Isaac Rosenberg, The Break of the day in the Trenches PDF

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Isaac Rosenberg, The Break of The Day in the Trenches Isaac Rosenberg may be remembered as a Jewish-English poet, or a poet of war, but his poetry stretches beyond those narrow categories. Since Rosenberg was only twenty-eight when he died, most critics have tended to treat his corpus as a promising but flawed start, and they wonder if he would have become a great poet had he lived. Rosenberg’s status as an English poet is thus still debated: he was a Jewish poet, he was an English poet; he was a war poet, he was a painter-poet; he was a young poet; he was a great poet and a minor poet. In his brief career, Rosenberg created a small selection of poems and a great many questions. The darkness crumbles away – L’oscurità si sgretola It is the same old druid Time as ever. E’ lo stesso vecchio druido Tempo di sempre Only a live thing leaps my hand – Solo una cosa vivente salta la mia mano – A queer sardonic rat – Un eccentrico topo sardonico As I pull the parapet’s poppy Mentre colgo il papavero dal parapetto To stick behind my ear. Per metterlo dietro il mio orecchio. Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew Comico topo, ti sparerebbero se sapessero You cosmopolitan sympathies Le tue simpatie cosmopolite (And God knows what antipathies). (E Dio sa quali antipatie). Now you have touched this English hand Ora che hai toccato questa mano inglese You will do the same to a German – Farai lo stesso con una tedesca – Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure Presto, senza dubbio, se è tuo piacere To cross the sleeping green between. Attraversare il prato dormiente It seems you inwardly grin as you pass Sembra che tu sorrida intimamente quando attraversi Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes I forti occhi, gli arti sottili , atleti altezzosi Less chanced than you for life, Meno fortunati di te nella vita,

Bonds to the whims of murder, Legati ai capricci dell’assassinio, Sprawled in the bowels of the earth, Stravaccati nelle viscere della terra, The torn fields of France. Campi lacerati di Francia. What do you see in our eyes Cosa vedi nei nostri occhi At the shrieking iron and flame Allo stridente ferro e fiamme Hurled through still heavens? Scagliati attraverso i cieli tranquilli ? What quaver – what heart aghast? Quali tremiti – quale cuore attonito? Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins I papaveri le cui radici sono nelle vene dell’uomo Drop, and are ever dropping; Cadono, e cadono sempre; But mine in my ear is safe, ma il mio nel mio orecchio è al sicuro, Just a little white with the dust. solo un poco imbiancato dalla polvere.

Rosenberg’s speaker/soldier in “Break of Day in the Trenches” is a man who’s in the thick of war, watching the darkness “crumble” into dawn — a dangerous time favored for “going over the top” to attack enemy trenches. The only sign of life in the trenches, besides our speaker, is the “queer sardonic rat” who grazes his hand as he reaches for a poppy on the parapet. In the nightmare world of war, it’s only the rat who can afford “cosmopolitan sympathies” — moving freely (and feeding well) on both sides of no man’s land. The speaker addresses the rat bitterly:

It seems you inwardly grin as you pass Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes, Less chanced than you for life, Bonds to the whims of murder, Sprawled in the bowels of the earth, The torn fields of France. He wonders what the rat sees in the soldiers’ eyes as the mortars and shells fall from the sky, these soldiers who resemble the carefree youths of prewar poetry, or the boys marching in propaganda posters. As if turning from an answer he doesn’t want to hear, the speaker readjusts his focus in the poem’s final lines: Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins Drop, and are ever dropping; But mine in my ear is safe— Just a little white with the dust. Poppies, associated with sleep and death, are the symbol of this war in particular; people in the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand still wear the poppy on Armistice Day, or Remembrance Day as it’s known there, or Veterans Day, as it’s known here. In Europe during the Great War, the red poppy was a weed that grew over battlefields, no man’s land, and near the trenches. In Rosenberg’s poem, these poppies grow out the blood of killed men, perhaps men the speaker has watched die. Like the men, the poppies “Drop, and are ever dropping” — except for the one the speaker has tucked behind his ear, in small act of defiance toward the death that surrounds him. It’s not an uncomplicated gesture; the poppy, plucked, will die, and the dust suggests the inevitable end of humankind: “for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

