This blog written as a lab activity task on Hackathon - 31-Dec-2025. My topic on this task is Cyber Security Basics for Everyday Users assigned by the Head of the Department of English (MKBU), Prof. and Dr. Dilip Barad Sir.
More Human Than Machine: 5 Shocking Truths About Today's Cyber Threats
Introduction: The Unseen Frontline of Our Digital Lives
We tend to imagine cybersecurity as a purely technological battle a silent war fought with complex code, sophisticated software, and impenetrable firewalls. But while the machines hum and the data flows, the real frontline of our digital lives is not where we think. The most significant vulnerabilities aren't in the silicon; they're in our own psychology. The most devastating impacts aren't just financial; they're deeply emotional. This article reveals five surprising and counter-intuitive takeaways from recent research that expose the human element at the heart of digital safety, where cognition, deception, and trauma define the new reality of cyber threats.
Here is the link of mind map as an overview of this blog: Click Here
1. It’s Not the Code, It’s Cognition: The Human Factor Is the Real Security Flaw
While organizations invest heavily in advanced firewalls and antivirus software, the foundational premise of modern cybersecurity is that the vast majority of threats succeed by exploiting human psychology and simple mistakes, not technological failures. Research consistently shows that users' mistakes due to poor cybersecurity skills are responsible for up to 95% of cyber threats to organizations. It’s rarely a system glitch that opens the door; it’s a moment of cognitive fatigue, a lapse in judgment, or a simple, misplaced click.
This reality is supported by stark data. An overwhelming 84% of insider-related data breaches were due to unintentional acts, such as an employee simply failing to secure a device. In the complex ecosystem of digital defense, individuals are consistently identified as the weakest link in the security chain. This fundamental vulnerability isn't just a theoretical weakness; it's an attack surface that nation-states and criminal enterprises are now exploiting at an unprecedented scale.
"Even with the best intentions, an employee may work in an insecure manner or under stress and cause a threat either because of poor security tool usability, lack or skills or human error."
2. The Trojan Horse in the Home Office: How a 'Laptop Farm' Infiltrated 300+ U.S. Companies
As a macro-level case study of human vulnerability, a recent scheme demonstrates how a massive national security threat can operate not through complex hacking, but through simple deception. The operation involved thousands of highly skilled North Korean IT workers who successfully posed as U.S. citizens to gain remote employment at over 300 American companies, including Fortune 500 corporations, a top-five major television network, a Silicon Valley tech company, and an aerospace manufacturer. In a particularly alarming development, the IT workers also attempted to obtain employment at two different U.S. government agencies, though these efforts were largely unsuccessful.
This scheme masterfully exploited a seismic cultural shift in the American workplace the normalization of remote hiring and the digital trust extended to unseen colleagues turning a symbol of modern flexibility into a national security vulnerability. The infiltration was enabled by a U.S.-based accomplice, Christina Chapman, who operated a "laptop farm" from her Arizona home. She received company-issued computers, hosted them on her domestic network to mask their true location, and deceived employers into believing the work was being performed in the United States. When authorities searched her home, they seized over 90 laptops.
The operation was a large-scale social engineering attack that relied on exploiting the "rapport-building" and trust inherent in corporate hiring processes. Ultimately, the scheme generated over $17 million for the scheme’s operators, including the government of North Korea. This case proves that the most effective attacks don't just bypass firewalls; they manipulate the very psychological tendencies that criminals are now weaponizing on a global scale.
3. The New Anatomy of a Scam: From Annoying Spam to Psychological Warfare
Modern scams have evolved far beyond basic lottery fraud and clumsy phishing emails. Today's cybercriminals operate as psychological engineers, using a sophisticated toolkit designed to exploit cognitive biases, a manufactured sense of urgency, and direct emotional manipulation.
