WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.720 Okay, let's unpack this. Today we are bringing 00:00:02.720 --> 00:00:06.400 you a deep dive into a really massive, deeply 00:00:06.400 --> 00:00:09.619 moving compilation of material. Truly massive. 00:00:09.740 --> 00:00:12.240 Right. And it's focused entirely on war poetry. 00:00:12.800 --> 00:00:14.939 We're going on a journey to trace exactly how 00:00:14.939 --> 00:00:18.899 humanity has processed the trauma, the, well, 00:00:19.140 --> 00:00:22.530 the fleeting glory and just the absolute horror 00:00:22.530 --> 00:00:24.910 of conflict through verse. And the timeline we're 00:00:24.910 --> 00:00:26.730 looking at is incredible. Yeah, we were talking 00:00:26.730 --> 00:00:28.789 about a timeline that stretches all the way from 00:00:28.789 --> 00:00:31.230 ancient bards of Greece, you know, singing to 00:00:31.230 --> 00:00:34.969 huge crowds right up to... modern digital newsletters 00:00:34.969 --> 00:00:37.689 being published in real time in Ukraine. So welcome 00:00:37.689 --> 00:00:40.109 to the deep dive. It is a remarkable stack of 00:00:40.109 --> 00:00:43.210 history to sort through for sure. And just to 00:00:43.210 --> 00:00:45.149 set the stage for you, it is crucial to understand 00:00:45.149 --> 00:00:46.850 the sheer breadth of what we're actually looking 00:00:46.850 --> 00:00:48.329 at today, because when people hear the phrase 00:00:48.329 --> 00:00:51.109 war poet, the immediate image that jumps to mind 00:00:51.109 --> 00:00:53.270 is usually like a young guy in a muddy trench. 00:00:53.810 --> 00:00:56.229 Exactly. A young soldier shivering in a trench 00:00:56.229 --> 00:00:59.390 with a notebook. But the reality is so much broader 00:00:59.390 --> 00:01:02.299 than that. These writers are combatants, absolutely, 00:01:02.880 --> 00:01:05.340 but they're also field nurses up to their elbows 00:01:05.340 --> 00:01:08.099 in casualties. They're civilians caught up in 00:01:08.099 --> 00:01:10.439 the crossfire of besieged cities. Distant observers, 00:01:10.739 --> 00:01:12.680 right. Right, distant observers just trying to 00:01:12.680 --> 00:01:15.659 make sense of the geopolitical chaos unfolding 00:01:15.659 --> 00:01:18.340 around them. And I want you to think about why 00:01:18.340 --> 00:01:20.780 this matters to you for a second. Put yourself 00:01:20.780 --> 00:01:22.519 in the mindset of reading a standard history 00:01:22.519 --> 00:01:25.689 book. Usually you're getting sterile facts. Just 00:01:25.689 --> 00:01:28.150 the data. Yeah, you get the dates, the movement 00:01:28.150 --> 00:01:31.109 of troop lines on a map, the grim tally of casualty 00:01:31.109 --> 00:01:34.219 numbers. It's incredibly distant. But poetry 00:01:34.219 --> 00:01:37.359 bypasses all of that analytical distance. It 00:01:37.359 --> 00:01:39.959 gives you the raw, unfiltered, emotional reality 00:01:39.959 --> 00:01:42.620 of those exact moments in history. It puts you 00:01:42.620 --> 00:01:44.159 right there in the boots of the people who are 00:01:44.159 --> 00:01:46.840 living through it, breathing the same dust. It 00:01:46.840 --> 00:01:49.140 truly serves as an emotional anchor. And we see 00:01:49.140 --> 00:01:51.739 that right from the very beginning of human civilization, 00:01:52.439 --> 00:01:55.379 deeply embedded in ancient oral traditions. So 00:01:55.379 --> 00:01:57.079 let's start right there at the beginning. You've 00:01:57.079 --> 00:01:59.760 got Homer's Iliad. from around the 8th century 00:01:59.760 --> 00:02:02.700 BC. Detailing the siege of Troy. Yeah, the 10 00:02:02.700 --> 00:02:05.500 -year siege. But what really caught my eye was 00:02:05.500 --> 00:02:08.840 the Iranian memorial of Zur. This was composed 00:02:08.840 --> 00:02:12.120 in pre -Islamic Persia. Oh, that is a fascinating 00:02:12.120 --> 00:02:15.259 one. It really is. This epic was kept alive by 00:02:15.259 --> 00:02:19.060 Zoroastrian priests and sung by traveling minstrels. 00:02:19.840 --> 00:02:22.060 And these minstrels were an absolute fixture 00:02:22.060 --> 00:02:24.639 of society back then. They weren't just providing, 00:02:24.639 --> 00:02:26.719 you know, background entertainment at a banquet. 00:02:26.960 --> 00:02:30.610 No, oh. This was how an entire culture memorialized 00:02:30.610 --> 00:02:33.629 its survival. It was how they honored their warriors. 00:02:33.969 --> 00:02:36.210 What's fascinating here is how poetry wasn't 00:02:36.210 --> 00:02:39.069 just reflecting history as this passive, backward 00:02:39.069 --> 00:02:41.669 -looking record. Sometimes it was active. It 00:02:41.669 --> 00:02:44.629 was subversive. And it was hiding right in plain 00:02:44.629 --> 00:02:47.750 sight. Oh, like the secret codes. Yes! Take the 00:02:47.750 --> 00:02:49.949 famous English nursery rhyme, The Queen of Hearts. 