World War I, the war that was originally expected to be “over by Christmas,” dragged on for four years with a grim brutality brought on by the dawn of trench warfare and advanced weapons, including chemical weapons. The horrors of that conflict altered the world for decades – and writers reflected that shifted outlook in their work. As Virginia Woolf would later write, “Then suddenly, like a chasm in a smooth road, the war came.”
Early works were romantic sonnets of war and death.
Among the first to document the “chasm” of the war were soldiers themselves. At first, idealism persisted as leaders glorified young soldiers marching off for the good of the country.
English poet Rupert Brooke, after enlisting in Britain’s Royal Navy, wrote a series of patriotic sonnets, including “The Soldier,” which read:
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.
Brooke, after being deployed in the Allied invasion of Gallipoli, would die of blood poisoning in 1915.
Explanation:
