Jewish Literary Review

Posted on May 23, 2008 by Steve Pollak

The making of a great war poet

I suppose Jean Moorcroft Wilson intended the double entendre in the title of her new book, “Isaac Rosenberg: the making of a Great War poet.” Rosenberg, pictured right, was considered by many to be a ‘great’ war poet as well as a ‘Great War’ poet.

In either case, it is remarkable to consider all the artistic success Rosenberg achieved with such a short life. Of course, most of the recognition he has received for his poetry and painting came after he died in the trenches in the First World War.

He was born in Bristol, England in 1890. The family moved to London’s East End in 1897 but a short while later left for Stepney so that young Isaac could receive a better Jewish education. Isaac left school at age 14 to become an apprentice engraver.

In 1907, he began taking evening art classes at Birkbeck College, where he won two awards for his work in nude portraits. Three years later, he enrolled in the Slade School of Fine Art in London. It was during this time that he began writing more seriously.

He stayed at Slade for about three years. In June of 1914, he moved to South Africa in a bid to find respite from his chronic bronchitis. That same month, a Bosnian Serb student shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. The assassination resulted in a series of war declarations that ultimately led to the ‘Great War.’ Rosenberg, who had been living in Cape Town while all of this was happening back on the continent, wrote a poem called On Receiving News of the War:

Snow is a strange white word.

No ice or frost

Has asked of bud or bird

For Winter’s cost.

Yet ice and frost and snow

From earth to sky

This Summer land doth know.

No man knows why.

In all men’s hearts it is.

Some spirit old Hath turned with malign kiss

Our lives to mould.

Red fangs have torn His face.

God’s blood is shed.

He mourns from His lone place

His children dead.

O! ancient crimson curse!

Corrode, consume.

Give back this universe

Its pristine bloom.

Many critics and historians have pointed out that Rosenberg took a critical view of the war (and, seemingly, of violence in general) at a time when many poets sought to exhibit more patriotic tones.

Even so, Rosenberg set sail for England in February 1915 and joined the army in October of that year after trying unsuccessfully to find a job. He served on the Western Front and died on April 1, 1918 while on night patrol. He was 27.

What makes this short life all the more remarkable is that it has been the subject of at least four biographies. Jean Liddiard’s “Isaac Rosenberg: The half used life” came out in 1975 (Liddiard also edited and wrote the introduction for the 2004 collection, “Isaac Rosenberg: Selected Poems and Letters.”) Also in 1975, Joseph Cohen’s “Journey to the trenches: The life of Isaac Rosenberg, 1890-1918” was published by Robson Books and Jean Moorcroft Wilson’s “Isaac Rosenberg: Poet and Painter: A Biography” was published by C. Woolf.

And now, we have another offering from Wilson, “Isaac Rosenberg: the making of a Great War poet,” which was published in March by Orion Publishing.

While noting that the new study “covers many of the same climactic periods” of Rosenberg’s life chronicled in Liddiard’s biography, author Ken Worpole writes in his review published last week in The Independent that, “Wilson’s book is particularly good on his early painting ambitions, providing a sympathetic description of Rosenberg’s time at the Slade, where fellow students included David Bomberg, Mark Gertler, Paul Nash and Stanley Spencer.”

Over at The Telegraph, Laura Thompson wrote in her review of Wilson’s book that she was not all that surprised to learn Roserberg’s first language was Yiddish:

It is somehow no surprise to learn, from Jean Moorcroft Wilson’s meticulous biography, that Rosenberg’s first language was Yiddish. His way with words often takes the form of a wildly creative grappling. It is as different as can be from the smooth linguistic assurance of, say, Rupert Brooke, but then Rosenberg was different in every way from his poet contemporaries, those glorious boys whom war had snatched from cricket fields and sunlit quadrangles.

Thompson goes on to say Wilson wrote a ‘full’ biography but I couldn’t tell if that turned out to be a good or a bad thing:

The problem, as often with “full” biographies, is that the facts take over from the tale.

Sometimes their sheer weight forces the writer to take refuge in banality. It feels odd that Rosenberg should be frequently taken to task for his “self-pity”, for seeing himself as “an outsider”, for being “difficult” – why shouldn’t he, given the circumstances?

There is no question that this book is a tremendous achievement of research, yet the story it tells is so very remarkable – so close to a fictional construct – that it can barely be contained within a conventional biography.

Also writing in The Telegraph, Nigel Jones takes a more circumspect view of Rosenberg’s admirers, including Wilson:

Although a city boy, [Rosenberg] was, like Edmund Blunden, a poetic pastoralist whose hero was that other artist-writer William Blake. Like David Jones and Ivor Gurney, he was a private who never sought an officer’s commission, and was equally gifted in other arts besides poetry. Like Rupert Brooke, he enjoyed the patronising patronage of Churchill’s wealthy secretary Eddie Marsh. But Rosenberg remained the outsider’s outsider.

This fact certainly disadvantaged Rosenberg in life, but since he was killed, 90 years ago, it has enhanced his steadily growing reputation. Bored by the standard-issue subaltern’s school of war poets, modern critics have leapt on Rosenberg’s outsider status – his Jewishness; his wretchedly poor upbringing; his frustrated career as an artist; his dismal health and lack of martial qualities – to elevate him above the crowd.

In fact Rosenberg’s reputation rests on shallow foundations – a handful of frequently anthologised pieces: Dead Man’s Dump; Break of Day in the Trenches; Returning, We Hear the Larks; Louse Hunting; and his poignant last poem, Through These Pale Cold Days.

With biographies of Sassoon and Sorley behind her – not to mention an earlier study of Rosenberg – Jean Moorcroft Wilson is clearly cornering the niche market in war poets, although she over-eggs her pudding in attempting to convince us that Rosenberg, the critics’ darling, is neglected (this is at least the fourth biography).

Moreover, in decrying the tendency of even his supporters to patronise him – Marsh invariably called him ‘poor little Rosenberg’ – she herself patronises what she calls ‘the public schoolboy’ poets. Nevertheless, this is a measured, thoroughly researched biography, incorporating much new material by and about the poet, which should be definitive.

With this labour of love, sensitively and sensibly analysing the poetry, Moorcroft Wilson has now surely said the last word on this gifted but tragically unlucky figure.

That’s probably a reasonable assumption. Most people don’t get even one biography written about their life.

Jean Moorcroft Wilson’s “Isaac Rosenberg: the making of a Great War poet,” is published by Orion Publishing (480 pages).

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2 Responses to The making of a great war poet

1. JewWishes says:

   May 23, 2008 at 11:14 pm

   Excellent post, Steve, informative and gives the reader the urge to run out and purchase the book.

   Reply
2. Steve Pollak says:

   May 24, 2008 at 10:27 pm

   thanks, JewWishes.

   Reply