A Tale of Letters and Libraries (or, Ari and Siegfried Sassoon, Part IV)

At long last—the post you’ve been waiting for! This is the story of how I got to meet Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves.

“But wait a second, Ari,” you say. “You told us last time that Sassoon died in 1967. Have you just managed to pull a Sassoon and maintain your youthful looks for…*pause to do the math*…at least 46 years?”

No, dear readers and raptors. I have not. (Or have I? *smiles mysteriously*) But what I did have was an extraordinary stroke of luck.

One night over winter break, I found myself geeking out about WWI over the phone to my dear friend Azalea. In the course of our conversation (or—let’s be honest here—my rambling), I wanted to look up some detail or other, so I grabbed my copy of Sassoon’s biography. But as I paged throgh the bibliography, my gaze snagged on something that I did not expect: a name.

More specifically, the name of my school.

What?

It was the delicious exhilaration of stumbling onto the exposed corner of something huge—the tip of a dinosaur fossil, or the prow of a sunken ship. I all but dove for my computer, pulling up my university’s online library catalogue and typing in “Siegfried Sassoon”. A lot of the results were biographies, or copies of Sassoon’s own books. But there, buried among them, was an entry for the university’s rare books and manuscripts collection.

And in it? Letters. Written by Siegfried Sassoon.

There was a freaking Siegfried Sassoon COLLECTION.

I think the sounds I made into the phone may have been incoherent. Or if they were coherent, they were something along the lines of, “HOLYCRAPWHATISTHISOHMYGOD.”

I mean, I certainly knew about the rare books and manuscripts collection. I’d been there once with a class to look at some T.S. Eliot first editions. And I had a vague notion that maybe you could go there on your own time and look at stuff, but I assumed it involved a lot of training and security checks and whatnot to handle old manuscripts, and I’d never actually bothered to peruse the library catalogue to see what was in there. But following the preregistration instructions on the library website turned out to be remarkably easy, and within about five minutes, the only thing standing between me and the reading room was a registration photograph and the fact that school didn’t start up for another week and a half.

Now electrified with excitement, I plunged into the catalogue, searching every Sassoon-related term that I could. Original materials by W.H.R. Rivers? YES (first edition books/reports, but no handwritten stuff). Original materials by Wilfred Owen? No (unsurprising, but sad nonetheless). Original materials by Robert Graves? YES—there was a Robert Graves Collection as well!

I had to restrain myself from going a little crazy with the “request boxes” button.

Two weeks later, finally back on campus, I was waiting on tenterhooks. The two Sassoon boxes I’d requested had to be shipped in from an off-campus storage facility; they were due to be there by Friday, and I was told I’d get an email when they arrived. But walking past the library on Thursday afternoon, I couldn’t help myself. I slipped into the cool and softly-illuminated dimness of that beautiful space, with its rows of climate-controlled shelves, and asked the security guard what I needed to bring with me tomorrow when I came to look at some materials in the reading room.

The absolutely stunning Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at University of Toronto. Not my school’s library, but it’s a similar look/feel.

“Two forms of photo ID,” he said. “And you know, you should head downstairs and ask if your stuff is here now.”

“Oh…” (don’t get your hopes up don’t get your hopes up) “Well, they said they’d be coming in tomorrow.”

“Yeah, but sometimes things come in early. Head on down and finish up your registration there, then see if your stuff has come in.”

“Okay…” (they said Friday they said Friday they said Friday)

I left my belongings in a locker and headed down. The woman at the desk cheerfully completed my registration and took my picture. “You’re all set!” she told me.

“Umm, so, the guy at the desk upstairs said I should ask if the boxes I ordered have come in.”

“Oh, are they supposed to arrive today?”

“No, tomorrow. But he said I should ask in case they came in early…”

She checked. They hadn’t. I felt appropriately chastened for having done precisely what I’d told myself not to do. I figured it was probably for the best, since I’d planned on making an event out of the library visit tomorrow. I thanked her and trooped on home, where I recounted the story to my suitemate Hana (who, by virtue of living with me, is usually the first person to hear about any new event in my life).

Then I plopped down on my couch to check my email and found I had two new messages—two emails from the library, telling me that the boxes had arrived and were waiting for me at the service desk. The messages had been sent about fifteen minutes after I’d left.

Literal heart palpitations. I’m not even kidding.

I didn’t jump up and throw on my coat that instant, though. It wasn’t as simple as that. Because no matter how thrilled I’d been at the prospect of getting to those boxes a day early, the fact was that I hadn’t psychologically prepared myself for this to be SASSOON DAY. SASSOON DAY was tomorrow. Friday. As such, I seriously considered just staying at home and going the next day like I’d planned.

But Hana told me to go. Mark told me to go. Marieke told me to go. So buzzing bundle of nerves that I was, I pulled myself together and walked back the way I’d come.

Into the cool, softly-glowing, book-filled space. Past the security desk with the friendly guard. Deposit all belongings except computer and notepad. Down the stairs. Through the glass doors. Up to the service desk. Sign in.

Receive box.

Clutch box in one arm and computer in other, in mortal terror of dropping either. Proceed to reading room. Set down computer. Set down box. Clench hands. Take a breath. Lift lid of box.

Remove first folder.
Set folder on table.
Open folder.

Pick up letter. Gloveless. Skin touching ink and paper.

Do your damnedest to stop shaking so you can read the damn thing.