The evolution of cybercrime in regions like India illustrates this trend, moving through three distinct phases: from basic lottery scams to financial-tech frauds, and now to a new era of "Psychological & authority-based cybercrime." These new scams, such as "digital arrest" and "coercive extortion," are designed to terrify victims into compliance.
Scammers' tactics now rely on "manipulative communication, urgency, and rapport-building" to exploit psychological vulnerabilities and the overconfidence of their targets. Research confirms that applying time pressure and framing a situation in terms of "loss-avoidance" makes people significantly more susceptible to fraud. These psychologically-honed tactics do more than just empty bank accounts; they inflict deep, lasting wounds on their victims.
"...social engineering 'is now considered the great security threat to people and organizations.'"
4. Beyond the Bank Account: The Hidden Epidemic of Cybercrime Trauma
The most devastating consequence of cybercrime is often not the financial loss, but the severe and lasting emotional toll. Victims of scams and cyberbullying face a non-financial fallout that can persist long after their bank accounts are restored.
The mental health impacts cited in research are profound, including "profound shame and embarrassment, emotional distress such as anxiety and depression," "trauma," and even "suicidality." The damage extends into a victim's social fabric, leading to "withdrawal and relationship breakups," "family stress," and "social ostracization." This trauma is not limited to financial fraud; cyberbullying is directly linked with higher rates of anxiety, depression, and persistent sadness among young people.
These findings reframe cybercrime from a simple monetary issue into a pressing public health concern. This deep psychological impact isn't limited to a specific demographic; the shame and fear are universal, which helps explain why vulnerability to these attacks is far more widespread than we assume.
5. The Myth of the 'Typical' Victim: Vulnerability Isn't Who You Think It Is
A common stereotype persists of the "typical" cybercrime victim: elderly, isolated, and technologically illiterate. This perception provides a false sense of security for everyone else. While seniors are certainly a vulnerable group due to factors like low digital literacy, the data reveals a much more complex and universal picture of who is at risk.
Recent findings directly challenge our preconceived notions and serve as a universal call to action:
Some of the most successful scams specifically target victims who are "middle-aged, well-educated women."
Cyberbullying is most common not among the youngest children or older teens, but during the middle school years, affecting approximately 37% of these students on a weekly basis.
A recent survey on fraud found that Gen Z and Baby Boomers reported falling victim to scams in the last year at almost identical rates (37% and 38%, respectively).
These statistics demonstrate that vulnerability is not a simple function of age or intelligence. It is a dynamic state influenced by life situations, psychological factors like overconfidence, and the increasing sophistication of scams designed to fool anyone, regardless of their background.
Conclusion: Building Our Human Firewall
From the simple negligence that accounts for 95% of breaches to the sophisticated social engineering that turned a suburban home into a hub for a hostile foreign power, the evidence is clear: our cybersecurity is only as strong as our human intuition. In an age of accelerating technology, our greatest challenge and our most effective defense—is undeniably human. Understanding the psychological, emotional, and social dimensions of cyber threats is just as critical as updating our software.
As our digital and physical lives merge, the critical question is no longer just how to secure our networks, but how to fortify the human operating system itself our awareness, skepticism, and empathy against adversaries who see our very nature as the ultimate vulnerability.
Apocalyptic Modernism, Poetic Silence, and the Ethics of Witness in an Age of War, Pandemic, and Cultural Collapse
This blog is written as part of an academic assignment assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad (Department of English, MKBU). It critically examines W. B. Yeats as a Modernist poet and evaluates the continuing relevance of his vision in the contemporary world.
The video explains W.B. Yeats's famous poem, "The Second Coming." The speaker discusses the poem's symbols, such as the "widening gyre" and the "rough beast," which show that the world is losing control and falling into chaos. Usually, people think this poem is about the violence of World War I and political trouble in Ireland. It describes a scary time when civilization seems to be breaking down and something bad is coming instead of a savior.
