Isaac Rosenberg the War Poet

Isaac Rosenberg had written as well as published poetry before he entered the Great War in October 1915. He continued to write poems even after he joined the British Army, this time about his war experiences. Before he was killed in action on April 1, 1918, he had written a fair amount of war poetry from the trenches. The poems were mostly in manuscripts cherished by his sister Annie, who, with relentless zeal, was able finally to have them published in 1922. Unlike fellow war poets such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, however, Rosenberg did not get immediate recognition. This was probably because, while his contemporaries wrote poetry of protest, satire, and pity, to which the general public could more readily respond, Rosenberg had a more nearly aesthetic ideal. Though he was born into a poor Jewish immigrant family in the East End of London, he was interested in art. Initially he dabbled in painting and attended art classes at Birkbeck College, London. Through the generosity of three Jewish ladies he attended the famous Slade School of Art in 1911, where he spent the next three years. Though he was able to hang his pictures in small galleries and sold a few, he realized that his professional success would not lie in that direction.

In any case he was more interested in reading and writing poetry. He was well read in English and French poetry. Starting with an enthusiasm for Yeats and Shelley and a passion for Shakespeare, he had his Donne period; and, among the Victorians, he liked Rossetti and Swinburne. His contemporary favorites were Francis Thompson, Abercrombie, and Bottomley; and he was aware of the symbolists like Poe and Verlaine. All in all he was much better read than nearly all of the war poets of his time. His early poems were published in fugitive magazines, and in 1912 he published a twenty-fourpage pamphlet, Night and Day, at his own expense. He met several literary figures (e.g. Marsh, Monro, Binyon, Bottomley), but they regarded him only as a poor Jew who wrote poems. Ezra Pound told Harriet Monroe, “he has something in him, horribly rough but then ‘Stepney, East’—.” Rosenberg grew friendly with editors and poets of the time, however, with whom he maintained a regular correspondence even from the trenches. He sent them the poems that he was able to write in those difficult conditions, and they sent him their commendations as well as constructive criticism.

When war broke out, Rosenberg was in South Africa, where he had gone owing to sickness. In 1914 he wrote the poem “On Receiving the News of War,” which gives one an idea of the kind of war poetry he would write once he entered the conflict: “Red fangs have torn His face / God’s blood is shed. / He mourns from His lone place / His children dead.” The linguistic compression and elemental vision of the lines make his poetry unique.

He enlisted in 1915 out of sheer financial desperation, hoping that his going to war would at least provide his mother with his statutory “separation allowance.” Life in the army was particularly painful for Rosenberg because of his weak health: he was a private (not an officer, as were the more famous war poets) and had to undergo rigorous training and menial labor. He also suffered from anti-Semitism. In a letter to Abercrombie, he wrote, “Believe me the army is the most detestable invention on earth and nobody but a private in the army knows what it is to be a slave.” Such experiences, one would imagine, would have turned him into a fiercely antiwar man. They did, but his sense of humor helped him retain his sanity. He wrote to Edward Marsh: “know that I despise war and hate war, and hope the Kaiser William will have his bottom smacked—naughty, aggressive schoolboy who will have all the plum pudding.”

Initially he wrote at least one patriotic poem, “Pozierès,” which he made soon after entering the war in August 1916. It was written only a few weeks before the battle of Pozierès Ridge...