00:02:50.110 --> 00:02:51.789 The one about baking tarts. That's the one. You 00:02:51.789 --> 00:02:54.270 probably remember it from childhood. But historical 00:02:54.270 --> 00:02:56.409 analysis suggests this innocuous little rhyme 00:02:56.409 --> 00:02:59.150 is alleged to be a highly coded, thinly veiled 00:02:59.150 --> 00:03:01.849 political poem. About a war. About the outbreak 00:03:01.849 --> 00:03:04.189 of the Thirty Years' War in the 17th century. 00:03:04.370 --> 00:03:06.349 Wait, the nursery rhyme about the Queen baking 00:03:06.349 --> 00:03:09.469 tarts is about a 17th century European conflict. 00:03:09.550 --> 00:03:12.409 It really is. The King and Queen of Hearts supposedly 00:03:12.409 --> 00:03:15.229 represent the Elector Palatine, Frederick V, 00:03:15.449 --> 00:03:18.650 and his wife, Elizabeth Stuart. Okay, so where 00:03:18.650 --> 00:03:21.009 do the tarts come in? The whole bit about the 00:03:21.009 --> 00:03:23.650 queen deciding to big tarts is actually a coded 00:03:23.650 --> 00:03:26.629 reference to her persuading her Calvinist husband 00:03:26.629 --> 00:03:29.270 to accept the Czech nobility's offer to take 00:03:29.270 --> 00:03:31.909 the throne of Bohemia. Okay, so if the king and 00:03:31.909 --> 00:03:35.270 queen are these 17th century royals, who is the 00:03:35.270 --> 00:03:37.849 nave of hearts? The one who steals the tarts? 00:03:38.030 --> 00:03:41.610 That represents the Holy Roman Emperor. The local 00:03:41.610 --> 00:03:43.870 officials of the emperor were overthrown in a 00:03:43.870 --> 00:03:47.389 famous palace coup. It's known as the Third Defenestration 00:03:47.389 --> 00:03:51.050 of Prague. I have to stop you right there. Defenestration 00:03:51.050 --> 00:03:53.629 as in literally throwing someone out of a window. 00:03:53.849 --> 00:03:55.949 Literally. And this was the third time they did 00:03:55.949 --> 00:03:58.569 it. Yes, it was a whole thing. The Czech nobility 00:03:58.569 --> 00:04:01.409 literally threw the Emperor's Catholic Regents 00:04:01.409 --> 00:04:03.650 out of a third story window at Prague Castle. 00:04:03.770 --> 00:04:06.729 That is insane. Did they survive? They survived 00:04:06.729 --> 00:04:09.669 because they landed in a massive pile of manure. 00:04:10.110 --> 00:04:13.039 Oh. Yeah. but it kicked off a massive continental 00:04:13.039 --> 00:04:16.399 war. So the Queen of Hearts was essentially a 00:04:16.399 --> 00:04:19.360 secret political commentary disguised as a harmless 00:04:19.360 --> 00:04:21.519 children's rhyme so people wouldn't be executed 00:04:21.519 --> 00:04:24.560 for singing it. That is wild. It really proves 00:04:24.560 --> 00:04:27.199 poetry was a dangerous, potent tool. And you 00:04:27.199 --> 00:04:29.100 actually see examples where poetry literally 00:04:29.100 --> 00:04:32.180 started wars. Fast forward to the 18th century. 00:04:32.680 --> 00:04:36.519 And there's the Scottish Gaelic poet, Alasdair 00:04:36.519 --> 00:04:39.560 Macmaester Alasdair. A very influential figure. 00:04:39.779 --> 00:04:41.480 Incredibly influential. He was this passionate 00:04:41.480 --> 00:04:43.800 supporter of the House of Stuart. His Jacobite 00:04:43.800 --> 00:04:46.579 poems were so fiery and persuasive that they 00:04:46.579 --> 00:04:49.500 were translated into English and read aloud to 00:04:49.500 --> 00:04:51.560 Prince Charles Edward Stuart. Direct to the Prince. 00:04:51.680 --> 00:04:54.180 Direct to the Prince. And those very poems played 00:04:54.180 --> 00:04:56.420 a major role in convincing the Prince to actually 00:04:56.420 --> 00:05:00.740 initiate the bloody 1745 uprising. It is a staggering 00:05:00.740 --> 00:05:03.230 amount of cultural influence for a poet to wield. 00:05:03.370 --> 00:05:06.089 He quite literally talked a royal into a rebellion. 00:05:06.410 --> 00:05:08.649 Which is pretty funny to think about today, considering 00:05:08.649 --> 00:05:10.930 you can barely convince people to show up for 00:05:10.930 --> 00:05:13.589 an open mic poetry night, let alone overthrow 00:05:13.589 --> 00:05:17.399 a monarchy. That is a very fair point. But contrast 00:05:17.399 --> 00:05:20.480 that slow, deliberate spread of 18th -century 00:05:20.480 --> 00:05:23.819 Gaelic poems with the sheer speed of how poetry 00:05:23.819 --> 00:05:26.439 mobilized in the 19th century. The printing press, 00:05:26.519 --> 00:05:29.420 right. Exactly. The industrialization of the 00:05:29.420 --> 00:05:32.300 printing press changed the game completely. During 00:05:32.300 --> 00:05:36.279 the Crimean War in 1854, Alfred Lord Tennyson 00:05:36.279 --> 00:05:39.079 read a newspaper account of a disastrous cavalry 00:05:39.079 --> 00:05:42.019 charge by British forces. Right. Within just 00:05:42.019 --> 00:05:44.939 a few minutes of reading that grim article, he 00:05:44.939 --> 00:05:47.860 sat down and wrote The Charge of the Light Brigade. 