Michael Korda’s “Muse of Fire” recalls the soldier-poet of World War I

Sassoon’s friend Wilfred Owen had a fatal urge to “prove to himself and others that he was no coward.”

The title of Korda’s ensemble play is taken from Shakespeare’s Henry V and its character, “The Muse of Fire Who Will Ascend/Heaven of the Brightest Invention.” Beginning with Rupert Brooke’s rustic paean to military service and culminating with Owen’s harsh but brilliant poem about the effects of poison gas, “Muse of Fire” is a highly detailed, elegantly written, and at times idiosyncratic song. It is a work.

A former editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster, Korda is the scion of a famous European film family and the author of more than 20 books. Even at age 90, he still writes engaging prose. Even the footnotes featuring the intersections between the lives of his subjects and his own biography are fascinating. “My whole family fought in that war, but on the enemy’s side,” he writes in the preface. However, none of the survivors talked about their experiences. “They were not willing to revisit that horror. The horror was indescribable.”

Korda’s argument is that World War I, more than any other war of the past century, has come to be “encapsulated” by the poetry it produced. This allowed poetry, unlike other writing, to escape official censorship. However, while the super-patriot Brooke quickly achieved fame, recognition for other, more skeptical soldier-poets grew only gradually.

For now, the subject matter is well-cultivated territory. But Korda is sensitive to the nuances of Britain’s class system and its overlapping literary worlds, and is excellent at tracing the bonds of acquaintance, camaraderie, friendship, and, at times, physical attraction that bound these people together.

One commonality was that they were indebted to the editorial and promotional skills of Edward Marsh, Winston Churchill’s private secretary and “a wise and influential judge of poetry”. There was found. Korda called him “one of the most tenacious and methodical editors of all time,” and Brooke and Sassoon both trusted him. So did poet and visual artist Isaac Rosenberg, whose paintings were purchased by Marsh.

British poetry about the First World War reflects two related developments. It embodies, first of all, a national shift from elation and idealism to anti-war protests and cynicism, fueled by catastrophic casualties, stalemate trench warfare, and an entire apparently pointless effort. That’s what I did. One of the constant drumbeats in Korda’s book is the record of casualties, battle after battle, which took an excruciating toll on an entire generation.

The second development that Korda better traces is the evolution of poetry from Georgian pomp and sentimentality to a leaner, more ruthless modernism. Korda perfectly recreates several famous poems, including Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est,” with its images of men “choking, suffocating, and drowning” in poison gas and its painful indictment of patriotic truths. . But Korda makes it clear that he is not a literary critic, and “Muse of Fire” is not the place to learn Owen’s famous half-rhymes and other poetic techniques.

Korda’s story can meander. Most of his first 100 pages detail Brooke’s tumultuous romance and his migrations across the United States, Canada, and the South Seas. Korda seems obsessed with Brooke’s physical beauty and his personal life. “In the long history of male-female relationships, few have stirred up as much neurotic anxiety, jealousy, self-pity, and discontent as Brooke did in the fall and winter of 1911, but there is little to show for it. .It’s about sex,” he writes in his preferred hyperbolic structure. One of the features of this book is its concern with the question of which nonsense was physically completed, a salacious gossip that has little to do with war poetry.

Although Brooke had already achieved literary fame, he enlisted as soon as war broke out and became one of its chief propagandists. His sonnet “Peace” compares soldiers to “swimmers leaping to the clean,” seeking escape from “an old, cold, weary world” without fear of death. “He was the perfect embodiment of the national spirit,” Korda wrote. Brooke died of sepsis in 1915, without seeing much action or having a chance to reconsider his aspirations.

After interviewing Brooke, Korda touches on the lives and poetry of Rosenberg (who enlisted due to financial hardship), Alan Seeger, and Robert Graves, before discussing the star duo of Sassoon and Owen. Graves was also a dedicated officer who became a postwar celebrity for his memoirs, “Goodbye to All Things,” and historical novels such as “I, Claudius” and “Claudius the God.”

Seeger’s participation is the biggest surprise. He was an American graduate of Harvard University and the uncle of folk singer Pete Seeger. To take part in the war, he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion, but his poetry, like Brooke’s, had a romantic bias. He is known today primarily for the one-line poem “I meet with death,” but unfortunately this poem turned out to be prophetic.

Sassoon also enthusiastically joined the military early on. Admired for his courage, he wrote realistically about the trials of his fellow soldiers and was increasingly brutal about the politicians and generals responsible for their trials. When Sassoon issued an anti-war protest in July 1917, he refused further military service before being sent to the Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, where he was treated for what was then known as shell shock. . For Sassoon, it was a preferable option to a court martial. At the hospital, he was placed under the care of W.H.R. Rivers, a psychiatrist who was responsible for preparing him to rejoin the war. He also met Owen, an admirer, who was actually suffering from what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder. They became close, and Sassoon encouraged and even edited Owen’s poetic endeavors.

Both men return to battle, with only Sassoon left alive to commemorate the end of the war. His celebratory song, “Everyone Sang,” he optimistically promised, “sings never end.” The poem, Korda writes, “came to symbolize the futility and cruelty of war and the hope that humanity could pursue its destiny without war.” So far, no such luck.

Julia M. Klein is a book reviewer who writes for Forward magazine.

World War I seen through the life of a soldier poet

Riverite. 381 pages, $29.99.