I spent that afternoon paging through the letters, postcards, and photographs of Siegfried Loraine Sassoon. It took about 30 minutes for my hands to stop trembling. It was the natural awe of handling old papers combined with the awe of those papers having been his. That was his handwriting I was deciphering, with the strange lowercase g’s and the t’s that looked more like a spike on an ECG reading than a cursive letter (dear Siegfried, did it ever occur to you that someone might actually have to read what you wrote?). His hand moved across this page some eighty-odd years ago. I’m sure I sound like I’m devolving into fangirlishness à la Wilfred Owen, but if you’ve never handled old letters before in your life, please put it on your bucket list. Until someone invents a time machine, there is nothing like it in the world for bringing home the fact that historical figures were real, breathing, flawed, funny, loving, living human beings. From Sassoon to a friend and fellow poet who was teaching in Japan at the time:

“You will be wanting a supplement to the exhausted scribble I sent you in March, and I would like to believe that some such thought has migrated from Sendai to Bavaria this evening; (and that such events can happen I willingly do believe, for if poets can’t telepathize one another, who can?) But O, that you were here in corporeal completeness, for this room is the very one for a good tongue-travel with you, & endless cups of tea. Tantalizing indeed, for only this afternoon I received ½ lb. tin of excellent China tea, sent me by a kind friend in London—to whom I’d written that everything here is Elysian except the hot drink which Bavarians pretend is tea…” *

Endless cups of tea. Infini-tea, one might say.

Since that day, I’ve made so many trips to the library that the research librarians at the service desk now recognize me. I’ve read through folder after folder of Sassoon’s stuff (and have barely made a dent), as well as Robert Graves’s stuff. Best of all, there are things in there from Graves to Sassoon. My favorite such item is a poem called “Escape” that Graves wrote after he was wounded and reported dead at the Battle of the Somme.** It begins:

“But, Sassons,† I was dead an hour or more:
I woke when I’d already passed the door
That Cerberus guards & half way down the road
To Lethe, as an old Greek sign-post showed….”

I have the transcribed text of the poem, plus a scanned image. I wish I could show you, because Graves illustrated the whole thing with xkcd-esque stick figures and other little drawings (and it’s AWESOME), but I’m not sure about the legality of posting it on the internet.

But guys, Graves “died” on his 21st birthday. College students: he was your age when he wrote this quirky, teasing poem to one of his best friends about his narrow escape from death.

The Hawthorn Ridge mine explodes at 7:20 AM on July 1, 1916, marking the beginning of the Battle of the Somme (i.e. the battle in which Robert Graves supposedly died). (Imperial War Museum)

Real, breathing, flawed, funny, loving, living human beings.

The sad epilogue to this story is one that I’m slowly uncovering as I go through these letters and biographies, because in the years following the war, Graves and Sassoon’s relationship came apart at the seams. In incredibly painful ways that hurt my heart. I’m hesitant to explain any part of it just because my knowledge is so sketchy at this point that I’ll inevitably tell you something incorrect. But my rough understanding is that, while their friendship had been rocky in the late 1920s for several reasons, the publication of Graves’s autobiography Good-Bye to All That (written to be as controversial as possible so it would sell better) included material about Sassoon that was inaccurate in some places and highly personal (e.g. private correspondence) in others, all without Sassoon’s knowledge or consent. Sassoon was furious and deeply hurt. He contacted Graves’s publisher, who agreed to remove the worst of the offending material.

But the damage was done. A flurry of angry letters ensued between the two men. And thus it is that, on July 26th of 1937—nearly a decade later—Graves wrote to Sassoon from the United States:***

“Dear Siegfried,

I should like to see you when I come over for a month (Aug 13th to Sept 13th or so) not to chew over the fat of the past but to settle a sort of moral debt I owe you—and perhaps you owe me—namely, to see whether there is any remnant worth saving of the confused affection that there was once between us….”

The last part of that sentence is one of the things that hurts my heart.

I only have access to Graves’s half of the conversation, and I don’t know (yet) whether they did actually meet up. But I know their friendship was never restored to what it had been during the war. Honestly, that’s something that this entire WWI obsession has been forcing me to think about and confront: sometimes, change is painful and things don’t ever fully heal. You can lose a leg that won’t ever grow back. You can lose your innocence when you see unspeakable horrors. You can lose a bosom friend to time and distance and unkind words. And there’s something about this idea that profoundly disturbs me. Which is not to say that I think everyone else in the world is fine with it—just that, as an instinctual peacemaker with a morbid fear of physical and emotional damage, it’s an incredibly difficult idea for me to grapple with. I’m not done grappling. And I suspect that’s at least part of why I pursue this topic.

I hate to end on a sad note, so for what it’s worth: the consolation I find in Graves and Sassoon’s relationship is that while they were friends, they were very good friends. I think there’s a lot of value in that. And thus I end with an excerpt from the letter (now held by the New York Public Library) that preceded the “Escape” poem I quoted earlier:

Aug 4th ’16
Queen Alexandra Hospital

A ripping hospital, this. By the way, I died on my 21st birthday. I can never grow up now.

My dear Sassons,

I hope you haven’t taken the casualty lists seriously again. They are fools. I’m as right as rain & hope before many days to be up in glorious Merioneth again baking in the sun & storing up a large mass of Solar energy against our great Caucasus trip après la guerre. The rumour of my death was started by the regimental doctor & the Field Ambulance one swearing I couldn’t possibly live…

…Eddie tells me you were quite sad about my demise—dear old thing, I hope you didn’t avenge me with bombs or do anything rash!…

…Please reassure Holmes & Julian & Edmund Dadd & Joe Cottrell that they haven’t yet seen the last of me…Best of luck, & remember the men who cried out to the red-bearded hangman, “Non, tu ne me pourras pas tuer”: don’t succumb however many wise doctors give you up. Memento Caucasorum!

