred Owen

...poetry.
The author of Strange Meeting, Wilfred Owen, knew this. The poem is full of feeling, perhaps as much so as any in the English language, but it is also a work of superb craftsmanship, which took weeks to write. No-one reading Owen’s poetry can doubt the existence of that special vision.

Owen was born in 1893. Curiously, for one who knew so much about literature and was so gifted, he did not do well academically, though ...
...
When you read Strange Meeting (1918) you are struck at first by the unusual rhyme. In fact, it is para-rhyme, which almost rhymes, but not quite: hall-hell, years-yours, war-were. Why did he choose a device which is so difficult to sustain? I think for three reasons : he did not want obvious rhymes to distract from the meaning, as they so often do in conventional verse; he knew that this technique would give a sonorous effect to the poem; ... more

With the prospect of war looming ever closer, I have been looking again at what I believe to be the greatest war and anti-war poem ever written. Some of you will already know it, others will read it,I hope, for the first time. I have copied it in full at the end of this, and would like to share my thoughts with you.

Though I have been a student of literature nearly all my life, I have never really been fond of poetry in general. Most ‘poetry’ is verse, and there’s a huge difference, for poetry is the most difficult of all the forms of writing. It demands too much of most of us. It needs a unique vision, by which I mean the ability to see the subject from a new, and meaningful, angle. It needs technical knowledge. It needs constant reworking. I can churn out verse, and verse can be great fun, but I discovered long ago that I can’t write poetry. It’s just a pity that most of today’s ‘poets’ haven’t discovered it, too. One fallacy is that deep feeling makes for a poem, so if people are happy in love, unhappy in love, have suffered a major bereavement, or feel some great enthusiasm, the sitting down and pouring it out in words may give well them much wanted expression, be a catharsis. But the result will not be poetry.
The author of Strange Meeting, Wilfred Owen, knew this. The poem is full of feeling, perhaps as much so as any in the English language, but it is also a work of superb craftsmanship, which took weeks to write. No-one reading Owen’s poetry can doubt the existence of that special vision.

Owen was born in 1893. Curiously, for one who knew so much about literature and was so gifted, he did not do well academically, though he was reading widely and writing from an early age. He did not go to university, as his entrance exam results were disappointing, and in 1915 enlisted to fight in World War 1, being commissioned in 1916. Like most of his contemporaries in France, he rapidly became first disillusioned then appalled at the horrors of war, and a patriotism which he perceived to be founded in false values. Brought up and practising as a devout Christian he, like many of his generation, lost his faith in the mud of Flanders. However, he was a good soldier, a caring officer, and was awarded the MC for gallantry.

On November 4th., just six days before the Armistice on the 11th., in 1918, he was killed leading his men in the assault on the Oise-Sambre Canal, near Ors in northern France. He was twenty five. If he had lived, would he have gone on to even greater glory in his writing ? Or would the war have burned him out ? It’s impossible to say; but he has left behind enough for us to know that here is a poet of immense stature.
The poem could have been written at no other time in history, reflecting as it does a special historical viewpoint and the prevailing ‘mentality’ of most of the thinking men in the trenches; and yet it is applicable to any time of war. To label it either ‘optimistic’ or ‘pessimistic’ as some critics have done is absurd, since it is one man’s vision at a certain moment in history, and encompasses both hope and despair.

When you read Strange Meeting (1918) you are struck at first by the unusual rhyme. In fact, it is para-rhyme, which almost rhymes, but not quite: hall-hell, years-yours, war-were. Why did he choose a device which is so difficult to sustain? I think for three reasons : he did not want obvious rhymes to distract from the meaning, as they so often do in conventional verse; he knew that this technique would give a sonorous effect to the poem; and he probably relished the challenge. It’s written in iambic pentameters, as indeed is much of the greatest poetry in English. This is a natural English speech rhythm, and if you eavesdrop on conversations you often notice people chatting away in iambs. The rhythm of the iambic pentameter is Dee-DUM, Dee-DUM, Dee-DUM, Dee-DUM, Dee-DUM. It’s a powerful metre, and he uses powerful words for his powerful theme but the result, in skilled hands here, is one of gentleness rather than violence.

At first reading the theme seems simple enough. An English soldier at the Front dreams that he has been killed. He goes to hell, and there meets the German soldier he killed in hand-to-hand combat the day before. Death has made them allies, and before they sleep for ever they can talk, agree on the horrors of war, and mourn the potential that has died with them..
But when you begin to think, deeper meanings emerge. Paradoxically, this Hell is in fact a place of peace and reconciliation, where dead enemies become brothers in their loathing of war. Far from being at the beginning of an eternity of everlasting torment, the two soldiers are freed from all pain and horror. The real Hell is the war which they have left behind.

Then, one begins to wonder how many people there are in this poem. The two dead soldiers. Owen himself, observing. The voice of history. The voice of prophecy. The voice of Peace, peace personified; and this voice comes from the lips of the German soldier, which is quite extraordinary when one knows what Owen’s sufferings in battle had been, though many veterans of World War 1 were to say that they felt closer to the German soldiers in their mutual suffering than they did to the politicians and gung-ho journalists at home. The unheard voices are those of the millions of people who know and deplore the terrible waste of war : "……the truth untold, The pity of war, the pity war distilled", as Owen says.

It is remarkable that a poem of such majesty and maturity was written by a man of twenty five. A few of the lines are difficult, in a way that very great poetry often is. The more you try to explain what they mean, the more they slip away from you. And yet, and yet, you will know exactly what they mean if you can be content just to leave them alone. In this poem, these lines are:
"I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds: not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were."

Two other war poems by Owen, much shorter ones, are well worth reading : Anthem for Doomed Youth and Dulce et Decorum Est.

I was lucky when I was a student to have as my tutor the authority on Wilfred Owen, Doctor ( later Professor) D.S.R. Welland. His enthusiasm for Owen led me to a love of this poet, which I have tried to pass on to students in my turn. Great poetry never loses its relevance, that’s one test of greatness, and this poem is particularly applicable at present.
All anthologies of Owen’s poetry are currently out of print. There is masses of information on Google, though I’ve not looked at it, so the quality may be variable, and e-books are obtainable at :
www.ebookmall.com/alpha-titles/p-titles/Poems-Wilfred-Owen.htm

If anyone is studying Owen and would like to discuss any particular point about him or his work, please email me. And now, I hope you will read this poem, aloud if possible, and let the pathos, the power and the magic sweep over you. Note in particular that last, half line, and marvel at the skill which had the courage to end the poem in such a quiet, undramatic way.

STRANGE MEETING
It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,-
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.
With a thousand pains that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
"Strange friend," I said, "here is no cause to mourn."
"None," said that other, "save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also, I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled,
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery,
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels,
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now . . ."

Further reading.
Owen’s literary contemporaries who served in the Great War are Blunden, Brooke, Graves, Rosenberg, Sassoon and Sitwell, all well worth reading, though none, in my opinion, is quite in Owen’s class when writing about the war.

 

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