Wilfred Owen: Fresher Fields than Flanders

WILFRED OWEN: FRESHER FIELDS THAN FLAMDERS By Joseph Cohen (Newcomb College, Tulane University) The September, 1963, publication in England of the definitive edition' of Wilfred Owen's poetry, preceded in the summer by the appearance of JOURNEY FROM OBSCURITY: WILFRED OWEN, the first of three volumes of family memoirs2 by Harold Owen, Wilfred's younger brother and literary executor, has called attention again to the growing reputation of the World War I poet. His place in the first rank among the minor poets of this century is assured. Though he was unknown at the time of his death in battle on 4 November I9I8, and though his poems were at times out of print between the wars, Increased publishing activity, public readings and the sustained appearance of critical essays since 1945 have made his name familiar to a new generation of readers throughout the English speaking world. Moreover, the enthusiastic acclaim given to Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem," a moving nonliturgical Mass set to Owen's text, following its premiere performance in the rededication ceremonies of Coventry Cathedral In the spring of I962, extended interest in Owen. TIME magazine, in a subsequent review of Britten's requiem, described Owen as "England's great World War I poet,"' a description more significant for its confirmation of the poet's popularity than for its uncritical evaluation. The prestige Owen's name enjoys today developed slowly. It was carefully nurtured by the surviving members of his family and a few poets and critics who knew his worth from the beginning. These included Edith and Osbert Sitwell, Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden, and John Middleton Murry. Prior to the poet's death, only four of his poems appeared in print, three of them in THE NATION in I9I8.4 His first appearance in hard covers occurred in December, 1919, in the Fourth Cycle of Edith Sitwell's Anthology series, WHEELS.5 jhe volume was dedicated to his memory and it contained seven of his poems including "Strange Meeting." Owen's first collected edition appeared one year later in December, 1920. Issued by Chatto and Windus in blood-red cloth, it contained his famous preface with the lines "The Poetry is in the pity," two versions of "Strange Meeting" and 22 other poems, selected and introduced by Siegfried Sassoon. The volume is now referred to as the Sassoon edition, but its preparation was largely entrusted to Edith Sitwell. It left much to be desired, for a good deal of license was taken by both Sassoon and Dame Edith In establishing the text. A mere glance at Owen's surviving manuscripts in the British Museum will reveal the complexity of his compositional technique. The number of cancellations and uncancelled substitutions of individual words and occasionally of stanzas, and the number of variant drafts make his small body of poetry richly confusing. Neither Sassoon nor Dame Edith were adept at editing the complicated manuscripts and the result was an unreliable text. Tf the 23 poems only two have texts identical with those published by Edmund Blunden in 1931. Misreadings and printer's errors occur in ten poems in the Sassoon-Sitwel1 edition. Among the most notable of these were the purposeful deletions without manuscript authorization of the final line of the "Parable of the Old Men and the Young," and the epigraph to "The Show" from W. B. Yeats 1S "Shadowy Waters." The question of editorial responsibility for this edition hasarisen periodically. I η the Northcliffe Lectures delivered by the Sitwells in 1937, Dame Edith said, "It was I who prepared /Owen's/ first book of poems for publication. The poems were left in my care by my friend, Mr. Siegfried Sassoon, who had to go to America and who eventually edited them, and It was I who disentangled, from the highly complicated drafts, the words which I believed Owen wished used."° In the same sentence Dame Edith notes that it was she who prepared the poems for press but that Sassoon "eventually edited them." In a letter to the TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT which appeared 22 June 1956, she absolved herself from a charge of poor proofreading made by Dennis Weiland in the same journal one week before.7...