From David Jones' cover for 'In Parenthesis' (1937)
I was given a copy of a book by David Jones recently. Called ‘In Parenthesis’, it’s quite unlike anything else I’ve ever read: part poem, part novel, and brilliantly written. The person who gave it to me– my mum!– had seen Jones featured on a BBC Wales television program called ‘Framing Wales’. You can watch this program here, on BBC iPlayer (Jones’ life as a soldier and artist being mainly dealt with from 21.15 mins onwards [Apologies: my first link went to the wrong episode, now rectified]). The program also provides a description of the infamous battle of Mametz Wood, where 400 of Jones’ fellow Royal Welch fusiliers were killed: an attack which provided some inspiration for ‘In Parenthesis’.
David Jones is a unique figure in Great War poetry. In the first instance, as well as being a writer, Jones was a trained artist.
Now, this is also true of Isaac Rosenberg, of course. Yet it’s striking how much the methods and manner of the two artist-poets differ. Rosenberg’s poetry is brilliant, but was also in one sense quite traditional: the humane mysticism and striking imagery of the great Romantic poet William Blake, for example, seems to have been channeled through his work.
Jones, however, was a modernist.
What was modernism? Well, ‘Make it new!’ was the modernist’s cry. From around a hundred years ago onward, Modernists demanded a revolution in art, in response to the rapidly changing world of the early Twentieth Century. Think of Cubism, Surrealism and Dada in art; T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf in literature. They all looked to overturn what had become a cosy notion of what art and literature should look like. So, they embraced the new: while, at the same time, often searching the past for inspiration and roots, as if looking for an anchor to hold them safe in a scary new world of newspapers, processed meat and mass democracy. Modernism would also be a response to the horrors of the First World War and the technologies and culture that created it. Understanding this makes Jones an interesting figure in early twentieth century poetry.
Jones looked to write about his own wartime exeriences in a new way. ‘In Parenthesis’ is the remarkable result: and it remains a novel that is, remarkably, truly novel, or new. As with all experimenters in art, Jones divides critics: Paul Fussell, for example, doesn’t think much of him, while Jon Stallworthy thinks him excellent. We’ll get to study Jones in good time on ‘Move Him Into The Sun’, as we make our way through Stallworthy’s anthology– but enough here to have an introduction to the man and his art, courtesy of the Beeb. Enjoy.
So indulge me please as I dedicate a posting to Wales and the Welsh in poetry and prose from the First World War. You should expect nothing less from a Griffiths on March 1st.
A quick story. My wife is American and over a decade ago, before we married, I took her back to visit the Welsh town where I’m from. It’s a place called Llanelli. That weekend the national rugby team were playing at Llanelli’s famous rugby ground, Stradey Park. A marching band were in attendance and the crowd, jammed into the little stadium, were singing traditional Welsh songs with gusto: Sospan Fach, Calon Lan, Cwm Rhondda. It was a great warm up to the big game. The marching band began to come down to our end of the field. My wife, a little disconcerted, points to the band.
‘What is that?’
I say, ‘It’s a marching band, clever.’
‘No, no,’ she says, laughing. ‘What is that?’
She points to the front of the band. There is a goat being led on a rope by a soldier in a red coat and white hat. People are cheering.
‘Oh, that’s the regimental goat,’ I say.
‘The regimental what?’ she says, laughing.
‘The goat,’ I say again. ‘The regimental goat. A goat that belongs to the army regiment. It’s at all the Welsh games. I think it’s called Shenkin.’
At this, the American erupts into laughter. “I love it,’ she laughed. ‘A goat. At every game. Great!’ There followed a number of comments about how small the ground was, how great the goat and the singing was. She even enjoyed watching the rugby. Reader, I married her.
Shenkin the Goat.
So why on earth was there a goat at the game?
Shenkin was the mascot of the Royal Welch Fusiliers. Army regiments across the world often have peculiar traditions and rituals; a culture all of their own that their soldiers preserve. The story of the goat goes back to Victorian times and the Crimean War, when the goats were actually eaten by the soldiers. One night, after a sentry fell asleep on duty, a goat woke up the regiment as the Russian enemy started to attack, saving the men present from massacre. The Royal Welch have had a goat for a mascot ever since. Since the regimental system has always been tied to particular areas, the Royal Welch– and its goat– have represented Wales and Welsh pride for many years. And in terms of reading about the First World War in poetry and memoirs, Welshmen, the Royal Welch– and other Welsh regiments– are better represented than many others.
Why? Two great literary names, to start with: Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves. Neither were Welshmen but both were officers with the Royal Welch Fusiliers and their brilliant accounts of the First World War, ‘Memoirs of an Infantry Officer’ and ‘Goodbye to All That’, memorialise the actions of the Royal Welsh at infamous battles like that of Mametz Wood. These aren’t patriotic accounts: as Graves noted “Patriotism, in the trenches, was to too remote a sentiment, and at once rejected as fit only for civilians, or prisoners. A new arrival who talked patriotism would soon be told to cut it out” (p.157, ‘Goodbye to All That’, Penguin 1960). But they do give intense pictures of what Welsh soldiers were like in the First World War.
