May. 11th, 2015

charlie_cochrane: (lessons for suspicious minds)
I'd like to recommend this excellent book by Nicholas Murray. It's a study of "the brave and brief lives of the war poets" and not just the usual Sassoon and Owen. Rosenburg, Blunden, Gurney, etc all feature here. So does one of my favourite historical letters, the one Owen wrote Sassoon.

"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."

Poor Wilfred, so much in awe of Sassoon and unlikely ever to have that love requited in the way he seemed to want...
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