21 June Still Thinking

Slowly processing my trip, and somehow this conclusion keeps coming up.  Now, mind you, I do tend to hold a Pollyanna view of the world in that I try to put a positive spin on things.  But, I actually do see something quite clearly now, and it is heartening and hopeful.

All of those poets and non-poet soldiers thought their deaths were meaningless, wasteful, and preventable.  When I was visiting their battlefields, praying in nearby churches, or reading their poems to them over their gravesites, I felt the same way.  I used to dread teaching All Quiet on the Western Front, and felt I had to somehow make amends to those fictional characters by visiting their true counterparts on the ground where they fought.  But now, I realize their deaths have not been forgotten.

One hundred years after the war ended, normal citizens are still looking for those soldiers listed on the monuments for the missing at the Menin Gate and Tyne Cot.  And when one is found, and identified, the everyday people involved celebrate and commemorate that soldier by name.  He is honored and remembered and buried with his comrades.  Those who are determined to never forget the Great War, and teachers like me who teach the creative writing from the period, have not allowed their deaths to be buried and forgotten.

As the world grapples with chemical weapons once again, we can point to their first widespread use in Belgium and France, can acknowledge that both sides used them, and that both sides agreed they should never be used again.

Perhaps human history is one of aggression and dominance, but it doesn't have to be that way.  In some way, watching the World Cup soccer games reminds me that we have positive outlets for our competitive natures.  Patriotic fervor is best applied to the sports competitions that envelope the entire world. The Olympic Games are another venue for nationalism, but I kind of like what Belgium has been doing.  Most of the time, citizens relate to being from "Flandres" or "Wallonia" and not Belgium.  But, they all fly the Belgium flag when the World Cup comes around.  Their distinct cultures still exist, and they can unite for a common cause.  I am rooting for them.

I truly believe the soldiers who gave their lives for their countries in World War 1 would be 100% in favor of the European Union.  They probably wouldn't believe it could exist with 28 countries who have been enemies many times in the past centuries, but it does exist.  And countries heavily involved in WW1 started it in 1951:  Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Italy.  A Europe without borders has been a Europe without declared war. When security issues arise, European countries share their resources and help each other.

That never could have happened in 1918, when each side used propaganda to dehumanize the other.  But the poets knew.

In "Strange Meeting," Wilfred Owen imagines he meets a German poet in Hell, who tells him

                  ...Whatever hope is yours
           Was my life also; I went hunting wild
           After the wildest beauty in the world,
           Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
           But mocks the steady running of the hour,
           And if it grieves, grieves richer than here.
         
           For by my glee might many men have laughed,
           And of my weeping something had been left,
           Which must die now.  I mean the truth untold,
           The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
           (1918)

Ors, France, is the resting place of Wilfred Edward Owen.  I regret that I ran out of time to go down there; he ran out of time to hunt "the wildest beauty in the world".