Yours v. aff[ectionate]ly,
Robert

Dear Robert, Wilfred, and Siegfried,

It has been a pleasure having you on the blog. Thank you for writing poetry. Thank you for being awesome. Thank you for being human.

Much love,
Ari

Missed part of the Ari and Siegfried Sassoon series? Here’s the rest:

Part I: Story of a Friend Crush
Part II: Mad Jack, Poet, Soldier, Non-Spy
Part III: Shellshock and Poetry
Part IV: you’re here!

————————————————————————————————————————————

*, **, *** I prefer not to put the full citations on my blog (for privacy reasons), but if you are for some reason desperate to know, feel free to email me.

† Graves’s nickname for Sassoon

DISCLAIMER: I am not a historian—merely a nerd. I’ve read quite a lot about Sassoon, but I certainly don’t know everything, and this blog series is in no way an authoritative narrative. If you want to learn more from people who actually know what they’re talking about, here are some of the resources you should look at (this is the closest I’ll get to a Works Cited page):

Egremont, Max. Siegfried Sassoon: A Life. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2005. Print.

Graves, Robert. Good-Bye to All That. New ed. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1957. Print.

The letter from Graves to Sassoon is from The First World War Poetry Digital Archive, University of Oxford (www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit); © The Berg Collection, New York Public Library / The Robert Graves Copyright Trust

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Graves

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Sassoon

Shellshock and Poetry (or, Ari and Siegfried Sassoon, Part III)

When we left off, Siegfried Sassoon had just proclaimed to the world that he would no longer fight in the Great War. This was done with the full knowledge of what awaited him: a court-martial, probably followed by imprisonment and (possibly) by death. He felt miserable at some points, buoyant at others, but was determined to see it through. His hope was that by making a scandal of it—martyring himself for the cause—he could change the course of government policy. Having a decorated officer declare the war “evil and unjust” ought to have an effect, right?

Siegfried Sassoon (James Wilby) throws his MC in the Mersey in Regeneration (1997) (US title: Behind the Lines).
Credit: Artificial Eye Film Productions, Norstar Entertainment

The reaction of his friend Robert Graves, who was also convalescing in England at the time, was something along the lines of “WTF, SIEGFRIED. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Oh, to be sure, Graves agreed with the declaration. But he thought publishing those thoughts was a stupid, useless thing to do, and he had a realistic idea of how the War Office would react. He (and others) tried to make Sassoon see the light: the War Office knew that Sassoon wanted to martyr himself; court-martialling him would be giving him exactly the kind of platform he wanted, which was the last thing they wanted. (Indeed, the Army had shown nothing but politeness and restraint in dealing with the situation so far.) Sassoon refused to retract his statement, but was now painfully aware of the worry he was causing his friends; in a fit of anger and frustration, he threw the ribbon of his Military Cross into the River Mersey.

So, desperate to save his friend from himself, Robert Graves took matters into his own hands.

Pulling every string he could, Graves asked for Sassoon to be given a medical board (i.e. examined to see if he was fit for military service). He then had to convince Siegfried to attend it. Taking him for a walk on the beach, he argued his case, saying he knew for a fact that Sassoon would not get a court-martial or the publicity he wanted. The medical board was, he emphasized, the only way to get out of this situation safely and honorably. Sassoon made him swear—literally, hold up an imaginary Bible and swear—that he knew this to be true, and Graves did it. But Graves lied. He didn’t know for sure that they wouldn’t order a court-martial, but he was willing to do whatever was necessary to convince Siegfried to go.

The next day, Graves testified before the board himself, so anxious and upset on Sassoon’s behalf that he burst into tears at several points. He painted his friend as a hero suffering from neurasthenia (i.e. shellshock/PTSD) due to his courageous battlefield acts. Sassoon was then called in and examined. Finally, after much debate, he was told to report to “Rivers” at the Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh. “He is suffering from a nervous breakdown,” the board’s report read, “and we do not consider him responsible for his actions.”

Dr. W.H.R. Rivers

The Soldier’s Declaration was now officially discredited.

Sassoon arrived at Craiglockhart on July 23, 1917 (Graves was supposed to escort him, but missed the train). The hospital specialized in the treatment of officers with war neuroses, and the “Rivers” he’d been sent to was Dr. William Rivers, a well-respected psychologist/psychiatrist. Although Sassoon hated Craiglockhart (“Dottyville”, as he called it) and spent most of his time writing, playing golf, and taking walks, he absolutely adored Rivers, describing him as his “father-confessor”. Everyone loved Rivers, actually—he was an intelligent and exceptionally compassionate person. His “sessions” with Sassoon mostly consisted of long conversations about Siegfried’s experiences/feelings/opinions on the war. In Sassoon’s words:

“Three evenings a week I went along to Rivers’ room to give my anti-war complex an airing. We talked a lot about European politicians and what they were saying….What the politicians said no longer matters as far as these memoirs of mine are concerned, though I would give a lot for a few gramophone records of my talks with Rivers. All that matters is my remembrance of the great  and good man who gave me his friendship and guidance. I can visualize him, sitting at his table in the late summer twilight, with his spectacles pushed up on his forehead and his hands clasped in front of one knee; always communicating his integrity of mind; never revealing that he was weary as he must often have been after long days of exceptionally tiring work on those war neuroses which demanded such an exercise of sympathy and detachment combined.”

