
- 375 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
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 FallsFrequently asked questions
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Preliminary
- Preface to the Second Edition
- i The Path without Primroses
- ii Trench Education
- iii The Cherry Orchard 20
- iv The Sudden Depths
- v Contrasts
- vi Specimen of the War of Attrition
- vii Steel Helmets for All
- viii The Calm
- ix The Storm
- x A Home from Home
- xi Very Secret
- xii Cassar Went into Winter Quarters
- xiii The Impossible Happens
- xiv An Ypres Christmas
- xv Theatre of War
- xvi A German Performance
- xvii Departures
- xviii Domesticities
- xix The Spring Passes
- xx Like Samson in his Wrath
- xxi The Crash of Pillars
- xxii Backwaters
- xxiii The Cataract
- xxiv 1917 in Fading Light
- xxv Coming of Age
- xxvi School, not at Wittenberg
- xxvii My Luck
- A Supplement of Poetical Interpretations and Variations
- Copyright