80-561: Arthur Graeme West (September, 1891 – 3 April 1917) was a British writer and war poet . West was born in Eaton, Norfolk , educated at Highgate School , then Blundell's School and Balliol College, Oxford , and killed by a sniper in 1917. West enlisted as a Private with the Public Schools Battalion in January 1915. He joined from a feeling of duty and patriotism, but the war had
160-506: A Dead Officer (1919), which presents a scathing picture of army life and a vivid account of daily life in the trenches. The book was published posthumously and edited by C. E. M. Joad , an Oxford colleague of West's and an active pacifist (and contemporary of West's at Blundell's). It was reissued in 1991 by the Imperial War Museum and published again by Greenhill Books in 2007 with an introduction by Nigel Jones . The first edition of
240-830: A Jewish poet who wrote in German from Podiebrad an der Elbe in the Kingdom of Bohemia , had enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1913. On 4 November 1917, Janowitz died of wounds received at the Battle of Caporetto . Two years after his death, a volume of Janowitz's war poems, Aus der Erde und anderen Dichtungen ("Out of the Earth and Other Poems") was published in Munich . The first complete collection of his poems, however, came out only in 1992. According to Jeremy Adler, "Franz Janowitz conflicts with
320-401: A grand scale for English, Stramm achieved more modestly for German." Stramm's war poetry was first published by Herwarth Walden in the avant-garde literary journal Der Sturm and later appeared in the collection Tropfenblut ("Dripping Blood"), which was published in 1919. Iranian literature Iranian literature , or Iranic literature , refers to the literary traditions of
400-461: A great impression on him. In August 1916 he became a second lieutenant in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry . Shortly after, he wrote to his new battalion threatening to desert the army - but he could not bring himself to post the letter. Less than a year later, on 3 April 1917, he was shot dead by a sniper's bullet near Bapaume . West is principally known for one book, The Diary of
480-530: A literary tradition beginning in the 16th century. Pashto , one of Afghanistan 's two official languages and the second-largest regional language of Pakistan that is spoken natively by the Pashtuns , has developed a literature since the 17th or possibly the 11th century, producing works mainly through its prestigious coastal dialects. Balochi , spoken natively by the Baloch people throughout Balochistan , has
560-716: A major role in convincing the Prince to come to Scotland and to initiate the Jacobite Rising of 1745 . Other poems about the Uprising were written in both Gaelic and English by John Roy Stewart , who served as colonel of the Edinburgh Regiment and a close and trusted confidant of Prince Charles Edward Stuart . The Irish poem Mo Ghile Mear , which was composed by the County Cork Bard Seán "Clárach" Mac Domhnaill ,
640-589: A massive army from a coalition of Greek states led by King Agamemnon of Mycenae . The events between the cremation of Hector and the Fall of Troy are expanded upon in the 4th century epic poem Posthomerica , by Quintus of Smyrna . In pre-Islamic Persia, the war poem Ayadgar-i Zariran ('Memorial of Zarer') was composed; it was preserved by Zoroastrian priests after the Muslim conquest of Persia . In its surviving manuscript form, "The Memorial of Zarer" represents one of
720-735: A massive influence on Ukrainian literature . The Lay also captured the imagination of the intelligentsia during the Golden Age of Russian Poetry and has had a major influence on Russian literature and culture . In 1375, Scottish Makar , or court poet, John Barbour completed the epic poem The Brus , which celebrates the deeds of Robert the Bruce , who led the Scottish people in their Wars of Independence against Kings Edward I and Edward II of England and who ultimately became King of Scotland . Around 1488, fellow Scottish Makar Blind Harry wrote
800-598: A patriotic rally call for the North. Whitman volunteered for a time as a nurse in the army hospitals, and his collection Drum-Taps (1865) deals with his experiences during the War. On 18 July 1863, Die Minnesota-Staats-Zeitung , a newspaper published by and for German-speaking Forty-Eighters living in Minnesota , printed An die Helden des Ersten Minnesota Regiments ("To the Heroes of