00:05:48.060 --> 00:05:50.019 He wrote one of the most famous poems in the 00:05:50.019 --> 00:05:52.060 English language in just a few minutes. He did. 00:05:52.160 --> 00:05:54.220 And because of the printing press, it became 00:05:54.220 --> 00:05:57.100 this massive sensation almost overnight. It was 00:05:57.100 --> 00:06:00.220 printed in pamphlet form and shipped out, distributed 00:06:00.220 --> 00:06:02.379 directly to the troops sitting on the front lines 00:06:02.379 --> 00:06:05.819 in the Crimea. Wow. Imagine being a soldier and 00:06:05.819 --> 00:06:08.000 reading a poem about the battle you are currently 00:06:08.000 --> 00:06:10.360 fighting in. It functioned almost exactly like 00:06:10.360 --> 00:06:13.540 a 19th century viral post. It was this immediate 00:06:13.540 --> 00:06:15.959 widespread cultural processing of a military 00:06:15.959 --> 00:06:19.120 disaster. It turned a horrific tactical blender 00:06:19.120 --> 00:06:22.240 into a story of glorious sacrifice. Here's where 00:06:22.240 --> 00:06:24.279 it gets really interesting, because that romantic 00:06:24.279 --> 00:06:27.579 idea of a glorious cavalry charge, he couldn't 00:06:27.579 --> 00:06:30.300 survive what was coming next. the mechanized 00:06:30.300 --> 00:06:33.220 meat grinder of the First World War completely 00:06:33.220 --> 00:06:36.220 broke that tradition. The Great War changed European 00:06:36.220 --> 00:06:39.910 literature forever. Up until 1914, war poetry 00:06:39.910 --> 00:06:42.829 often maintained some thread of individual military 00:06:42.829 --> 00:06:45.569 glory, virtuous leadership, or noble sacrifice, 00:06:46.129 --> 00:06:48.129 tracing all the way back to those Homeric traditions 00:06:48.129 --> 00:06:50.329 we started with. But the trenches changed all 00:06:50.329 --> 00:06:52.970 that. Completely. The sheer unprecedented trauma 00:06:52.970 --> 00:06:55.750 of modern mechanized warfare, the slaughter of 00:06:55.750 --> 00:06:58.110 millions of young men by impersonal machine guns 00:06:58.110 --> 00:07:00.930 and long -range artillery, it completely annihilated 00:07:00.930 --> 00:07:03.170 those classic tropes. Writers had to struggle 00:07:03.170 --> 00:07:05.610 to find a totally new vocabulary that could convey 00:07:05.610 --> 00:07:07.889 the apocalyptic reality they were living through. 00:07:08.189 --> 00:07:10.790 And you see that struggle literally breaking 00:07:10.790 --> 00:07:13.589 the language apart. Take the German expressionist 00:07:13.589 --> 00:07:16.230 poet August Graham. The guy treated language 00:07:16.230 --> 00:07:18.209 like a physical material that was being blown 00:07:18.209 --> 00:07:21.209 to pieces. He tore the grammar completely apart. 00:07:21.449 --> 00:07:24.329 He paired his syntax down to its absolute bare 00:07:24.329 --> 00:07:27.089 essentials, completely stripping out standard 00:07:27.089 --> 00:07:30.430 grammar. He even coined new jagged words from 00:07:30.430 --> 00:07:33.980 old ones. He wrote a poem called Baptism by Fire 00:07:33.980 --> 00:07:37.040 that caused a massive scandal in the German press 00:07:37.040 --> 00:07:39.980 in 1915. And the wild part is it wasn't scandalous 00:07:39.980 --> 00:07:42.560 because it was overtly unpatriotic. Right, it 00:07:42.560 --> 00:07:44.699 was scandalous simply because it was too honest. 00:07:45.139 --> 00:07:47.459 Stramm absolutely refused to pretend that coming 00:07:47.459 --> 00:07:50.220 under heavy artillery fire felt like heroic excitement. 00:07:50.720 --> 00:07:52.980 The establishment wanted tales of bravery, but 00:07:52.980 --> 00:07:55.779 Stramm just presented the terrifying, numb, shattered 00:07:55.779 --> 00:07:58.959 reality of an artillery barrage. His broken sentences 00:07:58.959 --> 00:08:01.459 mirrored the broken landscape. But as much as 00:08:01.459 --> 00:08:03.879 poets like Stram, Wilfred Owen, and Siegfried 00:08:03.879 --> 00:08:06.860 Sassoon redefine the entire genre for the 20th 00:08:06.860 --> 00:08:09.339 century, there is a massive historical blind 00:08:09.339 --> 00:08:11.540 spot we need to talk about. Yes, the exclusion 00:08:11.540 --> 00:08:14.439 of non -combatants. Right. From the end of the 00:08:14.439 --> 00:08:17.180 First World War right up until the 1970s, the 00:08:17.180 --> 00:08:19.839 war poet label was almost exclusively reserved 00:08:19.839 --> 00:08:21.759 for men who fought and died in the mud of the 00:08:21.759 --> 00:08:24.600 trenches. It was an incredibly narrow definition 00:08:24.600 --> 00:08:27.699 of authenticity that completely boxed out other 00:08:27.699 --> 00:08:30.579 experiences. It excluded so many vital voices. 