Graves also spent time with the Welsh regiment (Note the difference in spellings!). The Welsh Regiment was a “rough and tough” regiment, less professional than the Royal Welch. Non-conformists and North Walian hill farmers– stolid, highly independent people– were among their ranks. Here’s an atmospheric account of the Welsh– and Graves– going to the trenches for the first time, under bombardment.
Collecting the draft of forty men we had with us, we followed… through the unlit suburbs of the town– all intensely excited by the noise and flashes of the guns in the distance. None of the draft had been out before, except the sergeant in charge. They began singing. Instead of the usual music-hall songs they sung Welsh hymns, each man taking a part. The Welsh always sang when pretending not to be scared; it kept them steady. And they never sang out of tune.
We marched towards the flashes, and could soon see the flare lights curving across the distant trenches. The noise of the guns grew louder and louder. Presently we were among the batteries. from about two hundred yards behind us, on the left of the road, a salvo of four shells whizzed suddenly over our heads. This broke up ‘Aberystwyth’ in the middle of a verse, and sent us off balance for a few seconds; the columns of fours tangled up. The shell went hissing away eastward… (p.81)
Graves is given a lecture about managing the soldiers in the Welsh regiment on his arrival at front by Captain Dunn:
These Welshmen are peculiar. They won’t stand being shouted at. They’ll do anything if you explain the reason for it– do and die, but they have to know the reason why… They are good workmen, too. But officers must work with them, not only direct the work… (p.86)
Welsh singing is a source of constant admiration in poetry written about Welsh soldiers in the First World War. In the anthology, of course, we have Sassoon’s great poem ‘Everyone Sang’, about the celebrations at the Armistice, which you feel must have been influenced by serving in regiments of singing Welshmen:
Everyone suddenly burst out singing; And I was filled with such delight As prisoned birds must find in freedom, Winging wildly across the white Orchards and dark-green fields; on–on–and out of sight.
Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted; And beauty came like the setting sun: My heart was shaken with tears; and horror Drifted away . . . O, but Everyone Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.
Another great poem that doesn’t feature in the anthology is Ivor Gurney’s ‘First Time In’. Ivor Gurney is one of the most underrated war poets of the First World War: a talented composer but mentally brittle, he went mad after the war’s end. He leaves us this poem about going, like Graves, up to the front for the first time– and encountering, to his surprise and wonder, a Welsh regiment.
After the dread tales and red yams of the Line Anything might have come to us; but the divine Afterglow brought us up to a Welsh colony Hiding in sandbag ditches, whispering consolatory Soft foreign things. Then we were taken in To low huts candle-lit shaded close by slitten Oilsheets, and there but boys gave us kind welcome; So that we looked out as from the edge of home. Sang us Welsh things, and changed all former notions To human hopeful things. And the next days’ guns Nor any line-pangs ever quite could blot out That strangely beautiful entry to War’s rout, Candles they gave us precious and shared over-rations — Ulysses found little more in his wanderings without doubt. ‘David of the white rock’, the’ Slumber Song’ so soft, and that Beautiful tune to which roguish words by Welsh pit boys Are sung — but never more beautiful than here under the guns’ noise.
I realise that I haven’t even mentioned Wilfred Owen, an English son of the border country, with a great love and longing for Wales. Neither have I dwelt on the remarkable Welshman David Jones, a private in the Royal Welch, whose work I shall be returning to very soon: but time, I’m afraid, doesn’t permit.
Let me then end somewhere near I started, at Stradey Park, listening, with my wife-to-be, to the crowd sing ‘Sospan Fach’. ‘Sospan Fach’ is one of Wales greatest folk songs, a shaggy-dog story about a Welsh housewife having a bad day. I once told an Irish friend what the nonsense-lyrics meant, and he was tremendously disappointed. “I thought it was about God or angels, or something of that kind”, he laughed.
Well, the song clearly made an impression on Robert Graves too. He produced his own poem entitled Sospan Fach (The Little Saucepan), which obviously re-imagines some of the episodes from ‘Goodbye to All That’ I’ve printed above. With it I’ll end this tribute to Wales and the Welsh in the First World War on St. David’s Day:
Four collier lads from Ebbw Vale Took shelter from a shower of hail, And there beneath a spreading tree Attuned their mouths to harmony.
With smiling joy on every face Two warbled tenor, two sang bass, And while the leaves above them hissed with Rough hail, they started ‘Aberystwyth.’
Old Parry’s hymn, triumphant, rich, They changed through with even pitch, Till at the end of their grand noise I called: ‘Give us the ‘Sospan’ boys!’
Who knows a tune so soft, so strong, So pitiful as that ‘Saucepan’ song For exiled hope, despaired desire Of lost souls for their cottage fire?
Then low at first with gathering sound Rose their four voices, smooth and round, Till back went Time: once more I stood With Fusiliers in Mametz Wood.
Fierce burned the sun, yet cheeks were pale, For ice hail they had leaden hail; In that fine forest, green and big, There stayed unbroken not one twig.
They sang, they swore, they plunged in haste, Stumbling and shouting through the waste; The little ‘Saucepan’ flamed on high, Emblem of hope and ease gone by.
Rough pit-boys from the coaly South, They sang, even in the cannon’s mouth; Like Sunday’s chapel, Monday’s inn, The death-trap sounded with their din.
***
The storm blows over, Sun comes out, The choir breaks up with jest and shout, With what relief I watch them part– Another note would break my heart!
Move Him Into The Sun 