880-649: A poet from Clan Macrae , who emigrated to Moore County in the Colony of North Carolina around 1774, fought as a Loyalist during the American Revolution , and composed Gaelic war poetry there until his death around 1780. In 1783, the year that saw the end of the American Revolution and the beginning of the Highland Clearances in Inverness-shire, Cionneach mac Cionnich , a poet from Clan MacKenzie who
SECTION 10
#1732881100532960-478: A profound effect on him. An individualist who hated routine and distrusted discipline, he developed an intense abhorrence to army life and began to question the very core of his beliefs – in religion, patriotism and the reason for war. This growing disillusionment found expression in two particularly powerful war poems he wrote during this time: "God, How I Hate You" and "Night Patrol". In his diary he describes reading Bertrand Russell 's writings on pacifism, which made
1040-581: A region split between Georgia and Russia in the Caucasus , and is used officially by the Russian republic of North Ossetia-Alania and the autonomous State of Alania . Ossetian literature is based mainly on its prestigious Iron dialect , which is also used administratively. Kurdish , spoken natively by the Kurds throughout Kurdistan and used officially by the autonomous Region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq and
1120-558: Is "the first epic poem in Hungarian literature " and "one of the major works of Hungarian literature". Kenneth Clark 's Civilisation describes Szigeti veszedelem as one of the major literary achievements of the 17th century. Even though John Milton 's Paradise Lost is often credited with resurrecting Classical epic poetry , Milton's poem was published in 1667, sixteen years after Zrínyi's Szigeti Veszedelem . Another Croatian nobleman warrior-poet Pavao Ritter Vitezović wrote about
1200-764: Is a lament for the defeat of the Uprising at the Battle of Culloden . The poem is a soliloquy by the Kingdom of Ireland , whom Seán Clárach personifies, according to the rules of the Aisling genre, as a woman from the Otherworld . The woman laments her state and describes herself as a grieving widow due to the defeat and exile of her lawful King. Poems about the Jacobite rising of 1745 have also been written in English by Sir Walter Scott , Carolina Nairne , Agnes Maxwell MacLeod , Allan Cunningham , and William Hamilton . However, even as
1280-435: Is attested on several inscriptions from between the 6th to the 4th century BC, gave rise to Middle Persian in the 3rd century BC, which later produced a number of literary works centered in religious Manichaean and Zoroastrian books written between the 3rd to the 10th century AD. Parthian , another Middle Iranian language which dates to the first three centuries AD and was likely mutually intelligible with Middle Persian,
1360-403: Is believed to have been composed by Homer , a blind Greek Bard from Ionia . It is among the oldest surviving works of Western literature , believed to have begun as oral literature . The first written form is usually dated to around the 8th century BC. The Iliad is set during the ten-year siege of the polis of Troy ( Ilium ), ruled by King Priam and his sons Hector and Paris , by
1440-760: Is inspired by and named after Ali Pasha , the governor of the Pashalik of Ioannina in Ottoman Greece , describing, in heroic style, his life, and his military campaigns. The poem is written in Demotic Greek , which Shehreti considered a far more prestigious language than Turkish or Albanian . Historically, the Alipashiad is unique in Greek poetry due to its having been written from an Islamic point of view. The Greek War of Independence raged from 1821 to 1830 and resulted in
1520-413: Is known to have based his account very heavily on the memoirs of Zrinski's valet, Franjo Črnko. Karnarutić is known to have drawn further inspiration from Marko Marulić 's Judita . In 1651, Hungarian poet Miklós Zrínyi , the great-grandson of Nikola Zrinski, published the epic poem Szigeti veszedelem (" The Siege of Sziget "). According to Encyclopædia Britannica Online , The Siege of Sziget
1600-661: Is poetry on the topic of war. While the term is applied especially to works of the First World War , the term can be applied to poetry about any war, including Homer 's Iliad , from around the 8th century BC as well as poetry of the American Civil War , the Spanish Civil War , the Crimean War and other wars. War poets may be combatants or noncombatants. The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameter which
