Undertones of War
eBook - ePub

Undertones of War

  1. 375 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Undertones of War

About this book

In a beautifully-rendered memoir of the Great War, the English poet recounts his experiences in the combat zones of France and Flanders.

Using his gifts as a distinguished poet, Edmund Blunden masterfully shares memories from his service in combat along with the feelings they invoked in him. After enlisting at the age of twenty, he took part in the destructive battles of the Somme, Ypres, and Passchendaele, which he describes as "murder, not only to the troops but to their singing faiths and hopes."

Blunden's autobiography conveys all the horrors of trench warfare, the struggle to comprehend the violence, and the strangeness of observing the war as both a soldier and a poet. With allusive and powerful prose, he conveys the fortitude and despair of his comrades, including the stunning acts of bravery that won him the Military Cross. Although Blunden left the war physically unscathed, he bore mental scars from it for the rest of his life.

Originally published in 1928, Undertones of War features thirty-two of Blunden's poems inspired by the war.

"An extended pastoral elegy in prose. . . . No one disagrees that together with Sassoon's and Graves's 'memoirs' it is one of the permanent works engendered by memories of the war. . . . It is the sheer literary quality of Undertones of War that remains with a reader." —Paul Fussell 

"An established classic." —D. J. Enright

"A masterpiece . . . The best English book of its kind." —Cyrill Falls

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Yes, you can access Undertones of War by Edmund Blunden in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & Historical Biographies. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. Contents
  6. Preliminary
  7. Preface to the Second Edition
  8. i The Path without Primroses
  9. ii Trench Education
  10. iii The Cherry Orchard 20
  11. iv The Sudden Depths
  12. v Contrasts
  13. vi Specimen of the War of Attrition
  14. vii Steel Helmets for All
  15. viii The Calm
  16. ix The Storm
  17. x A Home from Home
  18. xi Very Secret
  19. xii Cassar Went into Winter Quarters
  20. xiii The Impossible Happens
  21. xiv An Ypres Christmas
  22. xv Theatre of War
  23. xvi A German Performance
  24. xvii Departures
  25. xviii Domesticities
  26. xix The Spring Passes
  27. xx Like Samson in his Wrath
  28. xxi The Crash of Pillars
  29. xxii Backwaters
  30. xxiii The Cataract
  31. xxiv 1917 in Fading Light
  32. xxv Coming of Age
  33. xxvi School, not at Wittenberg
  34. xxvii My Luck
  35. A Supplement of Poetical Interpretations and Variations
  36. Copyright