After World War I, Sassoon published a series of fictionalized autobiographies known collectively as The Memoirs of George Sherston , and he also served as the literary editor of the Daily Herald for several years.
Sassoon was gay, and after the war he had a series of relationships with other men before marrying Hester Gatty in Together they had a son, George Sassoon, before separating in In he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He died on September 1, National Poetry Month. Materials for Teachers Teach This Poem. Poems for Kids. Poetry for Teens. Lesson Plans. Resources for Teachers. Academy of American Poets.
American Poets Magazine. Poets Search more than 3, biographies of contemporary and classic poets. Siegfried Sassoon — Related Poets. During this time he wrote: "All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful". The final manuscript of Anthem for Doomed Youth carries suggestions including that of the title in Sassoon's handwriting. Owen's confidence grew, his health returned, and in October a medical board decided that he was fit for light duties.
Sassoon's hostility to war was also reflected in his poetry. During the First World War Sassoon developed a harshly satirical style that he used to attack the incompetence and inhumanity of senior military officers.
These poems caused great controversy when they were published in The Old Huntsman and Counter-Attack Edgell Rickword , was one of those soldiers who read Sassoon's poems during the war. He later recalled how the poems came as a revelation of how war could be dealt with "in the vocabulary of war" and gave him "a start towards writing more colloquially, and not in a second-hand literary fashion".
Adam Hochschild , the author of To End All Wars , has pointed out: "His protest soon dropped out of the newspapers. His time in the hospital produced no dividend for the peace movement, but an enormous one for English literature. A fellow patient was the year-old aspiring writer Wilfred Owen, recovering from wounds and shell shock, to whom the older Sassoon offered crucial encouragement. Owen became the greatest poet of the war.
The War Office had been extremely shrewd. After three months in the hospital whose services he did not need, Sassoon found himself increasingly restless. Finally he accepted a promotion to first lieutenant and returned to the front. He did so not because he had abandoned his former views, but because, as he put it in his diary when he was back with his regiment in France, I am only here to look after some men. It was a haunting reminder of the fierce power of group loyalty over that of political conviction-and all the more so because it came from someone who had not in the slightest changed, nor ever in his life would change, his belief that his country's supposed war aims were fraudulent.
Despite his public attacks on the way the war was being managed, Sassoon, like Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves , agreed to continue to fight. Sassoon was sent to Palestine. In May he rejoined his old battalion in France , and in July was wounded again, this time in the head. Owen however was killed at Sambre—Oise Canal on 4th November A week later the Armistice was signed. Sassoon became a socialist and in March George Lansbury appointed him as the literary editor of the left-wing The Daily Herald.
Those for the years —25 show him torn politically, the possessor of a private income with an uncomfortable socialist conscience; torn artistically, preferring eighteenth-century poetry to that of his modernist contemporaries, and longing - but unable - to write a Proustian masterpiece; and torn emotionally by a succession of disappointing homosexual relationships. In the late s Sassoon turned to writing prose. Although he had enjoyed a long-term relationship with the writer, Stephen Tennant , Sassoon married Hester Gatty on 18th December They settled at Heytesbury House , near Warminster in Wiltshire , where Sassoon spent the rest of his life.
Their son, George Sassoon , was born in In he published a critical biography of George Meredith , and all the time he was writing poetry, published in private or public editions, which culminated in the Collected Poems According to Rupert Hart-Davis : "Sassoon was strikingly distinguished in appearance, his large bold features expressing the courage and sensitivity of his nature, and he retained his slimness and agility into old age, playing cricket well into his seventies.
A dedicated artist, he hated publicity but craved the right sort of recognition. He was appointed CBE in , and was pleased by the award of the queen's medal for poetry in and by his honorary degree of DLitt at Oxford in , but he pretended that such honours were merely a nuisance.
A natural recluse, he yet much enjoyed the company of chosen friends, many of them greatly his juniors, and was a witty and lively talker. After being wounded in action, Sassoon wrote an open letter of protest to the war department, refusing to fight any more.
The poem takes the reader through three different scenarios. In the first, a man loses his legs, in the second: his eyes, and in the third: his mind. Were he and Siegfried lovers? This poem tells us the real vision Siegfried Sassoon had of the war. This poem gives us a sense of a soldier who has died a noble death and despite the harsh realities of war, he dies with honor and dignity. When did Siegfried Sassoon die? His father was a wealthy Jewish businessman and his mother an Anglo-Catholic.
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