1680-580: Is portrayed as having fought in the Battle of Brunanburh in 937 as an elite mercenary soldier for Æthelstan . The foundational masterpiece of Welsh poetry , Y Gododdin ( c. 638 – c. 1000 ), tells how Mynyddog Mwynfawr , the King of Gododdin in the Hen Ogledd , summoned warriors from several other Welsh kingdoms and led them in a campaign against the Anglo-Saxons which culminated with
SECTION 20
#17328811005321760-728: Is sometimes referred to as "The Poet-Priest of the Confederacy," and as "The Poet Laureate of the South." Rudyard Kipling wrote poetry in support of the British cause in the Boer War , including the well-known "Lichtenberg", which is about a combatant's death in a foreign land. Swinburne , Thomas Hardy , and others wrote also poems relating to the Boer War. Hardy's poems include "Drummer Hodge", and " The Man He Killed ". '"Swinburne regularly donated work to
1840-532: The 2nd Minnesota Cavalry Regiment . During his service in that Regiment, Thomas wrote many Welsh poems, including Pryddest ar Wir Fawredd . On the Confederate side, the most well-known Civil War poet is Father Abram Ryan , a Roman Catholic priest and former military chaplain to the Confederate Army . Father Ryan, who eulogized the defeated South in poems like The Conquered Banner and The Sword of Lee ,
1920-512: The Austro-Hungarian Army prior to the outbreak of war in 1914. In response, Gyóni had written the great pacifist poem, Cézar, én nem megyek ("Caesar, I Will Not Go"). According to Peter Sherwood, "Gyóni's first, still elated, poems from the Polish Front recall the 16th century Hungarian poet Bálint Balassi 's soldiers' songs of the marches, written during the campaign against the Turks ." During
2000-760: The Ban of Croatia , defended the Hungarian fortress of the same name against an enormous Ottoman army under the command of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent , has thrice been made the subject of epic poetry . The first epic poem about the Siege was composed in Croatian by the poet Brne Karnarutić of Zadar , titled Vazetje Sigeta grada (English: The Taking of the City of Siget ), and posthumously published at Venice in 1584. Karnarutić
2080-487: The Battle of Catraeth around the year 600. The narrator names himself as Aneirin and professes to have been one of only two to four Welsh survivors of the battle. The Brussels Manuscript of the Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib , which is believed to have been written around 1635 by Franciscan friar and historian Mícheál Ó Cléirigh , contains many Irish war poems not found elsewhere. Like the other two surviving manuscripts,
2160-653: The British Army on the night before the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775. Longfellow's poem was first published in the January 1861 issue of The Atlantic Monthly and later included as part of Longfellow's 1863 poetry collection Tales of a Wayside Inn . Ralph Waldo Emerson 's 1837 poem Concord Hymn pays tribute to the Patriot militia at the Battle of Concord and famously says that they fired, " The shot heard round
2240-701: The Czech nobility 's offer of the throne of the Kingdom of Bohemia , after the local officials of "The Knave of Hearts", the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II , were overthrown in a palace coup known as the Third Defenestration of Prague . In German poetry , the Baroque anti-war sonnets of Andreas Gryphius remain well known. Gryphius made many enemies for himself by denouncing the destruction, suffering, and needless civilian casualties left behind by
2320-461: The Don River . Since its 18th-century rediscovery in a 15th-century manuscript from Yaroslavl and 1800 publication by Aleksei Musin-Pushkin , The Lay has inspired other poems, art, music, and the opera Prince Igor by Alexander Borodin . It is claimed by Russians, Belarusians , and Ukrainians as a national epic . As the main characters of the poem came from modern Ukraine , The Lay has had
2400-734: The Earl of Surrey defeated and killed King James IV of Scotland and gave no quarter to an estimated 12,000 nobles and commons recruited from both the Scottish Highlands and Lowlands, is sometimes considered the end of the Middle Ages in the British Isles . By far the most famous war poem about the battle is the poem in Scots , The Flowers of the Forest by Lady Jean Elliot . In 1755, Lady Jean published
