Sassoon S

Sassoon, Siegfried Lorraine

ACHIEVEMENTS: Important BritishWorld War I poet.

NICKNAME/ALIAS:

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: 8 September 1886, Brenchley, England

DATE/PLACE OF DEATH/AGE AT DEATH: 1 September 1967, Wiltshire, England. Aged 80.

DISCIPLINE: Literature

FIELD: Poet

LANGUAGE: English

PARENTS: Alfred Sassoon and Theresa Thornycroft

SIBLINGS: 2 brothers

SPOUSE: Hester Gatty (married in 1933)

CHILDREN: George

EDUCATION: Marlborough College; Clare College Cambridge

MAJOR WORK: War Poems (1919)Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man (1928)

LIFE AND TIMES: Sassoon was born into an upper class British family. He hardly knew his father who left the family while he was still very young and died when he was nine. His mother, who encouraged Sassoon's artistic abilities, came from a family of prominent landowners, as well as a talented artistic family.

After Cambridge, Sassoon returned to his country home where he lived on a small income and spent his days foxhunting and playing cricket. During this period he continued to write the poetry he had been experimenting with while at college. Between 1906 and 1912, he published nine small volumes of poetry, many as small private publications.

In 1913, Sassoon'sThe Daffodil Murder, a parody of John Masefield'sThe Everlasting Mercy brought him attention from the literary world. However, around the time Sassoon was beginning to develop a literary name for himself, war broke out.

Sassoon enlisted in 1914 and after training as an infantry officer, was sent to France in 1915 to fight on the Western Front. Sassoon quickly distinguished himself with his reputation for bravery. His men named him "Mad Jack" because of his daring and dangerous actions on the battle field.

In 1916 he was awarded the Military Cross. In 1917 he was injured and sent home to recover, when he came into contact with the anti-war and pacifist movement. Their ideas, coupled with the horrors he had seen on the battlefield, led him to reassess his experiences and speak out against the war.

Sassoon threw his Military Cross medal into the river and, on 15 July 1917, wrote "A Soldier's Declaration" the short protest that attacked British leaders, suggesting that they were sacrificing men for their political aims. The letter was read to the House of Commons and published in many newspapers.

Sassoon hoped to be court-martialed and become a martyr for the British peace movement, but a medical examination concluded that his action were the cause of shell-shock. He was sent to the Craiglockhart Military Hospital in Scotland, where he wrote some of his best war poems and met and influenced another important war poet, Wilfred Owen.

Feeling a sense of duty to his comrades in arms, Sassoon returned to the front for two more tours of duty before a head wound sent him permanently. Following the war Sassoon continued to write poetry and prose. Under the influence of the peace movement, Sassoon became, for a time, a socialist. After the war he worked for the Daily Herald as a literary editor and helped on political campaigns for the Labour Party while studying economics at Oxford.

During the war Sassoon wrote some of his most powerful poetry, that dealt directly with the brutality and senselessness of war. Earlier, Sassoon's poetry had followed the tradition of romantic portrayals of war and adventure. But after the experience of trench warfare, Sassoon quickly developed an authentic voice for the horror and pain of battle, expressing disgust for the public and politicians who continued to romanticize and profit from the brutality of war.

Sassoon's poetry was published inCambridge Magazine and other similar publications and was collected in two volumes,The Old Huntsman (May 1917) andCounter-Attack (June 1918). His war poems were then collected and published in 1919 asWar Poems.

Following the war, Sassoon continued to write. In 1928, in Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, followed by Memoirs of an Infantry Officer in 1930, andSherston's Progress in 1936, he revisited his war experience.

These novels explored the impact of the war on Sassoon's life, and suggested the great upheaval the war had had upon much of rural and country life in England. Sassoon articulated his sense of loss for upper-class English country life, while at the same time satirizing the futility of English upper class behavior in the face of war.

At seventy Sassoon became a Catholic and his late writing in concerned with spirituality and religious ideas.

ASSESSMENT: Siegfried Sassoon was the most eminent World War One English war poet.

EXTRA CONNECTIONS: He was influenced by Thomas Hardy*.

He was a friend of Sir William Walton*,Aldous Huxley*,TE Lawrence*

He knew Morrell*

He wrote about Russell*

ONELINER: Siegfried Sassoon, World War I poet

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Corrigan, Felicitas, Siegfried Sassoon: Poet's Pilgrimage. London: Gollancz, 1973.

Sternlicht, Stanford, "Siegfried Sassoon," in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 191: British Novelists Between the Wars. Ed. by George M. Johnson. Detroit:Gale Group, 1998. pp 285-294.

Anon. "Siegfried Sassoon." Contemporary Literary Criticism. Detroit: Gale Group, 2002.