00:08:31.259 --> 00:08:34.000 Over 500 women published poetry during World 00:08:34.000 --> 00:08:36.950 War I. They were writing about the crushing anxiety 00:08:36.950 --> 00:08:39.649 of the home front, the deep grief of mourning 00:08:39.649 --> 00:08:42.870 a lost generation, and the visceral blood soaked 00:08:42.870 --> 00:08:45.330 reality of nursing the wounded. But they were 00:08:45.330 --> 00:08:47.649 basically ignored. Largely brushed aside and 00:08:47.649 --> 00:08:50.009 excluded from early literary anthologies because 00:08:50.009 --> 00:08:52.649 they didn't fit the soldier poet archetype. Which 00:08:52.649 --> 00:08:54.549 is ironic considering the medical side of the 00:08:54.549 --> 00:08:56.970 war gave us two of the most iconic cultural symbols 00:08:56.970 --> 00:08:59.710 of World War I. You have the Canadian surgeon 00:08:59.710 --> 00:09:01.929 John McCrae. He was treating the wounded during 00:09:01.929 --> 00:09:05.240 the horrific Second Battle of Ypres. Just a bloodbath. 00:09:05.500 --> 00:09:07.740 Absolute nightmare. After burying a close friend, 00:09:08.039 --> 00:09:10.480 he sat in a tiny eight by eight foot dirt bunker 00:09:10.480 --> 00:09:14.960 and wrote In Flanders Fields. A poem that resonated 00:09:14.960 --> 00:09:18.659 so deeply it went truly global. Right. It became 00:09:18.659 --> 00:09:21.639 so ubiquitous that it inspired an American poet 00:09:21.639 --> 00:09:25.210 named Moina Michael. She read McCrae's poem and 00:09:25.210 --> 00:09:27.750 was so moved by the imagery of the poppies blowing 00:09:27.750 --> 00:09:30.450 among the crosses that she established the tradition 00:09:30.450 --> 00:09:33.110 of wearing a red poppy year round to honor the 00:09:33.110 --> 00:09:36.509 fallen. It's amazing. It is amazing how one short 00:09:36.509 --> 00:09:39.769 poem scribbled in a dirt bunker between surgeries 00:09:39.769 --> 00:09:42.610 shaped the way the entire globe handles memorial 00:09:42.610 --> 00:09:45.409 culture for a century. It is a profound legacy, 00:09:45.730 --> 00:09:48.669 but World War I poetry also exposes the deep 00:09:49.289 --> 00:09:52.350 messy political complications of the era. The 00:09:52.350 --> 00:09:54.690 Irish poets are a prime example of this tension. 00:09:54.950 --> 00:09:57.590 Divided loyalties. Exactly. Take Francis Ledwidge. 00:09:58.029 --> 00:10:00.570 He was a staunch Irish Republican who initially 00:10:00.570 --> 00:10:02.409 refused to enlist in the British army, which 00:10:02.409 --> 00:10:04.169 makes total sense given the political climate 00:10:04.169 --> 00:10:06.090 in Ireland at the time. But he ended up in a 00:10:06.090 --> 00:10:08.029 British uniform anyway. How did that happen? 00:10:08.169 --> 00:10:11.009 He faced a brutal show trial by local unionists 00:10:11.009 --> 00:10:13.870 who publicly accused him of cowardice. The pressure 00:10:13.870 --> 00:10:16.330 was immense. Ultimately, he joined the British 00:10:16.330 --> 00:10:19.230 military, but he made it very clear it wasn't 00:10:19.230 --> 00:10:21.090 out of loyalty to the British crown. It was a 00:10:21.090 --> 00:10:24.289 moral stance for him. Right. He joined because 00:10:24.289 --> 00:10:26.929 he simply refused to let others defend European 00:10:26.929 --> 00:10:29.509 civilization from imperialism while he stayed 00:10:29.509 --> 00:10:31.690 comfortably at home. And he tragically died at 00:10:31.690 --> 00:10:34.649 the Battle of Passchendaele. Then on the other 00:10:34.649 --> 00:10:37.970 side of that coin, you have W .B. Yeats. He wrote 00:10:37.970 --> 00:10:40.629 an Irish airman foresees his death about his 00:10:40.629 --> 00:10:43.289 friend, Major Robert Gregory. But he didn't publish 00:10:43.289 --> 00:10:46.070 it right away. No, Yates actually withheld publishing 00:10:46.070 --> 00:10:50.049 that poem until after the 1918 armistice. He 00:10:50.049 --> 00:10:52.289 intentionally showed restraint, feeling it was 00:10:52.289 --> 00:10:54.450 inappropriate to publish such a highly nuanced 00:10:54.450 --> 00:10:57.070 politically complex poem during the absolute 00:10:57.070 --> 00:10:59.230 height of a global conflict. That incredible 00:10:59.230 --> 00:11:02.090 tension of divided loyalties only amplifies as 00:11:02.090 --> 00:11:04.409 we move forward in the timeline into the 20s 00:11:04.409 --> 00:11:07.600 and 30s. It does. And this brings us to the Russian 00:11:07.600 --> 00:11:10.179 and the Spanish civil wars. Now I want to take 00:11:10.179 --> 00:11:12.200 a second to speak directly to you, the listener, 00:11:12.759 --> 00:11:15.159 because the sources here deal with highly politically 00:11:15.159 --> 00:11:17.779 charged content from both left -wing and right 00:11:17.779 --> 00:11:20.139 -wing figures. We want to make it absolutely 00:11:20.139 --> 00:11:22.799 clear that we are not taking sides. We are not 00:11:22.799 --> 00:11:25.610 endorsing any of these viewpoints. Exactly. We 00:11:25.610 --> 00:11:28.409 are simply acting as impartial guides. We're 00:11:28.409 --> 00:11:31.049 reporting on the ideas and historical realities 00:11:31.049 --> 00:11:33.230 contained within the original source material 00:11:33.230 --> 00:11:36.350 to understand how humanity processes conflict. 00:11:36.720 --> 00:11:39.299 If we connect this to the bigger picture, civil 00:11:39.299 --> 00:11:41.860 wars are uniquely devastating because they force 00:11:41.860 --> 00:11:44.039 writers to turn their pens and their weapons 00:11:44.039 --> 00:11:46.679 against their own countrymen. It fractures a 00:11:46.679 --> 00:11:49.600 nation's literary soul. It turns neighbor against 00:11:49.600 --> 00:11:52.679 neighbor. Exactly. During the Russian Civil War, 00:11:52.860 --> 00:11:55.899 the symbolist poet Marina Tsveteva wrote an epic 00:11:55.899 --> 00:11:58.559 cycle of poems that essentially served as a diary 00:11:58.559 --> 00:12:01.860 glorifying the anti -communist White Army. Meanwhile, 00:12:02.190 --> 00:12:04.990 On the exact opposite side of that brutal conflict, 00:12:05.529 --> 00:12:08.090 you have Osip Mandelstam. He was writing poems, 00:12:08.429 --> 00:12:11.029 fervently praising the Red Army. But the profound 00:12:11.029 --> 00:12:13.210 tragedy of his story is that he truly believed 00:12:13.210 --> 00:12:15.509 a poet must be the unflinching conscience of 00:12:15.509 --> 00:12:18.169 the people. And that belief eventually cost him 00:12:18.169 --> 00:12:21.309 everything. It really did. Decades later, Mandelstam 00:12:21.309 --> 00:12:24.269 composed a short epigram that mocked Joseph Stalin's 00:12:24.269 --> 00:12:27.570 cruelty. And he died in a Soviet gulag simply 00:12:27.570 --> 00:12:30.279 for writing it. We see that same intense bitter 00:12:30.279 --> 00:12:32.639 divide during the Spanish Civil War. English 00:12:32.639 --> 00:12:35.379 -speaking poets actually travel to Spain to volunteer 00:12:35.379 --> 00:12:38.179 and fight on both sides. On the nationalist side, 00:12:38.179 --> 00:12:40.500 you have the South African poet Roy Campbell. 00:12:40.740 --> 00:12:43.139 The Catholic convert, right? Yes, he was a recent 00:12:43.139 --> 00:12:45.379 Catholic convert and he was absolutely horrified 00:12:45.379 --> 00:12:48.240 by the violence of the Republican forces, specifically 00:12:48.240 --> 00:12:51.220 the Red Terror. He discovered the bodies of Carmelite 00:12:51.220 --> 00:12:53.720 monks and Toledo men he had personally befriended 00:12:53.720 --> 00:12:56.039 who had been executed in the street without a 00:12:56.039 --> 00:12:59.100 trial. And the executioners had written, thus 00:12:59.100 --> 00:13:02.399 strikes the Cheka in blood above the bodies of 00:13:02.399 --> 00:13:04.600 the monks. Right. And just for context, the Cheka 00:13:04.600 --> 00:13:06.740 was the original Soviet secret police force, 00:13:06.940 --> 00:13:08.860 which heavily influenced the communist factions 00:13:08.860 --> 00:13:12.460 in Spain. So Campbell wrote furious poems detailing 00:13:12.460 --> 00:13:15.960 this horrific event, cementing his pro -nationalist 00:13:15.960 --> 00:13:18.259 stance. But that had consequences for his legacy. 00:13:18.399 --> 00:13:21.299 Huge consequences. Because he backed Francisco 00:13:21.299 --> 00:13:24.059 Franco's fascist -aligned forces, he was effectively 00:13:24.059 --> 00:13:26.960 blacklisted. He was deliberately left out of 00:13:26.960 --> 00:13:29.639 many subsequent poetry anthologies and university 00:13:29.639 --> 00:13:32.559 literature courses for decades. Now, contrast 00:13:32.559 --> 00:13:34.399 Campbell's experience with that of his close 00:13:34.399 --> 00:13:37.600 friend, Luis Cridge. Criggs was an Afrikaner 00:13:37.600 --> 00:13:40.019 Calvinist and he campaigned just as passionately, 00:13:40.139 --> 00:13:43.279 but for the opposing Republican faction. He wrote 00:13:43.279 --> 00:13:45.940 a furious Afrikaner's poem. that specifically 00:13:45.940 --> 00:13:48.299 condemned the bombing raids carried out by pro 00:13:48.299 --> 00:13:50.539 -nationalist Lafawfoo pilots. And he didn't pull 00:13:50.539 --> 00:13:53.440 any punches with his imagery. Not at all. Craig 00:13:53.440 --> 00:13:56.860 used a savage irony that mixed sacred Latin church 00:13:56.860 --> 00:13:58.740 liturgy with the violence of the mercenaries 00:13:58.740 --> 00:14:01.399 dropping bombs on civilians. That's intense. 