2480-662: The Iranian languages , developed predominantly in Iran and other regions in the Middle East and the Caucasus , eastern Asia Minor , and parts of western Central Asia and northwestern South Asia . These include works attested from as early as the 6th century BC. Modern Iranian literatures include Persian literature , Ossetian literature , Kurdish literature , Pashto literature , and Balochi literature , among others. The earliest surviving literary works in an Iranian language are that of
Arthur Graeme West - Misplaced Pages Continue
2560-562: The Persian Empire from the creation of the world until the Muslim conquest in the 7th century. It is one of the world's longest epic poems created by a single poet, and the national epic of Greater Iran . The Shahnameh also contains many works of war poetry. Armenia 's national epic , Sasna Tsrer ( Daredevils of Sassoun ), is set during the time of the invasion of Armenia by the Caliphate of Baghdad (about 670), and focuses on
2640-525: The Siege of Przemyśl , Gyóni wrote poems to encourage the city's defenders and these verses were published there, under the title, Lengyel mezőkön, tábortúz melett ( By Campfire on the Fields of Poland ). A copy reached Budapest by aeroplane , which was an unusual feat in those days. According to Erika Papp Faber, "His leaning toward Socialism and his anti-militarist attitude were, for a brief time, suspended, as he
2720-462: The battle of the same name . The Battle of Brunanburh in 937 is also celebrated by an Old English poem of the same name in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , which in 1880 was translated into modern English, in a metrical mixture of Trochees and dactyls , by Alfred Tennyson . The anti-hero Egill Skallagrímsson of Egil's Saga , attributed to the twelfth-century bard Snorri Sturluson ,
2800-417: The guerrilla warfare of Boer Commando leader Christiaan De Wet . Published poets wrote over two thousand poems about and during the war. However, only a small fraction still is known today, and several poets that were popular with contemporary readers are now obscure. An orthodox selection of poets and poems emerged during the 1960s, which often remains the standard in modern collections and distorts
2880-642: The ship of state into shipwreck. MacCionnich also argues that truth is on the side of George Washington and the Continental Army and that the Gaels would do well to emigrate from the Highlands and Islands to the United States before the King and the landlords take every farthing they have left. During the early 19th century, Albanian Muslim bard Haxhi Shehreti composed the epic poem Alipashiad . The work
2960-799: The 9th and 10th centuries in Sogdia , was centered in Manichaean, Buddhist, and Christian texts. A few Bactrian manuscript fragments have also been discovered, dating between the 4th to the 9th century. Of the living Iranian languages, Persian has been the most influential. Various modern dialects of Persian are spoken natively by the Persians , Tajiks , Hazaras , and Aimaqs , among others, of which three standardized variants, namely Western Persian (or simply "Persian"), Dari , and Tajik , are used officially in Iran , Afghanistan , and Tajikistan . Modern Persian literature originates from its earlier forms in
3040-548: The 9th century, although it is also considered to be a continuation of works from much older stages of the language. In spite of originating from the region of Persis (better known as Persia ) in southwestern Iran, the Persian language was used and developed further through Persianate societies in Asia Minor , Central Asia , and South Asia , leaving massive influences on Ottoman and Mughal literatures , among others. Ossetian ,
3120-527: The Battle. His poem Odiljenje sigetsko ("The Sziget Farewell"), first published in 1684, reminisces about the event without rancour or crying for revenge. The last of the four cantos is titled "Tombstones" and consists of epitaphs for the Croatian and Turkish warriors who died during the siege, paying equal respect to both. In her book The Real Personage of Mother Goose , author Katherine Elwes Thomas alleges that
