Programme 3

Dulce et Decorum Est

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

Owen's great reactionary poem bitterly challenges and refutes the pretence of popular ideology that warfare is something heroically romantic. The vision of war that emerges from the appalling poison gas attack that obscenely brutalises and annihilates young life - making even Owen complicit in its horror - conveys the pity that war distils.

The devastating brutality of trench warfare is symbolised in the irregularity of the verse form, sudden switches of pace and mood, intrusive punctuation undermining any easy iambic rhythm, the haunting 'yelling', 'stumbling', 'floundering', 'drowning', 'guttering, choking, drowning', 'smothering', 'writhing', 'gargling' forever present and continuous.

The reality confounds the age-old 'Lie' cloaked in the imposing respectability of classical Latin - the learned language of medicine, science, philosophy and theology. Enjambment neatly isolates that which Owen so ironically demonstrates to be:

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

(Sweet and seemly it is
To die for one's country.)

The shocking reality is neither 'dulce' nor 'decorus'.

The programme interviewees are Kate Clanchy, Michael Donaghy, Andrew Motion and Owen Shears.

www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/LostPoets/Dulce.html
Online text

www.hcu.ox.ac.uk/jtap/images/mss/bl/ms43721/41va.jpg
Manuscript of 'Dulce et Decorum Est'