The speaker also shares a new way to look at the poem that connects it to the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. When Yeats wrote this, his wife was very sick with the virus. The video suggests that scary lines like "the blood-dimmed tide" might actually be describing the terrible symptoms of that sickness. The speaker compares this to the fear people felt during the COVID-19 pandemic, showing that the poem might be about the horror of disease as well as war.
This video is a lecture about W.B. Yeats's short poem titled "On Being Asked for a War Poem." Written in 1915 during World War I, the poem was Yeats's response to a request from friends to write something for a book to help war refugees. In the poem, Yeats argues that during such serious times, it is better for a poet to remain silent. He says that poets do not have the skill to set politicians right and should instead stick to writing about topics like young love or the wisdom of old age.
The speaker in the video explains that there is a deeper meaning behind these simple lines. He suggests that Yeats is being ironic because he actually wrote a poem to say he wouldn't write one. The lecture highlights that Yeats was an Irish nationalist who did not want to support the British war effort. By refusing to write a patriotic war poem, Yeats was making a statement that a poet's job is to focus on personal and eternal truths, not to get involved in the political arguments of the day.
The video is a Hindi podcast discussing two poems by W.B. Yeats: "On Being Asked for a War Poem" and "The Second Coming." The speakers first look at "On Being Asked for a War Poem," written in 1915. They explain how Yeats was asked to write a patriotic poem for World War I but refused. Instead, he wrote a poem saying poets should stay silent during such times and not try to guide politicians. He believed a poet's job was different and, privately, he sympathized more with the young soldiers dying on both sides than with the British war effort.
The second part of the podcast focuses on "The Second Coming," written in 1919. The speakers discuss the famous images of chaos and the "rough beast" replacing Christ. They introduce a new perspective from Elizabeth Outka's research, suggesting the poem was also influenced by the Spanish Flu pandemic. At the time, Yeats's pregnant wife was very sick with the virus. The podcast argues that lines like "the blood-dimmed tide" might describe the horrific symptoms of the flu, making the poem a reflection of both political collapse and personal fear of disease.
Infograph of Yeats's Vision Versus War Chaos:
3. Study Material: Discussion Questions:
The Widening Gyre and the Silent Poet: W.B. Yeats, Apocalyptic Modernism, and the Ethics of Political Witness
Introduction: The Trembling of the Veil in 1919
In the immediate aftermath of the Great War, the Western world found itself perched on a precipice of historical dissolution. The year 1919 was not merely a chronological marker of the cessation of hostilities; it was a psychological and structural rupture in the continuity of European civilization. The mechanized slaughter of the trenches had dismantled the Victorian faith in linear progress, revealing beneath the veneer of enlightenment a capacity for industrial barbarism that defied traditional artistic categorization. Simultaneously, the island of Ireland was convulsing in the throes of its own violent birth, with the Irish War of Independence transforming the local landscape into a theater of guerrilla warfare and colonial repression. It was within this crucible of global disintegration and local insurgency that William Butler Yeats composed "The Second Coming," a poem that has transcended its immediate historical moment to become the definitive lexicon of chaotic modernity.
Yet, alongside this masterful articulation of collapse, Yeats maintained a controversial and often contradictory stance regarding the poet's responsibility to the political sphere. While "The Second Coming" engages deeply with the metaphysical reality of violence, Yeats explicitly argued in poems like "On Being Asked for a War Poem" and in his editorial exclusions of the "trench poets" that the artist must remain aloof from the "passive suffering" of warfare. This report provides an exhaustive analysis of this duality in Yeats’s work. It explores the intricate machinery of his apocalyptic imagery, the widening gyres, the acoustic severances, and the inversion of moral orders and juxtaposes this mythopoetic engagement with his theoretical refusal to engage in the "journalism" of war poetry. By synthesizing the geometric mysticism of A Vision with the literary politics of the 1930s, we reveal how Yeats attempted to solve the crisis of modern violence not by documenting it, but by transforming it into a terror-inducing myth.
