STRANGE MEETING - WILFRED OWEN

STRANGE MEETING - Wilfred Owen (1893 – 1918)

Poem:

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 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 thousand pains that vision’s face was grained;

Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,

‘Strange friend’, I said, ‘here is no cause to mourn.’

‘None,’ said the 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,

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 he 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….’

Summary of the poem:

I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned

Yesterday through me as you jobbed and killed

Sings Wilfred Owen in the poem Strange Meeting striking the core of human pathos of killing man by man in terms of war. As a solider, his experience of unrelenting weather and fierce fighting was turned to creative account in poems in the trenches of warfront such as Strange Meeting, Exposure, No Man’s Land and Asleep trying to instruct the idea of grim war which brings death to the mankind.

My subject is war and the pity of war writes in the preface to his volume of poems and adds All a poet can do today is warn, sounds a grim warning of war.

Owen heralds from the period of transition from Romantic and Victorian to Modern modes of poetry is one on the fundamental shifts in the history of literature. As a admirer of Keats, wrote poems in imitation of Keats and as soldier, he illustrated many poems on theme of war filled with pity and indignation.

Strange Meeting is excellent illustration of what Owen said in the preface of his volume of poems. If the reader is brought closer to the poem by the romantic diction, it enables the poet himself to maintain a certain aesthetic distance from the subject by the unique qualities of his new-found realism with traditional qualities of imagination and expression.

Strange Meeting which envisions an eerie encounter in the world between two dead soldiers precisely killer and victim and proceeds the dialogue in the sullen hall of Hopelessness (hell). The two dead souls further speak on how the war could have drawn them to fight and kill though they do not each other before.

Now men will go content with what we spoiled.

Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.

War is unwanted and it is only political exploitations for nothing. If some are not satisfied with the blood shed, their blood will boil; they will shed their blood or shed others’ blood. Politicians flatter the people as well as soldiers war is mode of progress in a systematic discipline and it will be systematic retreat away from the real progress.

Into vain citadels that are not walled.

Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels.

The soldier had the courage and wisdom, the divine knowledge and the strength of mind, to break away from the nations in their stupid march away from the sacred values of life. But they are retreating into what they consider impregnable citadels. And he proceeds to tell the war reality – when the soldiers had shed much blood their own and their enemies’ would check the chariot wheels by clogging – the wheel of progress.

The soldier, however, asserted that he did not want to join in the war once again if he had rebirth on earth but he would serve the people those who wounded on the Battle-Front by giving sweet waters of Peace and Love.

The two dead souls virtually are the mouth piece of the poet, where the poet himself an Army Officer who led his soldiers like cattle to a slaughter house and he too killed just a week before Armistice. He did not see at least the publication of his book to which he wrote preface.

The poem Strange Meeting illustrates as an excellent piece of war theme, but unfortunately he did remain to see his book in print.

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