3200-454: The British upper class and the literary world were romanticizing the Uprising and the culture of the Scottish clans , the suppression of Highland Scottish culture, which had begun after the rising's defeat, continued for nearly two centuries afterward. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 's 1860 poem Paul Revere's Ride both retells and fictionalizes the efforts of Boston silversmith Paul Revere to warn Patriot militia of an imminent attack by
3280-423: The Brussels Manuscript relates the wars between the Irish clans and the Norse and Danish invaders , and celebrates the ultimate rise to power of Brian Boru as High King of Ireland . The Song of Dermot and the Earl is an anonymous Anglo-Norman verse chronicle written in the early 13th century in England. It retells the 1170 invasion of Ireland by Diarmait Mac Murchada , the wars that followed between
Arthur Graeme West - Misplaced Pages Continue
3360-409: The Earl since Goddard Henry Orpen published a diplomatic edition under this title in 1892. The Tale of Igor's Campaign ( Слово о пълкѹ Игоревѣ ), an epic poem in Old East Slavic , describes a failed raid made in the year 1185 by an army led by Prince Igor Svyatoslavich of Novgorod-Seversk against the Polovtsians ( Cumans ), Pagan Turkic nomads living along the southern banks of
3440-420: The English nursery rhyme The Queen of Hearts is about the events that caused the outbreak of the Thirty Years War . The King and Queen of Hearts are, according to Elwes Thomas, a thinly disguised description of Elector Palatine ( German : Kurfürst von der Pfalz ) Friedrich V and his wife Elizabeth Stuart . The Queen's decision to bake tarts refers to her persuasion of her Calvinist husband to accept
3520-400: The European imagination. For poets, the unprecedented scale of violence annihilated the classic traditions of war literature – individual heroism, military glory, and virtuous leadership. Writers struggled for a new idiom commensurate with their apocalyptic personal experience. European Modernism emerged from the trenches of the Western Front . " British poetry especially was transformed by
3600-424: The First Minnesota Regiment"), a work of German poetry in tribute to the Union soldiers of the 1st Minnesota Infantry Regiment and their iconic charge from Cemetery Ridge during the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg . The poet was G. A. Erdman of Hastings, Minnesota . Also during the American Civil War, Edward Thomas, a Welsh-language poet whose Bardic name was Awenydd , enlisted in Company E of
3680-422: The Great War." August Stramm , who is considered the first of the expressionists , has been called by Jeremy Adler one of, "the most innovative poets of the First World War ." Stramm, Adler writes, treated, "language like a physical material" and, "honed down syntax to its bare essentials." Citing Stramm's fondness for "fashioning new words out of old," Adler has also written that, "what James Joyce did on
3760-412: The Highland Clans" and Òran do'n Phrionnsa – "A Song to the Prince," serve as testament to the Bard's passionate loyalty to the House of Stuart . According to literary historian John MacKenzie , these poems were sent to Aeneas MacDonald , the brother of the Clanranald tacksman of Kinlochmoidart . Aeneas read the poems aloud to Prince Charles Edward Stuart in English translation and the poems played
3840-456: The Uprising was only completed many years later. When Ailean Dearg, the Chief of Clan Macdonald of Clanranald had been mortally wounded at the Battle of Sherrifmuir , Alasdair Dubh, 11th Chief of Clan MacDonald of Glengarry rallied the faltering warriors of Clan Donald by throwing up his Highland bonnet and crying Buillean an-diugh, tuiream a-màireach! ("Blows today, mourning tomorrow!"). Following Alasdair Dubh's death (c. 1721 or 1724), he
3920-408: The autonomous federation of Rojava in northern Syria , has a literary tradition whose earliest works are those of Malaye Jaziri , a 16th-century influential Kurdish poet from Jazira who used the Kurmanji dialect, and of at least one writer before him, in addition to the orally transmitted folk poetry and prose narratives. Gurani , spoken by the Guran Kurds mainly in Hawraman , also produced
4000-418: The book consisted of an introduction by Joad, extracts from West's 1915-17 diary, and several essays and poems. Joad edited the book as pacifist propaganda and it was published jointly by the left-wing Herald newspaper and Sir Francis Meynell's Pelican Press (Meynell's other publications had included Sassoon's protest in 1917). Jones' edition does not include Joad's introduction. War poet War poetry
