David Reynolds Quote
So, in the still-lingering shadow of 1861–65, let us suspend disbelief for a while and look more attentively at Europe’s Great War. To a large extent, American perceptions of 1914–18 have been influenced by debates in Britain—readily accessible via the common language. There 1914–18 has become a literary war, a human tragedy detached from its moorings in historical events, entrenched in the mud of Flanders and Picardy, illuminated only by a few antiwar poets such as Wilfred Owen—perhaps the most studied writer in the English school curriculum after William Shakespeare. My subject is War and the pity of War, Owen declared. The Poetry is in the pity. Yet by reducing the conflict to personal tragedies, however moving, the British have lost the big picture: history has been distilled into poetry.6
So, in the still-lingering shadow of 1861–65, let us suspend disbelief for a while and look more attentively at Europe’s Great War. To a large extent, American perceptions of 1914–18 have been influenced by debates in Britain—readily accessible via the common language. There 1914–18 has become a literary war, a human tragedy detached from its moorings in historical events, entrenched in the mud of Flanders and Picardy, illuminated only by a few antiwar poets such as Wilfred Owen—perhaps the most studied writer in the English school curriculum after William Shakespeare. My subject is War and the pity of War, Owen declared. The Poetry is in the pity. Yet by reducing the conflict to personal tragedies, however moving, the British have lost the big picture: history has been distilled into poetry.6
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