Wilfred Owen

There was one other bright side to Dottyville, but it took several weeks to surface. The patients and staff at at Craiglockhart who read the newspapers had seen Sassoon’s declaration. One such patient was a young officer by the name of Wilfred Owen. A writer and poet himself, he became curious about Sassoon’s poetry and, upon ordering himself a copy of Siegfried’s book, The Old Huntsman, was utterly blown away. “Shakespeare reads vapid after these,” he wrote his mother.

Still, it was several weeks before Owen mustered the courage to timidly knock on Sassoon’s door. He found Siegfried perched on his bed and polishing some golf clubs. Stammering with shyness and fanboy awe (as well as due to his neurasthenia), Owen asked if Sassoon would be kind enough to autograph a few copies of The Old Huntsman. Siegfried was happy to oblige and the two of them proceeded to have a half-hour conversation, which ended with Sassoon advising Owen to “Sweat your guts out writing poetry!”.

And so began the friendship of the First World War’s two greatest poets.

The relationship wasn’t a balanced one, at least not at first. Owen was merely an “interesting little chap” to Sassoon after that first encounter, whereas Owen hero-worshipped practically everything about Sassoon (who was, after all, good-looking, 6.5 years older, 7.5 inches taller, a decorated officer, and a published poet). Siegfried also had the advantage of being one of those charismatic people who, although he sometimes gave the impression of aloofness (mostly due to being shy), turned out to be an intelligent, funny, thoughtful, endearingly self-centered person once you got him talking. It was a recurring theme throughout his life: there was something intensely beguiling about his manner, and he seemed to fascinate nearly everyone he met. Owen was certainly no exception.

Nevertheless, they started to meet regularly to talk shop, often with Sassoon reading his latest work to Owen, who thought it “superb beyond anything in his Book”. Sassoon agreed to look at some of Owen’s poetry as well—not terribly impressed at first, but increasingly interested as Owen accepted his critiques and improved. The younger man even gained enough confidence to make suggestions about Sassoon’s work (and was amazed when Sassoon accepted the notes—imagine, your favorite writer taking suggestions from you!). Owen began to experiment with writing about the war, sometimes in Sassoon’s style and sometimes in his own. And one day, he showed Sassoon a sonnet that began,

“What passing bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns

Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons…”

Owen’s manuscript for “Anthem for Doomed Youth”, with Sassoon’s edits on it. Note the original title and Sassoon’s suggestion to change it. Click to enlarge. (British Library, Manuscript Collections)

Sassoon was impressed. Really and honestly impressed, and as they worked to edit it, he even suggested that they might try to get it published. While that didn’t end up happening, it did make Sassoon start to take “little Wilfred” more seriously. And over time, Owen’s hero-worship also faded a bit as he found himself able to laugh affectionately at Siegfried’s flaws.

Wilfred Owen was discharged from Craiglockhart in October 1917. The night he left, the two friends dined together at a club, and Sassoon left before Owen did—but not before handing him an envelope and giving him stern instructions not to open it until he’d gone. When Owen opened it, he discovered a £10 note and the address of one of Sassoon’s literary friends/mentors in London, plus a note from Sassoon telling him to go have some fun. Overwhelmed, Owen tried to express his gratitude in a letter, realized he was completely overdoing it, and waited a few days before trying again to explain how much Sassoon’s friendship and mentorship meant to him:

“Know that since mid-September, when you still regarded me as a tiresome little knocker on your door, I held you as Keats + Christ + Elijah + my Colonel + my father-confessor + Amenophis IV in profile. 

What’s that mathematically? 

In effect it is this: that I love you, dispassionately, so much, so very much, dear Fellow, that the blasting little smile you wear on reading this can’t hurt me in the least. 

If you consider what the above Names have severally done for me, you will know what you are doing. And you have fixed my Life – however short. You did not light me: I was always a mad comet; but you have fixed me. I spun round you a satellite for a month, but I shall swing out soon, a dark star in the orbit where you will blaze.”

(Brief biographical interlude: if that reads like a love letter, that’s because it basically is one. Though there’s not a lot of concrete evidence (I’ll explain why shortly), based on the correspondence we have, it certainly seems like Owen was in love with Sassoon. (That can’t come as a total surprise based on what I’ve said so far, right?) Whether they had any kind of romantic/sexual relationship is up for debate depending on who you talk to, but whatever happened between them, it meant more to Owen than it did to Sassoon. That said, Siegfried was certainly very fond of Wilfred, and when…well, I’m getting ahead of myself. Keep reading and I promise we’ll get there.)

The Craiglockhart Hydropathic, as it looks today (now part of Napier University)

Owen might have escaped from Dottyville, but Sassoon had not. In the course of his sessions with Rivers at Craiglockhart, Sassoon had been forced to repeatedly confront one agonizing fact: no matter how much he hated the war, and no matter how much he wanted to stay true to his ideals, his men were still out on the front. Suffering. Dying. And from his safe little room in this safe little building on this safe little island, there was nothing he could do to save them. Reading the casualty lists in the papers was a daily torture. And he gradually realized he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t go back.

“…In bitter safety I awake, unfriended;

And while the dawn begins with slashing rain

I think of the Battalion in the mud.

‘When are you going out to them again?

Are they not still your brothers through our blood?’”

So, he went back.

It took some work and several false starts. Like Robert Graves, Dr. Rivers had to pull some strings to get Sassoon a medical board—and then had to do it all over again when Sassoon missed the first one. And once he’d been declared fit, it took a while for him to actually get back to France—he ended up at a training camp in Ireland first, then deployed in Palestine. But by May of 1918 he was finally finally finally back among the horrors of the trenches and the beauty of the French countryside. The few familiar faces here were far outnumbered by the unfamiliar; death had not been kind to the battalion in Sassoon’s absence, and his remaining friends were glad to have him back. (Robert Graves, also still alive, was in England.)