At dawn a sentry standing on duty pulls a poppy from the top of the trench he guards. A rat jumps over his hand. At first amused, the soldier reflects on the animal’s presence on the front line. Break of Day in the Trenches: Dawn in the trenches was an important part of the soldier’s day: before dawn ‘stand to’ took place, when soldiers would man the fire-step in preparation for an attack. The speaker in this poem seems to be alone at dawn, however, and in a thoughtful or whimsical frame of mind. Rosenberg himself described the poem in a letter to his friend Eddie Marsh as “a poem I wrote in the trenches, which is surely as simple as ordinary talk” (Stallworthy, p.165). “The darkness crumbles away.”: As the poem begins, the night is ending, and, like the earth at the top of the trench, “crumbles away”. This is a poem that constantly reminds the reader of the presence of earth and dust: from the perspective of the rat who scurries close to the

earth among the corpses, to the soldiers who are in constant close proximity to the dirt of the front— in life as in death. “It is the same old druid Time as ever,”: the druids were the priesthood of the ancient British pagan religion. In his ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, Stallworthy writes that here “we can see the figure of Old Father Time personified as a druid (standing perhaps before a druidic sacrificial altar)” (p.166). Dawn, Stallworthy explains, was the customary time for druidic sacrifice— which, of course, was also often human sacrifice. Yet all this is conveyed with what seems like a light, popular allusion— a reference to the familiar image of Father Time, sickle in hand. “Only a live thing leaps my hand, / A queer sardonic rat”: A rat appears and runs over the soldier’s hand. The rat is described whimsically: the soldier’s sense of surprise is followed by clear amusement at the animal’s peculiar (“queer”) expression, which suggests a mocking or scornful (“sardonic”) look. The rat is the first of two symbols that Rosenberg uses to subvert the pastoral mode in this poem. In the pastoral nature is idealized and opposed to the corruption of the world of men: a typical example might be Shelley’s ‘To a Syklark’. In ‘Break of Day in the Trenches’, on the other hand, it is the much-loathed rat who seems to be contemplating men— as Paul Fussell notes, “perfectly aware of the irony in the… [swapping] of human and animal roles”. “As I pull the parapet’s poppy / To stick behind my ear”: The second focus of contemplation in the poem is a flower— a poppy growing out of the parapet (that is, the top of the trench wall). The soldier pulls the poppy from the earth and places it behind his ear. The poppy, of course, is a familiar symbol of war: its redness, above all, being associated with the blood of dead soldiers (see my notes for ‘In Flanders Fields’, below). There seems something romantic, amused, even devil-may-care about the soldier’s unsoldierly gesture: more suitable perhaps to the actions of a young boy, or a lover. Note the alliteration here, whose ‘pah-pah-pah-pah’ may suggest the sound of far-off gunfire. “Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew / Your cosmopolitan sympathies”: The rat seems oddly amused (“droll’). Here the voice of the poem becomes directed towards the rat, addressing him wryly. The rat has more freedom than the soldier who is subject to military laws that forbid fraternisation with the enemy. If the soldier shared the same “cosmopolitan sympathies” as the rat— to be ‘cosmopolitan’ means to be careless of nationality or affiliation when approaching others— then he would be shot. “Now you have touched this English hand…”: The rat is free to roam, and the soldier seems to take pleasure in its carelessness about Nationality. Remember that Rosenberg hated the war and the army with a particular passion, fighting only for money to help his family. Rosenberg, a working-class, Jewish poet-artist, was doubtless used to being an outsider, due

to his class, race and creative inclination. His ironic identification with the hated trench-rat is very much a source of the poem’s power: it allows a kind of grim objectivity regarding human affairs to be expressed in an almost playful, leavened tone. “Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure / To cross the sleeping green between”: Blake’s Songs are once again referenced here by Rosenberg, as in ‘On Receiving News of the War’. Here the reference to “the sleeping green between” recalls Blake’s poem ‘The Ecchoing Green’ (Blake’s spelling). Note the easy colloquial tone of the writing here, with its affirmative asides: “…soon, no doubt, if…”. “It seems you inwardly grin as you pass / Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes”: the rat seems aware of the irony that he, normally the subject to man’s dominion, now wanders freely amongst the bodies of the dead. These are the same idealised, classical bodies that Brooke seems to evoke in ‘Peace’: well-sculpted men of “sharpened power”, now broken in death. Their bodies here, lying in the dirt, seem to figure the end of one ideal of heroic manhood: but perhaps also the collapse of Western civilization. “Bonds to the whims of murder”: the dead men were tied (“bonds”) to the seemingly arbitrary commands of those who directed them to ‘murder’— a strong word, this, in connection with soldiering. “Sprawled in the bowels of the earth, / The torn fields of France.”: the soldier’s corpses are metaphorically described as lying within the earth’s guts; a metaphor that seems extended by the image of France’s ‘torn’ fields, and the sense that the country has been violently eviscerated by the war. “What do you see in our eyes…?”: the poem now becomes interrogative. This passage particularly recalls William Blake’s poem ‘The Tyger’. ‘The Tyger’ interrogates how it can be that such a deadly creature as the tiger could be created by a ‘good’ God. The questioning here and the elemental imagery describing battle (“shrieking iron and flame / Hurled through still heavens”) echoes much in Blake’s poem, but most clearly perhaps the apocalyptic fifth verse after the creation of the tiger: “When the stars threw down their spears, / And watered heaven with their tears, / Did he smile his work to see? / Did he who made the lamb make thee?”. The rat is an emblem of death, like the tiger; but the heavier condemnation for both creature’s existence seems to fall on those agents in both poems that allow them to be or flourish— God in Blake’s poem, man’s violence in Rosenberg’s. “What quaver— what heart aghast?”: Again, Blakean syntax here (that is, the line is constructed in such a way that it recalls William Blake’s writing). Does the rat see fear (a “quaver”) in men’s eyes? Or perhaps the rat sees terror (“heart aghast”) within?

“Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins / Drop, and are ever dropping;”: the poem concludes with a clever return to the flower which the soldier picked from the parapet at the poem’s beginning. The reference to poppies “roots” which are “in man’s veins” is a return to the old notion that poppies flourished whilst growing on the blood of dead soldiers. Like the poppy that the soldier in the poem picked (thus killing it), these poppies continually “drop”: like the dead soldiers who nourish them. “But mine in my ear is safe— just a little white with the dust.”: for a little while, the poppy behind the soldier’s ear is safe, declares the soldier. There is an irony to this, however: the poppy plucked from the earth is now dying. The whitening of the dust seems to signify the beginning of this journey towards death. The soldier’s observation seems aware of the irony: that man’s actions mean that safety is unlikely— that the “dropping” of another poppy is at best delayed for the short while this dawn scene lasts. [ANTHOLOGY NOTE: This poem is one of the most richly associative in the whole anthology: Jon Stallworthy has himself written that this is one of his favourite First World War poems. It straddles many areas of interest for students: it plays with the pastoral mode; it subverts symbols conventionally associated with the war (rats and poppies); it does so in a realistic way, giving a strong flavour of everyday life for soldiers in the trenches; it contains its own implied critique of the classical, ‘heroic’, muscular values prevalent before the war; and it has strong mythic overtones. It is indeed one of the great masterpieces of First World War poetry, and expresses the momentary pleasures and everyday horror of the war without sentimentality. I always feel that ‘Break of Day in the Trenches’ is a key poem in Stallworthy’s anthology; it is a poem that can be linked to many of the other poems in the collection, both good and bad.] __________________________________________________________________________ ‘Break of Day in the Trenches’ is by one of the First World War’s leading war poets, Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918). The poem might be analysed as war poetry’s answer to John Donne’s ‘The Flea’ – because the rat which is so friendly towards the English poet will also cross No Man’s Land and make friends with the German enemy. The rat, that ubiquitous feature of WWI imagery, here acts as a reminder of the English and Germans’ common humanity, even in times of war. It’s all here in ‘Break of Day in the Trenches’: the rats, the trenches, the symbolic poppy ‘Break of Day in the Trenches’ is a quintessential war poem. Yet the style is understated, even offhand: here there is none of the strong moralising or quietly righteous (never selfrighteous) indignation found in much of Wilfred Owen’s poetry. Instead, Rosenberg describes and lets his description (largely) do the work. The poem is written in something

approaching free verse, rather than using the rhyme schemes and regular metre found in much of Owen’s work. And the description of the soldier’s encounter with the rat is masterly. In summary, as the poem’s title makes clear, it is dawn in the trenches during the First World War. It’s just an ordinary morning (Time is personified as a druid, suggesting there is something age-old and ancient about the dawn) except that when the soldier on sentry duty plucks a poppy from the top of the trench, a rat suddenly ‘leaps my hand’. Note the missing preposition: the rat doesn’t leap into or onto the speaker’s hand. It is more direct than this, the turning of the intransitive into a transitive verb mirroring the suddenness, and unexpectedness, of the action. The soldier sees the rat as ‘cosmopolitan’ for fraternising with an English soldier in No Man’s Land. Blithely, the rat will ‘cross the sleeping green between’ – the drawn-out assonance of the ‘e’ sounds suggesting the blissful indifference of the rat, which does not realise it is running around a warzone. The rat darts between strong, fit, healthy young men, yet – despite the associations between rats and disease and extermination – this rat’s life expectancy is probably better than most of these young soldiers, who may be dead next week, or tomorrow, or later that day. Indeed, many of their fallen comrades already lie ‘Sprawled in the bowels of the earth, / The torn fields of France.’ Rosenberg then wonders what knowledge the rat has of the fear and terror in the soldiers’ eyes. Does it sense their misgivings, their anxieties? Or is it blithely and blissfully unaware of the conflict raging around it? The speaker of the poem then turns to consider the poppy he picked from the trench, and alludes to the idea that red poppies sprang from the blood of dead soldiers. These poppies are dropping and dying here in No Man’s Land – just like the soldiers themselves – while the rat thrives. The final line is a fine example of Rosenberg’s understated style: the red poppy is ‘just a little white with the dust’, but the whiteness resonates with ambiguous symbolism, suggesting death (the pale faces of the dead soldiers?), purity, and ghostliness. But Rosenberg doesn’t force any particular meaning on us as readers: he could simply be making a literal comment about the dust on the poppy, a matter-of-fact statement that should be taken at face value....