00:14:01.539 --> 00:14:04.480 It built to a massive climax that openly mocked 00:14:04.480 --> 00:14:07.200 the crucifixion of Christ. Essentially asking 00:14:07.200 --> 00:14:09.620 how the church could support a side dropping 00:14:09.620 --> 00:14:12.360 bombs from the sky, the outrage was immediate. 00:14:13.189 --> 00:14:15.269 vehement condemnation poured in from the Catholic 00:14:15.269 --> 00:14:18.210 Church in South Africa, who called the poem deeply 00:14:18.210 --> 00:14:20.909 sacrilegious. Just goes to show how in a civil 00:14:20.909 --> 00:14:23.129 war, poetry doesn't just reflect the battlefield. 00:14:23.330 --> 00:14:25.470 It becomes a battlefield itself. Exactly. That 00:14:25.470 --> 00:14:28.350 is a crucial insight. But as the 30s bleed into 00:14:28.350 --> 00:14:31.269 the 40s, the tone of the poetry shifts yet again. 00:14:31.490 --> 00:14:34.269 It really does. There's this fascinating observation 00:14:34.269 --> 00:14:37.289 from the American poet Richard Wilbur. He noted 00:14:37.289 --> 00:14:39.590 that the World War II poets felt fundamentally 00:14:39.590 --> 00:14:42.820 different from the World War I poets. In what 00:14:42.820 --> 00:14:45.659 way? Well, if World War I was defined by a sense 00:14:45.659 --> 00:14:49.240 of tragic futility, young men dying for nothing 00:14:49.240 --> 00:14:52.360 in the mud world war. Two poets felt they were 00:14:52.360 --> 00:14:55.379 fighting a just war against terrible, fascistic 00:14:55.379 --> 00:14:57.620 enemies that absolutely had to be destroyed to 00:14:57.620 --> 00:15:00.720 save the world. But believing a war is just absolutely 00:15:00.720 --> 00:15:03.480 does not insulate a poet from its horrors. Why? 00:15:03.480 --> 00:15:06.399 The difficulty of processing the sheer industrialized 00:15:06.399 --> 00:15:09.279 scale of civilian and military devastation in 00:15:09.279 --> 00:15:11.960 World War II was immense. Look at the Polish 00:15:11.960 --> 00:15:14.460 poet Anna Szroczewska. Her story is incredible. 00:15:14.620 --> 00:15:16.600 She served as a battlefield nurse during the 00:15:16.600 --> 00:15:19.980 1944 Warsaw Uprising. Put yourself in her shoes. 00:15:20.009 --> 00:15:22.490 She witnessed a city of a million people fighting 00:15:22.490 --> 00:15:25.149 a desperate, doomed battle against Nazi tanks 00:15:25.149 --> 00:15:28.350 and heavy artillery for 63 straight days. And 00:15:28.350 --> 00:15:30.009 the most striking thing is that it took her 30 00:15:30.009 --> 00:15:32.490 years to figure out how to write about it. Exactly. 00:15:32.750 --> 00:15:35.610 30 years of silence on the subject. She tried 00:15:35.610 --> 00:15:37.850 for decades to put the uprising into verse, but 00:15:37.850 --> 00:15:39.970 she kept destroying her manuscripts. Everything 00:15:39.970 --> 00:15:43.110 she wrote felt too flowery, too wordy, or too 00:15:43.110 --> 00:15:45.649 pathetic compared to the brutal reality she had 00:15:45.649 --> 00:15:47.110 lived through. So what did she end up doing? 00:15:47.230 --> 00:15:50.169 She realized she had to strip everything away, 00:15:50.190 --> 00:15:52.750 even more than August Ram did in World War I. 00:15:53.210 --> 00:15:55.070 She published a collection of what she called 00:15:55.070 --> 00:15:59.009 un -rhymed miniature micro -reports. Just tiny, 00:15:59.230 --> 00:16:01.970 breathless, fragmented observations of a single 00:16:01.970 --> 00:16:04.690 horrific incident, because that was the only 00:16:04.690 --> 00:16:06.950 way the human mind could process that level of 00:16:06.950 --> 00:16:09.950 trauma without completely breaking down. Psychological 00:16:09.950 --> 00:16:11.769 toll is just staggering to think about. And we 00:16:11.769 --> 00:16:14.350 see a similarly chilling attempt to process the 00:16:14.350 --> 00:16:17.000 dark ideology of the war. From the Hungarian 00:16:17.000 --> 00:16:19.740 poet, Niklos Rednody, he was a vocal critic of 00:16:19.740 --> 00:16:22.139 both the fascist Arrow Cross party and the pro 00:16:22.139 --> 00:16:24.320 -German government. He had a very specific view 00:16:24.320 --> 00:16:27.340 on totalitarianism. He did. Rednody believed 00:16:27.340 --> 00:16:29.879 that totalitarianism, whether fascism or communism, 00:16:30.639 --> 00:16:33.179 destroyed intricate, beautiful civil society 00:16:33.179 --> 00:16:35.700 in order to create what he called a criminally 00:16:35.700 --> 00:16:38.309 simple -minded order. His analogy for this concept 00:16:38.309 --> 00:16:40.250 is one of the most haunting details we've come 00:16:40.250 --> 00:16:43.009 across. It really stuck with me. He compared 00:16:43.009 --> 00:16:46.269 authoritarianism to wanting an ideal cat. Yeah. 00:16:46.629 --> 00:16:50.309 So imagine you take a real living breathing cat. 00:16:50.830 --> 00:16:53.350 You kill it. You strip away its flesh, you put 00:16:53.350 --> 00:16:55.669 it into an industrial mold, and you press it 00:16:55.669 --> 00:16:57.909 into the perfect uniform shape of a cat. It's 00:16:57.909 --> 00:17:01.110 grotesque. It's this visceral, horrifying image 00:17:01.110 --> 00:17:05.009 of how regimes crush the messy, beautiful reality 00:17:05.009 --> 00:17:08.829 of human lives into a dead artificial mold where 00:17:08.829 --> 00:17:11.450 everyone conforms. And part of maintaining that 00:17:11.450 --> 00:17:13.950 dead artificial mold is strictly controlling 00:17:13.950 --> 00:17:16.579 the narrative. Which brings us to the profound 00:17:16.579 --> 00:17:18.920 theme of censorship in World War Two poetry. 00:17:19.839 --> 00:17:22.200 We have the Japanese general, Tadamichi Korebayashi. 00:17:22.259 --> 00:17:24.059 He was the commander during the brutal battle 00:17:24.059 --> 00:17:27.019 of Iwo Jima. Right. Knowing he was facing certain 00:17:27.019 --> 00:17:29.619 death against overwhelming American forces, he 00:17:29.619 --> 00:17:32.039 sent a farewell message back to Imperial headquarters 00:17:32.039 --> 00:17:34.339 and he included three traditional Waka poems. 00:17:34.640 --> 00:17:36.920 Just to clarify, Waka poetry is that classical 00:17:36.920 --> 00:17:39.119 Japanese format, right? The one with five lines 00:17:39.119 --> 00:17:41.940 and 31 syllables. That's right. It's an ancient, 00:17:42.259 --> 00:17:45.180 highly structured form meant to convey deep emotion. 00:17:45.720 --> 00:17:49.000 But the poems he sent weren't the glorious patriotic 00:17:49.000 --> 00:17:52.539 versus the military command wanted to hear. Historians 00:17:52.539 --> 00:17:55.309 view his Waka poems as a subtle but an incredibly 00:17:55.309 --> 00:17:58.329 firm protest against a military command that 00:17:58.329 --> 00:18:00.609 was so casually throwing the lives of its men 00:18:00.609 --> 00:18:03.670 away in unwinnable battles. He wrote about the 00:18:03.670 --> 00:18:06.130 profound sadness of his soldiers falling in battle 00:18:06.130 --> 00:18:08.670 far from home. I'm guessing the Japanese military 00:18:08.670 --> 00:18:10.349 sensors didn't just pull the set in the morning 00:18:10.349 --> 00:18:12.750 paper. Not at all. They couldn't allow a commanding 00:18:12.750 --> 00:18:15.910 general to express anti -war sentiment. So they 00:18:15.910 --> 00:18:18.109 heavily rewrote his death poems before releasing 00:18:18.109 --> 00:18:20.750 them to the public, completely altering his words 00:18:20.750 --> 00:18:23.130 to falsely claim that the soldiers died happily 00:18:23.130 --> 00:18:26.470 in suicidal ban - They hijacked his final words. 00:18:26.529 --> 00:18:29.349 They hijacked his final words to feed the propaganda 00:18:29.349 --> 00:18:31.589 machine. And we should note that censorship wasn't 00:18:31.589 --> 00:18:34.029 just happening on the Axis side of the war. Take 00:18:34.029 --> 00:18:36.490 Sadako Korihara. She survived the dropping of 00:18:36.490 --> 00:18:39.279 the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. She wrote a major 00:18:39.279 --> 00:18:41.960 collection of poems bearing witness to the unimaginable 00:18:41.960 --> 00:18:45.099 horrors of the nuclear blast. But her work was 00:18:45.099 --> 00:18:47.480 suppressed. Headily censored by the American 00:18:47.480 --> 00:18:50.240 occupation forces in Japan because her poetry 00:18:50.240 --> 00:18:53.819 dealt too explicitly with the devastating lingering 00:18:53.819 --> 00:18:56.839 reality of the nuclear fallout. It proves time 00:18:56.839 --> 00:18:59.460 and time again that poetry holds a raw truth 00:18:59.460 --> 00:19:01.940 that authorities often find incredibly threatening. 