Part I: The Metaphysics of Disintegration in "The Second Coming"
To understand the profound resonance of "The Second Coming," one must look beyond the surface level of its ominous tone and dismantle the philosophical architecture that supports it. Yeats was not merely reacting to the headlines of 1919; he was interpreting current events through a complex esoteric system he had developed with his wife, Georgie Hyde-Lees, through the practice of automatic writing. This system, later codified in his treatise A Vision, viewed history not as a straight line of ascent but as a series of interlocking spirals, or "gyres," which determined the rise and fall of civilizations.
1. The Geometry of Chaos: The Widening Gyre
The poem opens with an image of pure kinetic energy, devoid of a human subject. The line "Turning and turning in the widening gyre" introduces the reader immediately to the geometric logic that governs Yeats's universe.
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
The Historical Mechanism of the Gyre
A "gyre" in Yeatsian terminology is more than a simple spiral; it is a cone of historical destiny. Yeats believed that human history operated in cycles of approximately 2,000 years. Each era, or "tincture," possessed a specific character either "primary" (objective, religious, democratic, self-sacrificing) or "antithetical" (subjective, aristocratic, individualistic). As one cone (or era) reached its maximum expansion, it would naturally lose its structural integrity, and the opposing cone, which had been narrowing within it, would begin to expand and take dominance. This interpenetrating movement ensures that every civilization contains the seeds of its own destruction.
In 1919, Yeats believed the "Christian" era, a primary cycle defined by altruism, democracy, and the suppression of the self was reaching its terminal point. The "widening" of the gyre described in the poem represents the moment when the centrifugal force of history overcomes the centripetal force of the civilization's organizing principle. The structure stretches until the center can no longer hold the periphery together.
The Centrifugal Force of Modernity
The phrase "widening gyre" conveys a specific sensation of centrifugal force, the physical inertia that pushes objects outward when rotation accelerates. If one imagines a falcon flying in a tight, controlled circle, there is a balance between the bird's momentum and the center of its orbit. As the bird spirals outward ("widening"), the speed required to maintain the orbit increases, and the connection to the center weakens. By utilizing this geometric imagery, Yeats suggests that the civilization of the early 20th century had expanded too far: its empires were too vast, its armies too mechanized, and its populations too ungovernable. The system had generated too much energy to be contained by the traditional structures of religion ("the center") or monarchy. The disintegration is, therefore, not a political accident but a mathematical inevitability of the historical cycle.
2. The Acoustic Severance: Falcon and Falconer
Following the abstract geometry of the gyre, Yeats introduces the poem's first concrete metaphor for the breakdown of authority: "The falcon cannot hear the falconer".
The Failure of Communication
This image operates on multiple symbolic levels. In the medieval tradition of falconry, the relationship between the bird (the falcon) and the master (the falconer) is one of absolute hierarchy and control. The falcon represents the wild, instinctual, or kinetic forces of the world, the military, the mob, or human passion. The falconer represents the controlling intelligence God, the State, reason, or the aristocracy.
Crucially, Yeats depicts the breakdown of this relationship as an acoustic failure. He does not write that the falcon refuses to obey, which would imply a rebellion, a conscious political act of defiance. Instead, he writes that the falcon cannot hear. The widening of the gyre has pushed the bird beyond the master's hearing range. This implies that the separation is structural rather than volitional. The "logic" of the civilization (the falconer) can no longer transmit its signals to the "instinct" of the civilization (the falcon). The tether has been severed not by anger, but by distance and noise. This captures the specific horror of World War I, where the "machines" of war mobilization timetables, artillery barrages, and alliance systems seemed to gain a momentum of their own, operating beyond the control or comprehension of the diplomats and monarchs who supposedly commanded them.
3. Elemental Destruction: The Liquefaction of Order
As the geometric structure in the air dissolves, the poem’s perspective shifts to the terrestrial plane, using liquid imagery to describe the consequences of this collapse.
"The blood-dimmed tide is lost, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned".