But on July 13, 1918, while he was returning from no-man’s land after one of his usual daredevil patrols, Sassoon was mistaken for a German by one of his own men and shot in the head.

Yup, in the head.

Ne freak-out pas, as my high school French teacher would say. He didn’t die. He thought he was dying at first, as did the man who’d shot him (horrified once he discovered what he’d done)—but the bullet hadn’t penetrated his skull. Just a lot of bleeding, as scalp wounds do. At the casualty clearing station, Sassoon firmly told the doctors that he did not want or need to be sent home. It wasn’t his decision to make, though; he was shipped back to England.

Wilfred Owen

Nor was recuperating in a London hospital Sassoon’s idea of a good time. He was annoyed at having his social visits restricted, miserable at being cooped up, and distraught over being separated from his men again. His friends worried frankly about his “hankering” after death. But in August, who should reappear but Wilfred Owen, who was now well on his way to being a full-fledged poet. The two spent the space of a single afternoon together shortly before Owen was due to return to France. Owen neglected to mention this fact; Siegfried had once said it would be good for Owen’s poetry if he went back but, at another point, had threatened to stab him in the leg if he did. In part, Owen felt that he had to go back so that at least one of them would be writing from the front lines. But only once he was in France did Owen actually tell Sassoon where he’d gone. The two men corresponded over the next two months, Sassoon sending his newest book, and Owen sending new poems he’d written—poems that made Siegfried finally realize “little Wilfred’s” incredible potential as a poet. And the tide of the war had turned. Germany was losing ground, unable to compete with the Allies’ new American resources. And then…

And then.

On November 4th, 1918, exactly one week before the Armistice, Lt. Wilfred Owen of the Manchester Regiment led his company in an attempt to cross the Sambre-Oise canal at Ors, under heavy fire, and was killed in action. He was 25 years old. The telegram notifying his parents was delivered on November 11th, 1918 as the bells were ringing to celebrate the end of the war.

Sassoon didn’t find out about Owen’s death until several months after the fact. According to one quote I’ve read (though can’t verify), he described it in later years as “an unhealed wound, & the ache of it has been with me ever since.” What we do know is that Sassoon went on to become the greatest advocate and supporter of Owen’s work, personally editing several books of Owen’s poetry. Indeed, it’s largely due to Sassoon that we know as much of Owen as we do. And remember how I said I would explain why we don’t know more? Wilfred Owen had left his mother instructions to burn a sack of letters and personal papers in the event of his death—and to the everlasting chagrin of biographers everywhere, she did as he asked. There are a good many things we shall never know about him as a result (but then again, such is the case with all biography).

Sassoon in 1920

If you want to find out what happened to Sassoon in the years after the war, you’ll have to turn to one of the excellent resources listed below, because here at the end of the war comes the end of my telling of his story. I will say that he went on to write a great deal of poetry, as well as his memoirs (both fictionalized and, later, more honestly autobiographical). His friendship with Robert Graves, rocky after Graves’s efforts to “save” him, deteriorated pretty completely in later years (more on this in my next post). He had several love affairs (most notably with Stephen Tennant). And although he was gay, he went on to marry a woman (Hester Gatty) because he wanted to be a father (and got his wish). And he lived to the ripe old age of 80, dying in 1967.

WHOOOEEEEEE! Mad props if you made it to the end of that thing! Had I known I’d get so wrapped up in telling this, I’d have restructured my blog series, but there wasn’t a good place to break up this chunk of the story, so thanks for sticking around. Keep your eyes peeled for the final blog post (not nearly this long, I promise you) on how I got to “meet” Sassoon, Graves, and others.

And finally—I know I skated over the poetry in these biographical sketches, but PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE do read it. It’s the reason these guys are famous, and it’s incredible stuff (although, obvious-but-fair-warning: it’s about war, and war is not pretty).

Here are a few of my favorites to get you started:

Sassoon

Base Details

Survivors

Repression of War Experience

The Glory of Women

Aftermath

Owen

Anthem for Doomed Youth

Dulce et Decorum Est

S I W (stands for ‘Self Inflicted Wounds’—trigger warning for suicide)

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

Missed part of the Ari and Siegfried Sassoon series? Here’s the rest:

Part I: Story of a Friend Crush
Part II: Mad Jack, Poet, Soldier, Non-Spy
Part III: you’re here!
Part IV: A Tale of Libraries and Letters

DISCLAIMER: I am not a historian—merely a nerd. I’ve read quite a lot about Sassoon, but I certainly don’t know everything, and this blog series is in no way an authoritative narrative. If you want to learn more from people who actually know what they’re talking about, here are some of the resources you should look at (this is the closest I’ll get to a Works Cited page):

Egremont, Max. Siegfried Sassoon: A Life. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2005. Print.

Graves, Robert. Good-Bye to All That. New ed. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1957. Print.

Sassoon, Siegfried. The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston. 2nd ed. London: World Books, 1940. Print.

Stallworthy, Jon. Wilfred Owen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974. Print.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Sassoon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfred_owen

Mad Jack, Poet, Soldier, Non-Spy (or, Ari and Siegfried Sassoon, Part II)

LOOK, SOPHIA! I TOOK THE PICTURE FOR YOU! (For the rest of you, that’s my copy of The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston, by Siegfried Sassoon [i.e. his fictionalized memoirs]. Published 1940. It smells AMAZING. Be jealous.)