4080-401: The earliest surviving works of Iranian literature and the only surviving epic poem in Pahlavi . Historically, Iranian epic poems such as this one were composed and sung by travelling minstrels, who in pre-Islamic and Zoroastrian times were a fixture of Iranian society. Ferdowsi 's 11th century Shahnameh ("Book of Kings") retells the mythical and to some extent the historical past of
SECTION 50
#17328811005324160-471: The effects of war and the transitoriness of human life; "Menschliches Elende" (Human misery); and "Trawrklage des verwüsteten Deutschlandes" (Lament of a Devastated Germany). In 1632, Gryphius had witnessed the pillaging and burning of the Silesian town of Freystadt by the Protestant troops of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden . Gryphius immortalized the sack of the city in a detailed eyewitness account titled Fewrige Freystadt , which made him many enemies. In
4240-459: The end of the First World War. Georg Trakl , an Expressionist poet from Salzburg , enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian Army as a medical officer in 1914. He personally witnessed the Battle of Gródek , fought in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria , in which the Austro-Hungarian Army suffered a bloody defeat at the hands of the Imperial Russian Army . Georg Trakl is best known for the poem Grodek . Franz Janowitz [ de ] ,
4320-407: The epic poem The Wallace , about the life and death of iconic Scottish nationalist Sir William Wallace . The events of the Scottish Wars of Independence are also a regular theme in the verse of Scotland 's national poet , Robert Burns . The 15th-century poem Zadonschina , which draws upon the same tradition of Pre-Christian Slavic war poetry as The Tale of Igor , was composed to glorify
4400-474: The history of English literature . "Similar cohorts of war poets occupy important positions in other European literature's. French literature has Charles Peguy , Guillaume Apollinaire , and Blaise Cendrars (who lost his right arm at the Second Battle of Champagne ). Italian poetry has Eugenio Montale , Giuseppe Ungaretti , and Gabriele D'Annunzio . German poetry has Georg Trakl , August Stramm , and Gottfried Benn . "These scarred survivors reshaped
4480-447: The impression of World War I poetry. This selection tends to emphasize the horror of war, suffering, tragedy and anger against those that wage war. In a 2020 article for the St Austin Review about American WWI poet John Allan Wyeth , Dana Gioia writes, "The First World War changed European literature forever. The horror of modern mechanized warfare and the slaughter of nineteen million young men and innocent civilians traumatized
4560-459: The independence of the Greek people after more than four hundred years of rule by the Ottoman Empire . The uprising and its many predecessors also produced many great composers of war poetry. In English poetry , Lord Byron is by far the most famous of these poets. Byron travelled to Greece during the fighting and joined the Greek rebels. Byron also glorified the Greek cause in many of his poems, which continued to be widely read. Even though he
4640-429: The invaders and Haskulf Thorgilsson , the last Hiberno-Norse King of Dublin and Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair , the last High King of Ireland , and the subsequent visit to Ireland by King Henry II of England in 1172. The chronicle survived only in a single manuscript which was re-discovered in the 17th century at Lambeth Palace in London. The manuscript bears no title, but has been commonly dubbed The Song of Dermot and
4720-431: The lyrics anonymously and The Flowers of the Forest was at first thought to be an ancient ballad. However, Robert Burns suspected it was an imitation, and together with Ramsay and Sir Walter Scott eventually identified the author. The 1566 Battle of Szigetvár , in which a vastly outnumbered army of 2,300 Croatian and Hungarian soldiers in service to the Habsburg monarchy and under the command of Nikola IV Zrinski ,
4800-438: The most famous 19th-century war poem is Tennyson 's " The Charge of the Light Brigade ", which he supposedly wrote in only a few minutes after reading an account of the battle in The Times . It immediately became hugely popular, even reaching the troops in the Crimea , where it was distributed in pamphlet form. As the American Civil War was beginning, American poet Walt Whitman published his poem " Beat! Beat! Drums! " as
