To understand this rather confusing poem, I first had to figure out what style of poem it was written in the style of an idyll, which typically describes rustic life, in the style of the Idylls by Theocritus.
According to the research that I did, Theocritus describes initmate scenes from everyday life.
Upon finding this out, I could understand the poem a little more. It doesn't talk about actual war, but the results of it. They discuss how the war affected them. Only one of the characters is named, Robert, the other is un-named, and simply called S. The poem is written using their dialogue, and can be interpretted as a dialogue between Robert and another friend of his, possibly Sassoon, based on the way he talks and the letter his character starts with.
The character, S, mentions that he has lived three thousand years, and that he is now nine-parts dead, which may be a hint at the massive amounts of people that died during the first World War. S seems to be the elder of the characters in the poem, and seems to carry the conversation, with Robert looking up to him. The character do confuse me, however, as the language they use is very fantastical and their language at certain points seems to be coming from the same character perspective.
Finally, the poems theme seems to be that war is totally nonsense, which is portrayed through the nonsense that the character talk about. They stay away from mentioning anything to do with the war, and talk about things that don't have any place in the contemporary society. It reaches a new profoundness at the line 'we all worship nonsense', which I believe talks about the materialistic nature of societies. Once again, it is difficult to properly analyse the poem, due to the confusing nature of the language used, but it is an interesting poem.
According to the research that I did, Theocritus describes initmate scenes from everyday life.
Upon finding this out, I could understand the poem a little more. It doesn't talk about actual war, but the results of it. They discuss how the war affected them. Only one of the characters is named, Robert, the other is un-named, and simply called S. The poem is written using their dialogue, and can be interpretted as a dialogue between Robert and another friend of his, possibly Sassoon, based on the way he talks and the letter his character starts with.
The character, S, mentions that he has lived three thousand years, and that he is now nine-parts dead, which may be a hint at the massive amounts of people that died during the first World War. S seems to be the elder of the characters in the poem, and seems to carry the conversation, with Robert looking up to him. The character do confuse me, however, as the language they use is very fantastical and their language at certain points seems to be coming from the same character perspective.
Finally, the poems theme seems to be that war is totally nonsense, which is portrayed through the nonsense that the character talk about. They stay away from mentioning anything to do with the war, and talk about things that don't have any place in the contemporary society. It reaches a new profoundness at the line 'we all worship nonsense', which I believe talks about the materialistic nature of societies. Once again, it is difficult to properly analyse the poem, due to the confusing nature of the language used, but it is an interesting poem.
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