Rosenberg, Isaac. (1890 - 1918).
L i f e
- born in a humble family of Anglo-Jewish origin
- aspired to be a painter, supported by donors to study art
- enlisted in WW I, killed in action in the last year of the war
W o r k
- early poetry: draws on Jewish history and mythology
- war poetry: successfully uses his visual gifts as a painter
- abounds in vividness: the fierce apprehension of the physical reality of war, the vivid sense of involvement, the exclamatory directness of language
- sparkles with stark and often contrary energy: a detached and curious fascination with the nature of war, with the ravaged men and landscapes, and the imagery around him in the desolation of the trenches
- breaks new ground in imagery, rhythms, and dramatic effects
- associates often dissociated elements: the ‘queer, sardonic rat’, or the dropping poppies ‘whose roots are in men’s veins’
- moves towards a proto-Modernist fragmentation
Night and Day (1912), Youth (1915), and Moses, A Play (1916):
- early pamphlets of poetry published at his own expense
“Returning, We Hear Larks”:
- sees death as natural and as dangerously deceptive as larks singing behind the battlefield
“Break of Day in the Trenches”
“Louse Hunting”
“Dead Man’s Dump”
Quote
"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."
From "Break of Day in the Trenches".
Basics
(Selfportrait. Source: Wikimedia Commons).
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Author
Isaac Rosenberg. (1890 - 1918). British. -
Work
Poet. Painter. Author of "Break of Day in the Trenches". -
Genre
War poetry.
Literature
Abrams, Meyer Howard, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.
Barnard, Robert. Stručné dějiny anglické literatury. Praha: Brána, 1997.
Baugh, Albert C. ed. A Literary History of England. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967.
Coote, Stephen. The Penguin Short History of English Literature. London: Penguin, 1993.
Sampson, George. The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946.
Sanders, Andrew. The Short Oxford History of English Literature. New York: Clarendon Press, 1994.