The Paradox of the Blood-Dimmed Tide
Water is archetypally associated with purification, baptism, and the generation of life. Yeats inverts this archetype to create a vision of elemental horror. The "tide" suggests a massive, unstoppable natural force, driven by lunar cycles (which Yeats associated with the subjective and the irrational). However, this natural force is fundamentally corrupted: it is "blood-dimmed."
The adjective "dimmed" is precise and unsettling. It suggests opacity. Clear water allows for vision and insight; blood-dimmed water obscures reality. It implies a mingling of the oceanic (the universal) with the violent (the biological). The scale of the violence is so cataclysmic that it has dyed the oceans themselves, transforming the medium of life into a medium of slaughter. This imagery reflects the "red flood" of the war and the rising tide of revolutionary violence in Ireland and Russia.
The Mechanism of "Loosed"
The verb "loosed" appears twice in the first stanza ("The blood-dimmed tide is loosed," "Mere anarchy is loosed"). This word implies the sudden removal of a restraint. It evokes the image of a dam breaking or a cage door being unlatched. Yeats views civilized society not as a natural state of grace, but as an artificial dam that holds back the "flood" of human savagery. Under pressure from the widening gyre, the dam has cracked. The violence is not being created ex nihilo; it is being released. This aligns with Yeats's pessimistic anthropology, which viewed chaos as the default state of the universe when the disciplining forces of culture and ritual fail.
The Drowning of Ceremony
The target of this destruction is "the ceremony of innocence." Yeats creates a binary opposition between the brute force of the "tide" and the fragile construct of "ceremony." Ceremony implies order, custom, politeness, and ritual in the aristocratic and religious structures that give life meaning (weddings, baptisms, coronations). "Innocence" in this context is not merely a lack of guilt, but a specific kind of naive, ordered existence that requires protection.
The image of the ceremony being "drowned" suggests suffocation and submersion. You cannot argue with a flood; you cannot negotiate with a tide. The destruction of the old order is total and overwhelming. The "blood-dimmed tide" washes away the delicate social rituals that defined the Victorian and Edwardian eras, leaving only the raw, wet reality of violence.
4. The Reversal of Moral Order
The disintegration of the physical world is mirrored by a catastrophic inversion of the psychological and moral landscape.
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity".
The Pathology of the "Best"
This couplet provides a diagnosis of the political paralysis that defined the interwar period. The "best" the intellectuals, the humanists, the moderates, the heirs to the Enlightenment are paralyzed by their own capacity for nuance. They "lack all conviction" because they see every side of the argument, or because the war has shattered their faith in their own values. This reflects the deep "post-war disillusionment" where the old watchwords of honor, patriotism, and progress rang hollow. The liberal center, aware of its own hypocrisy and the failures of the past, finds itself unable to act with decisiveness.
The Vitality of the "Worst"
Conversely, the "worst" the fanatics, the extremists, the harbingers of totalitarianism possess "passionate intensity." They are unburdened by doubt or self-reflection. In the vacuum created by the hesitation of the moral, the immoral rush in with overwhelming kinetic energy. This dynamic creates a terrifying feedback loop: the only actors on the historical stage are those who wish to destroy it. Yeats here anticipates the rise of the blackshirts and brownshirts of Europe, the men of violence who would define the coming decades. The machinery of society is broken because the energy source is connected to the wrong pole; the "good" are inert, and the "evil" are dynamic.
5. Spiritus Mundi and the Rough Beast
As the first stanza details the collapse of the current order (the Primary gyre), the second stanza shifts to a prophetic mode to envision what the antithetical gyre will bring forth. Yeats accesses this vision through the Spiritus Mundi.
The Collective Warehouse: Spiritus Mundi
The Spiritus Mundi (Spirit of the World) is Yeats’s term for a universal, collective memory, a vast storehouse of archetypal images and racial memories that exists independently of the individual mind. Unlike Jung’s collective unconscious, which is psychological, Yeats’s concept is quasi-supernatural. It is a realm that poets, mystics, and visionaries can tap into during moments of historical rupture. The images in "The Second Coming" are not, therefore, inventions of Yeats's fancy; they are transmissions received from this great memory bank, signaling the return of an ancient archetype.
