Wilfred Owen: A New Biography [Hardcover]

 

 

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Here was a man who all his life struggled to define that precise moment when he could be confident of where he was in time and space. Hibberd describes Owen as that haunted being who is forever searching for the big purpose in life that justifies all the efforts needed to get there. "Wilfred Owen" is one very fine biography that takes the reader in to the life of Owen as he attempts to realize that poetic vision of a fulfilled life based on achieving eternal happiness through arduous service to mankind. Owen's journey, from early childhood in Victorian England to a tragic death in the trenches of the Western Front twenty some years later, is one littered with countless disappointments, misunderstandings and rejections. His aspirations to become a man of the cloth turned sour when he had an unfortunate falling out with the local vicar; his subsequent desires to become a high school teacher met with personal failures that he was never able to overcome. This was followed by his half-hearted attempt to become a language teacher and tutor in France before the outbreak of WW I. By his early twenties, he was starting to see himself as a person who was trying to break loose from the comforts and values of home, and finally become an accomplished individual. Through all these setbacks, Owen continued to see himself as an inadequate person who still had to discover the truth of what it means to know oneself. Right from his early days, Owen was a poet in the making, who possessed a sense of greatness but lacked the means by which to realize it. Since any relationships with women was impossible because of his close ties to his very cajoling and domineering mother, Owen turned to other men for social friendship and spiritual encouragement. Hibbert does an excellent job in showing how war became that irresistible magnet by which Owen was drawn into a greater scope of self-awareness. The two years of fighting as a junior officer with the Manchester regiment taught him that warrior greatness comes only with accepting personal suffering, self-denial, and even death. It was these qualities that Owen, the young romantic, captured in his poetry as essential for staying alive in the midst of battle. Becoming part of that insane scene called the Western Front forced Owen to see life not as a solitary venture but a collaborative adventure that meant closing ranks with others against the onslaught of the enemy. Hibbert `s study has me believing that Owen definitely found meaning in war, even if it didn't come with an enhanced sense of personal security and peace. I recommend this book to anyone who dismisses war and the military as an unnecessary and futile part of our culture. What Hibbert offers here is not a jingoistic glorification of slaughter but an intelligent clarification of how war helped individuals like Owen realize their destiny. A impressively complex story that very effectively exposes the big social, political and religious issues of this period as they impinge on the individual conscience. Owen's life attests to the titanic struggles that the common man has to endure in obscurity. Hibberd does the world a great service by allowing his readers the chance to peer in on this Owen's battles with the dragons.

There's not much that can be said about Wilfred Owen that shouldn't have already been said. Yet the life of this brilliant poet, which was cut short just before the armistice that ended World War I, remains unknown to far too many. Wilfred Owen is referred to as a "soldier-poet" of WWI, which includes him in the company of such literary standards as Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon. But, as perhaps the greatest poet among the three, he is the least known. Dominic Hibberd's new biography will hopefully set that to rights.

I first fell in love with Wilfred Owen's poetry when I read "Dulce et Decorum est." I found his imagery real and terrifying as it spoke to the true brutality and horrors of "modern" warfare. (The poem is a description of a soldier dying in a gas attack.) Throughout the years I have read much on WWI and on the soldier-poets, but nothing has come as close to so vividly portraying the life of one of them as Hibberd's new biography.

Hibberd begins his very thorough telling of Owen's life, starting with his familial background and youth, and working his way through Owen's years as a parish assistant and his numerous attempts to gain a university education. It seems a long time before we are to encounter Wilfred as a soldier, but Hibberd builds a solid base that explains Wilfred's personality and his attitude towards poetry. Owen's devoutly Evangelical mother had wished her son to enter the service of the church, but after his time in Dunsden, Owen found it increasingly hard to reconcile his Christian faith with his love of literature, finding the two to oppose each other. His one desire in life was to be a poet, and upon entering the English army, he probably had no idea that his voice would come through war. Only a few of Owen's poems (five) were published in his lifetime and after his untimely death, his poetry was collected and published in the 20s and 30s. Afterwards, he seems to disappear entirely from the literary map until a renewed interest in his work arose in the 1960s; an appropriate time since another "war to end all wars" was being fought in Vietnam.

The one area of dicord I take with this biography concerns Owen's sexuality. In the book jacket, and several times throughout the book, Hibberd states that Owen was a homosexual. This is evidently shown through his connections with various personages who were homosexuals, including his friend and mentor, fellow soldier and poet, Siegfried Sassoon. While I don't doubt that this was the truth regarding Owen's sexuality, Hibberd seems a little over-insistent with too little to back it up. Yet perhaps this is due to the inconsistencies that exist in the mystery surrounding Wilfred Owen. Hibberd makes it known that much was done by Owen's brother Harold to paint his brother (as well as himself and the family name) in a better light. As curator of his brother's letters, Harold took great pains to destroy any references that could be suspicious, which must include references to Owen's sexual preferences. As seemingly complete as this biography is, Hibberd himself points out in his epilogue that there are facts about Owen's life that we may never know.

This book is an engaging read for any fan of World War I or any fan of poetry. The literary world is much indebted to Owen, whose poetry spoke the truth in a time or darkness, and whose innovations with style and technique were revered by the very poets he once emulated. If only the literary world was aware of this. Perhaps Dominic Hibberd's book will finally grant Owen his distinguished place and well-deserved fame in modern literature.

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