Imagine it is 1914. You are young, full of energy, and you are told that going to war is the greatest adventure of your life. That dying for your country is an act of pure beauty. At the beginning of the Great War, poetry sounded like Rupert Brooke. We heard verses like: "If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England". It was romantic idealism at its peak. But the reality of rats, mustard gas, and infinite mud was about to change literature forever.
Soon, the shine of the medals rusted. Poets appeared who didn't write from offices in London, but from the bottom of a flooded ditch. Let’s talk about Siegfried Sassoon. He didn’t want to be a hero; he wanted to denounce the incompetence of the generals. His poetry was a punch: direct, bitter, and satirical. But it was his protégé, Wilfred Owen, who took the pain to another level. Owen introduced the concept of the "Pity of War". In his famous poem "Dulce et Decorum Est", he breaks classical aesthetics to show us a soldier drowning in gas, with lungs "gargling blood". With Owen, poetry stopped being a celebration and became an urgent testimony.
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