4880-402: The mountains to gain their independence. Dionysios Solomos , another poet of the Greek War of Independence , wrote the Hymn to Liberty , which is now the Greek national anthem , in 1823, just two years after the Greeks rose against the Ottoman Empire . It is also the national anthem of Cyprus , which adopted it in 1966. Solomos is considered to be the national poet of Greece. Probably
SECTION 60
#17328811005324960-413: The only surviving descendant of the ancient Scytho - Sarmatian ( Alanic ) languages that was written for the first time on an inscription dating from the 10th to 12th century, has a literary tradition that originates from the 17th century, with the first Ossetian book printed in 1798, although it also has a large body of older folkloric epics . It is spoken predominantly by the Ossetians in Ossetia ,
5040-444: The papers to rouse the spirit, from 'Transvaal', with the infamous closing line, 'Strike, England, and strike home', to 'The Turning of the Tide'." During the last phase of the war in the former Orange Free State , the Afrikaner people of Winburg taunted the Scottish regiments in the local British Army garrison with a parody of the Jacobite ballad Bonnie Dundee , which was generally sung in English. The parody celebrated
5120-416: The private armies of both sides in both verse form and in prose. Gryphius's first collection of poems, Sonnete ("Sonnets"), was published in 1637 by Wigand Funck in Lissa , and is accordingly known as the Lissaer Sonettbuch , after the town. The collection of 31 sonnets includes some of his best known poems, such as "Vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas", later titled "Es ist alles eitel" (All is vanity), about
5200-437: The received idea of the best German war poets. Neither realistic , nor ironic, nor properly expressionistic , while he excoriated the battlefield that the whole world had become, he still preserved a Faith in nobility, innocence, and song. Forced into maturity by the war, his poetic voice never lost a certain childlike note – indeed, in some of his best poems, naivety and wisdom coexist to an almost paradoxical degree. Such poetry
5280-422: The religious texts of the Avesta , written in Avestan , an Old Iranian sacred language . The oldest part of these are the Gathas ( 𐬔𐬁𐬚𐬁 , Gāθā , "hymn"), that are a collection of hymns believed to be composed by Zoroaster , the reformer of the ancient Iranian religion and the founder of Zoroastrianism , dating to the 6th century BC. Old Persian , the earliest form of the Persian language that
5360-544: The resistance of four generations within the same family, which culminates with Armenian folk hero David of Sasun driving the Muslim invaders from Armenia . It was collected and written down from the oral tradition by Fr. Garegin Srvandztiants , a celibate priest of the Armenian Apostolic Church , in 1873. The epic was first published in Constantinople in 1874. It is better known as Sasuntsi Davit (" David of Sasun "). The Old English poem The Battle of Maldon , which survives only in an unfinished fragment, celebrates
5440-406: The sensibility of modern verse. The Great War also changed literature in another brutal way; it killed countless young writers." From the war itself until the late 1970s, the genre of war poetry was almost exclusively reserved for male poets. This was based on an idea of an exclusive authenticity limited to the works of those who had fought and died in the war. It excluded other forms of experience in
5520-409: The song Là Sliabh an t-Siorraim , Sìleas na Ceapaich , the daughter of the 15th Chief of Clan MacDonald of Keppoch , sings of the joy upon the arrival of Prince James Francis Edward Stuart , the indecisive Battle of Sheriffmuir and the state of uneasy anticipation between the battle and the end of the Jacobite rising of 1715 . The most iconic poem by Sìleas, however, inspired by the events of
5600-417: The trauma of trench warfare and indiscriminate massacre. The 'War Poets' constitute an imperative presence in modern British literature with significant writers such as Wilfred Owen , Robert Graves , Siegfried Sassoon , David Jones , Ivor Gurney , Rupert Brooke , Edward Thomas , and Isaac Rosenberg . Their work, which combined stark realism and bitter irony with a sense of tragic futility, altered