IT IS SASSOON DAY! YAY SASSOON!!

So who is this guy is and why he is worthy of fascination? Ladies and gentlemen, step right up and allow me to introduce you to Siegfried Loraine Sassoon.

2nd Lt. Siegfried Sassoon

Let’s start with some barebones pre-war biography here,* just to get ourselves set up (I’ll keep it brief):

In spite of his name, Siegfried Sassoon wasn’t German, but British (his mother just loved Wagner—seriously, that’s the truth). Born in 1886, he was the second of three sons in an upper-middle-class family. His father came from a wealthy family of Jewish merchants, but was disowned for marrying a “shiksa”; he abandoned the family early on and died when Siegfried was 8 or 9.

I think it’s fair to say that little Siegfried was a sensitive kid who was determined to prove to the world that he wasn’t. He grew up writing poetry, something he loved and which his mother encouraged—but also took an interest in cricket and particularly in fox-hunting as a way to “prove” his masculinity (he was, eventually, rather good at fox-hunting, but liked it more for the riding than for the hunt). He attended Cambridge, but only dabbled in law and history and spent most of his time writing. He left without completing his degree.

Then, after several aimless years of poetry (for which he was beginning to get a wee bit of attention), hunting, and cricket, someone shot an archduke in Sarajevo, and the First World War broke out in the summer of 1914.

Biographical note from a non-biographer…

Now, I have to pause and add an important biographical note: from a rather young age, Sassoon was keenly aware of the fact that he crushed on guys rather than girls. In an era when homosexual acts were quite literally illegal (*coughOscarWildecough*), being gay wasn’t exactly a subject for polite conversation. So for a long time he struggled with these feelings without any real notion that he might not be the only one. It wasn’t until he read a book written by an openly gay man that he realized, to his intense relief, that there were other people like him. (Siegfried eventually confessed his homosexuality to his younger brother and confidante, Hamo, who calmly replied with something along the lines of, “Yeah, I am too. So?”)

Still with me so far? Cool, because stuff is about to get interesting.

Sassoon joined the army almost immediately in 1914, partly out of patriotism and partly hoping it would give his aimlessness some direction. But he broke his arm in a riding accident before he could be deployed in France…

…and while he was recuperating, his brother Hamo was killed in action at Gallipoli in the fall of 1915.

Hamo’s death left Siegfried reeling. Nevertheless, in late 1915, the fox-hunting poet found himself serving in France as a second lieutenant. There, he quickly struck up a close friendship with another young poet and officer, the 20-year-old Captain Robert Graves. In his autobiography Good-Bye to All That, Graves explains how they met:

Painting of Robert Graves

I noticed ‘The Essays of Lionel Johnson’ lying on the table. It was the first book I had seen in France (except my own Keats and Blake) that was neither a military textbook nor a rubbishy novel. I stole a look at the fly-leaf, and the name was Siegfried Sassoon. Then I looked around to see who could possibly be called Siegfried Sassoon and bring ‘Lionel Johnson’ with him to the First Battalion. The answer being obvious, I got into conversation with him, and a few minutes later we set out for Béthune, being off duty until dusk, and talked about poetry.

(“…who could possibly be called Siegfried Sassoon…?” Lolololol. Oh Robert. But I digress.)

Graves and Sassoon were also friends with another young officer by the name of David Thomas. Thomas wasn’t a poet, but he was lovely human being by all accounts: sweet, good-natured, naïve, and modest. You can probably see where this is going. Poor Siegfried fell completely in love with him, though he took pains to keep their relationship platonic because…well, trenches. And there was the fact that Thomas had a girlfriend back home.

Then, one cold day in March of 1916, Graves and Sassoon got the news that David Thomas had been shot— through the throat—and was dead.

The Military Cross

It would be an understatement to say that the deaths of Hamo and David Thomas affected Siegfried. Up until Thomas’s death, Sassoon hadn’t felt particularly hostile towards the Germans. They were men, and they were suffering just as much as the Brits in the trenches, right? But after “Tommy’s” death, Sassoon started finding excuses to go out on patrol in search of Germans to kill. In his grief, he also lost all concern for his own safety, undertaking suicidally brave actions that earned him a Military Cross and the nickname “Mad Jack”. One story about him, (again, as told by Graves):

He went over with bombs [i.e. grenades] in daylight, under covering fire from a couple of rifles, and scared away the [trench] occupants. A pointless feat, since instead of signalling for reinforcements, he sat down in the German trench and began reading a book of poems which he had brought with him. When he went back he did not even report. Colonel Stockwell, then in command, raged at him. The attack on Mametz wood had been delayed for two hours because British patrols were still reported to be out. “British patrols” were Siegfried and his book of poems. “I’d have got you a D.S.O., if you’d only shown more sense,” stormed Stockwell.

The decision to chill there in the German trench wasn’t actually as nonchalant as Graves makes it sound, but the story gives you a sense of the sort of thing Sassoon was prone to doing. This, combined with his genuine concern for the well-being of those under his command, meant that his men loved him as an officer.

But in the spring of 1917, he was shot through the chest (with miraculously little damage to his internal organs) and sent back to England to recover.

WWI propaganda poster

Okay, another quick biographical note: so while Sassoon was in the trenches, he continued to write poetry. But it didn’t take long for his romantic idealism to be stripped away by the horrors of trench warfare. Influenced by Graves, he began to write about life in the trenches, and his poetry became keen-edged, often bitingly sarcastic and angry. In 1917, while he was recovering from his wound, he published a book of these poems. They caused quite a stir (particularly ones like
“Hero”, which came as a shocking dose of truth to the British homefront).