The Hybrid Horror: The Rough Beast
"A shape with lion body and the head of a man"
The vision that emerges from the desert sands is a hybrid creature, evoking the Egyptian Sphinx. It combines the "lion body" (power, predation, the solar force) with the "head of a man" (intellect, calculation). However, this is not the humanism of the Renaissance or the benevolence of the Christian man-god. The creature's gaze is "blank and pitiless as the sun." The sun provides light, but it possesses no empathy; it is an indifferent cosmic reactor.
This "Rough Beast" represents the character of the coming civilization. If the Christian era (the last 2,000 years) was defined by the Lamb, the Dove, and the values of pity, sacrifice, and softness, the new era will be defined by the Beast: hierarchical, powerful, and indifferent to human suffering. It is "rough" , unformed, brutal, and primal. The use of the sphinx-like imagery suggests a regression to a pre-Christian, pagan era of "stony sleep," where power, not love, is the organizing principle of the universe.
The Anti-Nativity
"Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
The poem concludes with a supreme act of blasphemy and subversion. Bethlehem is the axis mundi of the Christian era, the birthplace of Jesus, the inception of the current gyre. The Beast is returning to this sacred source not to pay homage, but to displace it. The verb "slouches" is grotesque and menacing; it suggests a malformed, lumbering determination, devoid of grace but possessing irresistible momentum. It is not a triumphant march, but a relentless biological arrival. The question mark at the end of the poem ("to be born?") leaves the reader on the precipice of this new, terrifying reality, confirming that the "Second Coming" is not the return of the Savior, but the arrival of the Antichrist or a force of pure historical negation.
Part II: The Politics of Silence – "On Being Asked for a War Poem"
While "The Second Coming" represents a maximalist engagement with the metaphysics of violence, Yeats maintained a minimalist, almost dogmatic refusal to engage with the politics of war in his poetry. This stance is crystallized in his 1915 poem "On Being Asked for a War Poem" and his subsequent theoretical writings.
1. The Context of the Refusal: Henry James and the "Manifesto"
The origin of "On Being Asked for a War Poem" lies in a specific request from the novelist Henry James in 1915. James, an American expatriate deeply invested in the Allied cause, was assisting Edith Wharton in compiling The Book of the Homeless, a collection of artistic works intended to raise funds for Belgian refugees displaced by the German invasion. James solicited a contribution from Yeats, expecting a piece that would reflect the moral gravity of the conflict.
Yeats’s response was not a patriotic anthem or a lament for the fallen. Instead, he sent a poem originally titled "To a friend who has asked me to sign his manifesto to the neutral nations," which he later shortened to "A Reason for Keeping Silent," and finally published as "On Being Asked for a War Poem." This evolution of the title highlights Yeats's intent: he was not merely declining a request; he was establishing a philosophical boundary between the poet and the propagandist.
The Poem's Text:
I think it better that in times like these A poet's mouth be silent, for in truth We have no gift to set a statesman right; He has had enough of meddling who can please A young girl in the indolence of her youth, Or an old man upon a winter's night.
2. Deconstructing the Doctrine of Silence
The Incompetence of the Poet
"We have no gift to set a statesman right." With this line, Yeats establishes a sharp demarcation between the sphere of art (the poet) and the sphere of action (the statesman). He rejects the Romantic conception of the poet as the "unacknowledged legislator of the world" (Shelley). Yeats posits a humbler, yet paradoxically more arrogant, role. The poet deals in eternal truths and intimate emotions, not the temporary, messy adjustments of geopolitical policy. He argues that poets lack the specific "gift" or technical competence to navigate the complexities of war and governance.