5680-471: The victory of Dmitri Donskoi , Great Prince of Moscow over Mamai and the Mongols of the Golden Horde at the Battle of Kulikovo along the Don River on 8 September 1380. The poem survives in six medieval manuscripts. The author of Zadonshchina is believed to have been Sofonii (Russian: Софоний). His name as the author of the text is mentioned in two surviving manuscript copies. The Battle of Flodden on 9 September 1513, in which an English army led by
5760-532: The war also gave women greater artistic freedom and space to express their identities as artists. Serbian World War I poets include: Milutin Bojić , Vladislav Petković Dis , Miloš Crnjanski , Dušan Vasiljev , Ljubomir Micić , Proka Jovkić , Rastko Petrović , Stanislav Vinaver , Branislav Milosavljević , Milosav Jelić , Vladimir Stanimirović . and others. Géza Gyóni , a Hungarian poet with twin beliefs in socialism and anti-militarism , had unhappily served in
5840-449: The war, such as mourning, nursing and the home front, which were more likely to be experienced by other demographics such as women. There were over 500 women writing and publishing poetry during World War I. Examples of poems by female poets include Teresa Hooley 's A War Film , Jessie Pope 's War Girls , Pauline B. Barrington 's Education , and Mary H.J. Henderson 's An Incident . In addition to giving women greater access to work,
5920-658: The world ." David Humphreys wrote the first sonnet in American poetry in 1776, right before he left Yale College to fight as a colonel in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War . Colonel Humphreys' sonnet was titled Addressed to my Friends at Yale College, on my leaving them to join the Army . Among the earliest known Scottish Gaelic poets in North America, is Kintail -born Iain mac Mhurchaidh ,
6000-639: Was also used in Manichaean texts, and is regarded, along with Middle Persian, as one of the bases of the modern Persian language. Khotanese literary works, written in a dialect of the Saka language that was used by the Saka Kingdom of Khotan on the southern branch of the Silk Road , centered mostly in Buddhist texts and were produced mainly between the 5th to the 10th centuries. Sogdian literature, dating mainly from
6080-574: Was born at Castle Leather near Inverness , composed the only surviving Gaelic poem of the era which takes up the Patriot, rather than the Loyalist, banner - The Lament of the North . In the poem, MacCionnich mocks the Scottish clan chiefs for becoming absentee landlords , for both rackrenting and evicting their clansmen en masse in favor of sheep, and of "spending their wealth uselessly", in London. He accuses King George III both of tyranny and of steering
6160-420: Was caught up in the general patriotic fervor at the outbreak of World War I. But once he experienced the horrors of war first hand, he soon lost his romantic notions, and returned to the more radical positions of his youth, as it evident in his further volumes." One of his poems from this period, Csak egy éjszakára ( For Just One Night ) became a prominent anti-war poem and its popularity has lasted well beyond
6240-649: Was eulogized by Sìleas in the song-poem Alistair à Gleanna Garadh , which hearkens back to the mythological poetry attributed to Amergin Glúingel and which remains an iconic and oft imitated work of Scottish Gaelic literature. In Scottish Gaelic literature , the greatest war poet of the Jacobite rising of 1745 is Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair , a tacksman from the Clanranald branch of Clan Donald . Jacobite songs penned by Alasdair such as: Òran Nuadh – "A New Song", Òran nam Fineachan Gaidhealach – "The Song of
6320-424: Was fired by a vision of a transcendental realm that lay beyond conflict, but never sought to exclude death. His 25 years, the last four of which were spent in the Army, scarcely left him time to develop a wholly independent voice, but his work displays an increasing mastery of form and deepening of vision. His small oeuvre consists of Novellen , essays, aphorisms, and a handful of the best German poems connected with
6400-576: Was strangled inside Nebojša Tower in Belgrade by order of Sultan Selim III of the House of Osman in 1798 while planning a Greek uprising with the assistance of Napoleon Bonaparte , the nationalist verse of Rigas Feraios helped inspire the Greek War of Independence and he remains a major figure in Greek poetry . In his poems, Feraios urged the Greek people to leave the cities for the mountains and to fight in
#531468