But the more time he spent in England, the more furious Sassoon became. Because the people back home had NO FREAKING CLUE what the war was really like (*coughJessiePopecough*). They still used words like “honor” and “glory” to talk about combat that mostly involved cowering in holes while death and horror rained down from above, or clambering upwards so you wouldn’t literally drown in 5 feet of mud, or dying horribly from the blindness, burns, and suffocation caused by poison gas.

If you hadn’t worked it out before now, I should point out that dear Siegfried had a bit of a hero/martyr complex (he often talked about how the idea of dying for somebody appealed to him). He’d faced death and worse, and with a medal for conspicuous gallantry, nobody could argue that he was afraid to go back to France. But the idea of fighting in a war he no longer believed in disgusted him. Encouraged by some of his literary friends who identified as pacifists, Sassoon made up his mind. In July of 1917, shortly before he was supposed to return to the Western Front, he wrote the following:

A diorama depicting what trench warfare actually looked like (from the Australian War Memorial)

Finished with the War: A Soldier’s Declaration

Lt. Siegfried Sassoon.
3rd Batt: Royal Welsh Fusiliers.
July, 1917.

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that the war upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them and that had this been done the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.

I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops and I can no longer be a party to prolonging these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.

On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the deception which is being practised upon them; also I believe it may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share and which they have not sufficient imagination to realise.

———————————————————————————————————————

This letter was sent to his commanding officer. It was sent to Graves and many other friends. It was sent to various prominent people, and was eventually read aloud in the freaking House of Commons (Yanks, for comparison, think of something like this being read aloud to Congress). Sassoon knew what he was in for, or thought he did. But things turned out rather differently than he imagined they would…and that’s where I’ll pick up the story in my next post.

Missed part of the Ari and Siegfried Sassoon series? Here’s the rest:

Part I: Story of a Friend Crush
Part II: you’re here!
Part III: Shellshock and Poetry
Part IV: A Tale of Letters and Libraries

* DISCLAIMER: I am not a historian—merely a nerd. I’ve read quite a lot about Sassoon, but I certainly don’t know everything, and this blog series is in no way an authoritative narrative. If you want to learn more from people who actually know what they’re talking about, here are some of the resources you should look at (this is the closest I’ll get to a Works Cited page):

Egremont, Max. Siegfried Sassoon: A Life. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2005. Print.

Graves, Robert. Good-Bye to All That. New ed. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1957. Print.

Sassoon, Siegfried. The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston. 2nd ed. London: World Books, 1940. Print.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Sassoon

Story of a Friend Crush (or, Ari and Siegfried Sassoon, Part I)

If you know me in real life, or follow me on Twitter or Tumblr, you’ve probably seen me gushing about some old dead guy named Siegfried Sassoon over the past few months. And if WWI or war poetry aren’t your thing, you probably haven’t the faintest idea why I’m so excited.

So today, I’ve decided to fill you all in a bit. Who is this Sassoon fellow and why should you care? Well, if my fascination with WWI is an addiction, then Siegfried Sassoon was one of my gateway drugs.

And what a poetical BAMF of a drug. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

This is how it happened:

Last semester (fall of 2012), I took a course on total war in Europe from 1914-1945. Our midterm assignment was to read two WWI memoirs or novels and write an essay comparing them. I opted to re-read All Quiet on the Western Front (since I hardly remembered a thing about it) and Henri Barbusse’s Under Fire, a book published during the war and the first novel to depict life in the trenches as it really was. My professor was an ardent fan of Barbusse (like, he wrote the introduction for the edition that I got out of the library), so I figured it was a good option.

But when I started reading, I just couldn’t get into it, at least in part due to the translation (I think I would have enjoyed it more in its original French), and also partly due to the voice. Whereas the narration of Paul Bäumer in All Quiet had gripped my attention from the first page, I found myself pushing my way through each chapter of Under Fire with the grim determination of a soldier slogging through mud in the trenches. It got to the point where I lamented to my friend Sophia over dinner one day that I despaired of ever finishing it in time to write a paper on it.

“Do you have to read this book?” she asked.

“No, but I have to read a book, and my professor likes this one, so–”

“Well, that’s just silly. Go pick another book that you like.”

Easier said than done. I recall staring at the list of titles in my course packet, with little to no idea what each one was about. But the name Siegfried Sassoon jumped out at me a bit (as it tends to do). I remembered him from our readings on shell-shock, and flipping back through my packet, I reread his story as it was sketched out there. An interesting fellow indeed. And Mr Sassoon had written a memoir called Sherston’s Progress, and it was on my reading list.

Well…

I frowned at his picture there in the packet for a bit, shrugged, then returned Under Fire and checked out Sherston’s Progress.

To call this a “good decision” would be a drastic understatement.

Right from the beginning, I genuinely WANTED to keep reading. It wasn’t just that Sassoon’s voice was charming (though it was). It wasn’t just that I liked the writing (though I did). It wasn’t just that I was interested in the story (though I was). The most salient part of my experience as I read was how much I grokked this man. I got him. I don’t know how else to explain it. His thought processes, his sense of humor, his flaws and foibles, his self-acknowledged self-contradiction—they all made perfect sense to me, because they were mine too. My suitemate Hana can attest to the fact that I spent an afternoon and an evening on the couch in our common room delightedly spouting quotes at her whenever she walked into the room. “I love this guy,” I told her. “I love the way he thinks!” It was the feeling of walking in someone else’s footsteps on a beach and finding it the most natural thing in the world because that person’s legs moved just the way yours do.