00:19:02.569 --> 00:19:04.589 Which brings us right up to the present day. 00:19:04.990 --> 00:19:07.450 We are seeing these exact same dynamics, the 00:19:07.450 --> 00:19:09.690 trauma, the desperate need for truth, and the 00:19:09.690 --> 00:19:12.269 urge to bear witness, playing out in real time 00:19:12.269 --> 00:19:15.690 with Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Yes, 00:19:15.849 --> 00:19:17.569 the timeline we've been tracking ends right in 00:19:17.569 --> 00:19:19.569 the middle of the digital age. We're seeing poetry 00:19:19.569 --> 00:19:22.690 respond almost instantly to the conflict. There 00:19:22.690 --> 00:19:25.029 is a heavy use of the sunflower motif representing 00:19:25.029 --> 00:19:27.819 Ukrainian resistance and national identity. You 00:19:27.819 --> 00:19:30.019 have prominent poets outside of Ukraine, like 00:19:30.019 --> 00:19:32.900 the UK poet laureate Simon Armitage, publishing 00:19:32.900 --> 00:19:34.859 new poems centered entirely on that imagery. 00:19:35.019 --> 00:19:37.460 It's an immediate global response. But even more 00:19:37.460 --> 00:19:39.680 fascinating to me is how the actual distribution 00:19:39.680 --> 00:19:42.480 of war poetry has evolved. It is a massive leap. 00:19:42.799 --> 00:19:45.140 We've gone from the traveling minstrels of pre 00:19:45.140 --> 00:19:47.859 -Islamic Persia to digital substack newsletters. 00:19:48.119 --> 00:19:50.440 There's a digital space right now called Sunflowers 00:19:50.440 --> 00:19:52.890 in the Blood. It's a newsletter that curates 00:19:52.890 --> 00:19:56.029 and publishes war poetry, translations and essays 00:19:56.029 --> 00:19:59.430 in real time. It's not waiting for a post -war 00:19:59.430 --> 00:20:02.089 anthology to be printed. It's being pushed straight 00:20:02.089 --> 00:20:04.589 into people's email inboxes as the artillery 00:20:04.589 --> 00:20:07.069 is literally firing. It's an incredible shift 00:20:07.069 --> 00:20:09.859 in the medium. So what does this all mean? We've 00:20:09.859 --> 00:20:12.319 covered thousands of years of human history today, 00:20:12.559 --> 00:20:15.059 and if there is one glaring takeaway from all 00:20:15.059 --> 00:20:17.900 this material, it's that while the weapons change 00:20:17.900 --> 00:20:20.720 from bronze swords at Troy to mechanized tanks 00:20:20.720 --> 00:20:23.839 in Warsaw to nuclear bombs in Hiroshima, and 00:20:23.839 --> 00:20:25.980 the politics constantly shift back and forth, 00:20:26.359 --> 00:20:28.759 the fundamental human impulse remains exactly 00:20:28.759 --> 00:20:31.359 the same. We still need to process it. Yes. When 00:20:31.359 --> 00:20:34.779 faced with the absolute extremities of war, humanity 00:20:34.779 --> 00:20:37.400 instinctively turns to the rhythm, the structure, 00:20:37.740 --> 00:20:40.259 and the deep emotional truth of poetry. It acts 00:20:40.259 --> 00:20:43.000 as a constant anchor for our humanity when absolutely 00:20:43.000 --> 00:20:45.140 everything else is being blown apart. This raises 00:20:45.140 --> 00:20:47.680 an important question, though. We've seen how 00:20:47.680 --> 00:20:50.819 war poetry relentlessly adapts its medium over 00:20:50.819 --> 00:20:53.960 time. We started with traveling minstrels singing 00:20:53.960 --> 00:20:57.099 ancient epics to crowds around a fire. Then we 00:20:57.099 --> 00:20:59.240 moved to printed pamphlets distributed in the 00:20:59.240 --> 00:21:02.380 mud of the Crimea. Then to radio broadcasts echoing 00:21:02.380 --> 00:21:05.079 through the siege of Leningrad. And now we are 00:21:05.079 --> 00:21:07.700 looking at algorithm -driven digital newsletters 00:21:07.700 --> 00:21:11.359 updating by the minute. If the old adage is right... 00:21:11.349 --> 00:21:14.430 and the medium truly shapes the message, how 00:21:14.430 --> 00:21:17.289 will the instantaneous, AI -driven, and hyper 00:21:17.289 --> 00:21:19.789 -fragmented platforms of the near future alter 00:21:19.789 --> 00:21:22.950 the very nature of war poetry? Will it lose its 00:21:22.950 --> 00:21:25.450 deeply personal human soul to the algorithms, 00:21:25.589 --> 00:21:28.710 or will the raw, undeniable necessity to write 00:21:28.710 --> 00:21:31.930 our way through trauma simply find a new, completely 00:21:31.930 --> 00:21:34.269 unimaginable format to break our hearts all over 00:21:34.269 --> 00:21:36.930 again? That is a heavy but incredibly vital thought 00:21:36.930 --> 00:21:38.940 to leave you with today. Thank you so much for 00:21:38.940 --> 00:21:40.420 joining us on this journey through the history 00:21:40.420 --> 00:21:42.500 of how we process conflict. We appreciate you 00:21:42.500 --> 00:21:44.180 taking the time to explore this deep dive with 00:21:44.180 --> 00:21:45.519 us and we'll catch you on the next one. Take 00:21:45.519 --> 00:21:45.680 care.