Search for books by: contact us home A B ... Join Our E-Mail Announcement List! Siegfried Sassoon: A Poet's Pilgrimage by Joseph Pearce Siegfried Sassoon is arguably the greatest of the War Poets. Arguably, but not indisputably. Many critics, begging to differ with such a judgment, would argue that his friend, Wilfred Owen, was more gifted and could boast a superior achievement in verse. Yet, if they are right, Sassoon becomes, if not the greatest, then certainly the most important of the War Poets. Sassoon was Owen's mentor, without whom Owen would probably have never written the acerbically assonant verse for which both men are celebrated. Owen was killed in action on the Western front in 1918, one of the final victims of the dying embers of World War I. As such, he remains cocooned in the incorruptible image of eternal youth. A slaughtered lamb, butchered before his gifts could develop. Sassoon, on the other hand, lived to a ripe old age, growing ever closer to Christ and His Church. His life, and the poetry that was its expression, would be one long and contemplative search for truth, a poet's pilgrimage. Having been wounded in the fighting on the Hindenburg Line, Sassoon was sent home. Then he began to reflect upon the human butchery he had witnessed, endured, and inflicted. From these moments of reflection the hero hatched the villain. The perfect soldier became the pacifist rebel. "Siegfried's unconquerable idealism changed direction with his environment," wrote Robert Graves. "He varied between happy warrior and bitter pacifist." | |
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