Sherston’s Progress is actually the third part of Sassoon’s fictionalized memoirs, the first two parts being Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man and Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. I was dying to read them as well, but given the volume of work I had, I couldn’t afford to get hooked on a non-academic book. I contented myself with reading Wikipedia articles and such in my non-existent spare time. The more I learned about Sassoon and the First World War and the other war poets (Robert Graves, Wilfred Owen, etc.), the more fascinated I became, and as NaNoWriMo approached, I was struck by the notion of writing a story set in the trenches. The idea was inspired in part by a poem of Sassoon’s (called “Sick Leave”) which begins:

“WHEN I’m asleep, dreaming and lulled and warm,
They come, the homeless ones, the noiseless dead.
While the dim charging breakers of the storm
Bellow and drone and rumble overhead,
Out of the gloom they gather about my bed.
They whisper to my heart; their thoughts are mine.
‘Why are you here with all your watches ended?
From Ypres to Frise we sought you in the Line…’”

Arthur, my protagonist, is definitely not Sassoon, but I did draw a lot of ideas from Sassoon’s experiences. And what experiences might those be? Tune in later this week for the crazy story of Sassoon’s life during the war, and then finally, the tale of how I got to “meet” Sassoon last Thursday.

Missed part of the Ari and Siegfried Sassoon series? Here’s the rest:

Part I: you’re here!
Part II: Mad Jack, Poet, Soldier, Non-Spy
Part III: Shellshock and Poetry
Part IV: A Tale of Letters and Libraries

And because I’m curious, dear readers and raptors: Do any of you have a friend crush on a historical figure? Or a crush-crush? (I wouldn’t classify my interest in Sassoon as a crush-crush, but for or those of you who are prone to them, I suggest you check out this Tumblr.) Who fascinates you and why?

Where On Earth Have I Been?

First of all, before I do anything else:

HAPPY 2013!!!

Now I know what you’re thinking: “Thanks, Ari! But, uh…we’ve reached the Ides of January and you’re just now wishing us a happy new year?”

The answer to that question is a bit complicated, and I shan’t endeavor to explain it all. But the basic story can be broken down into three interconnected parts:

1. I’ve been at home on break. And what have I been doing, if not blogging? A brief list, in no particular order:

• spending time with friends and family
• holiday celebrations
• holiday cooking (just cooking in general, really–I miss having a kitchen when I’m at school)
• taking walks in the great outdoors (THE GREAT OUTDOORS ARE GREAT YOU GUYS)
• drinking tea
• reading books
• writing/editing

And in order to do these things, I made a concerted effort to spend less time on the internet than I usually do. The success of this endeavor is questionable, but:

2. I’ve been writing and editing. Questionable degree of success here too. For several weeks (basically as soon as the holidays were over) I tried to dive back into editing UNFAMILIAR SPELLINGS. I cut some stuff, rewrote some stuff…and then hit a wall.

An awful wall.

The kind where you become convinced that everything you’re writing is crap.

The kind where you honestly can’t remember why you even liked this story in the first place.

The kind where you find yourself staring at your screen at 2 AM and moving punctuation around just so you can have the illusion of being productive. (I wish I were exaggerating.)

Needless to say, my actual output dwindled to nothing. I desperately wanted to go work on SHADESHOCK (my WWI novel) instead, but I’d promised myself I’d finish the US edits before I did, so I found myself in a depressing pit of doing nothing. Finally, in despair, I sent off a rambling, panicky email to my friend Marieke in the wee hours of the morning, an email that could essentially be summed up in the sentence, “WHAT DO I DO????” Her thoughtful response: “Well, what do you feel like you should be doing?”

It was what I needed to hear. Because I felt like I should be taking a break from writing, but I hadn’t been giving myself permission to do that, even though the angst and burnout clearly weren’t worth it. So that’s what I’m doing now. Granted, I’m in the midst of reading/critiquing a couple of manuscripts, so I’m not entirely out of the writing world, but I’m doing my best to take a break until I’ve got my feet under me and my head screwed on straight.

3. I’ve been obsessing about the First World War.

It’s a little embarrassing to admit, but this is a large part of the reason I haven’t been blogging. It’s not that the topic is somehow not conducive to writing (QUITE THE OPPOSITE). Rather, it’s that I’ve already subjected my friends and close family to my excited rambling, obsessive reading, and indignant outbursts—I’ve been hoping to spare my readers.

Sassoon!

But blogs are like journals, and journals are for honesty, so honestly? This what I think about 70% of the time that I’m not in class or talking to people or whatever. In the past month, I’ve acquired nearly a dozen books about WWI, many given to me quite unexpectedly by incredibly generous friends (who took me at my word when I joked about how I would not object to people giving me books about WWI—<3 you guys). I bought a book of WWI poetry at Powell’s in Portland, Oregon. I bought a book about the Somme on AbeBooks.com. I’m currently halfway through a biography of Siegfried Sassoon and the autobiography of Robert Graves. I just checked out World Without End, by Helen Thomas (wife of the poet/soldier Edward Thomas) from my university’s library.

And on some level I was only about 51% facetious when I told my parents on the phone yesterday, “So, this whole college thing. Can I do it over again and major in World War One?”

My point is that I’ve been shielding you all from the brunt of my mania by refusing myself an outlet here on the blog, because I’m afraid I’d talk about nothing else. I’ve missed blogging, though, so…I’m  back. But I’m giving you all advance notice: I may occasionally ramble passionately/emotionally about my new favorite topic.

There. You’ve been warned.

And again, happy 2013.