The Audience: The Girl and the Old Man
Yeats identifies his ideal audience through two archetypal figures: "A young girl in the indolence of her youth" and "an old man upon a winter's night."
The Young Girl: Represents innocence, potentiality, and the pre-political state of human experience. "Indolence" here suggests a luxurious, dreamlike state where art can be appreciated for its beauty, detached from utility.
The Old Man: Represents wisdom, reflection, and the post-political state of approaching death. By focusing on these two figures, Yeats explicitly excludes the "citizen" and the "soldier" , the figures defined by their public duties and civic responsibilities. He suggests that poetry should address the human condition at its most intimate and universal levels (love, age, beauty, death) rather than the collective madness of the polis.
The Pejorative of "Meddling"
Yeats uses the word "meddling" to describe the act of a poet engaging in political commentary. To "meddle" is to interfere officiously in something that is not one’s business. Yeats implies that when a poet writes propaganda, political verse, or even compassionate war poetry, they are betraying their craft. They are using the tools of the eternal (rhythm, metaphor, symbol) to serve the temporal (the war effort, the recruitment drive). For Yeats, this was a degradation of art, turning the poet into a "sandwich-board man" for a cause.
Part III: The Great Debate – Passive Suffering and the Rejection of Pity
The conflict between Yeats’s aesthetic of "Tragic Joy" and the grim reality of World War I reached its theoretical peak in 1936, when Yeats edited The Oxford Book of Modern Verse. In a move that shocked the literary establishment and defined his legacy regarding war poetry, he deliberately excluded the most famous "trench poets" of the Great War, including Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and Isaac Rosenberg.
1. The Doctrine of "Passive Suffering"
In his introduction to the anthology, Yeats provided a provocative justification for these exclusions:
"Passive suffering is not a theme for poetry. In all the great tragedies, tragedy is a joy to the man who dies... If war is necessary, or necessary in our time and place, it is best to forget its suffering as we do the discomfort of fever...".
Defining Passive Suffering
To understand this controversial stance, one must grasp Yeats's theory of tragedy. He believed that for suffering to be a valid subject for high art, the protagonist must be an agent. In Shakespearean tragedy (Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth) or Greek tragedy, the hero contributes to their own downfall through choice, character flaw (hamartia), or a struggle against fate. They speak, they act, and they ultimately embrace their end with a "tragic joy" or "gaiety."
In contrast, Yeats viewed the trench warfare of WWI as a mechanistic slaughter where individuals were reduced to objects. Soldiers were pinned down by artillery they could not see, gassed by invisible clouds, and obliterated by industrial machinery. They did not act; they were acted upon. They were victims of a process they could not control or comprehend. For Yeats, describing this victimization was merely "journalism" it elicited pity, physical revulsion, or sympathy, but it could not produce the metaphysical elevation of Tragedy. He believed that focusing on pain without agency reduced the human spirit to mere flesh.
2. The Conflict with Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen, who was killed in action one week before the Armistice in 1918, represented the antithesis of Yeats’s aesthetic. Owen’s famous draft preface to his poems stated:
"My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in pity.".
The "Sugar Stick" Insult
In private correspondence, Yeats was even more vitriolic than in his public introduction. In a letter to a friend, he dismissed Owen as "unworthy of the poets' corner of a country newspaper" and famously described his work as "all blood, dirt, and sucked sugar stick".
Blood and Dirt: Yeats found the hyper-realism of the trenches, the descriptions of frothing lungs, mud, and gore repulsive and unpoetic. He believed art should transform reality, not merely mirror its ugliness.
Sucked Sugar Stick: This cryptic and devastating insult likely refers to a sentimental sweetness or self-pity that Yeats detected in Owen’s work. He felt that Owen was "milking" the tragedy for emotional response, using the suffering of the soldiers to elicit a cheap, sentimental reaction from the reader, rather than transmuting it into the hard, cold forms of high art.
The Counter-Argument: Truth as Beauty
The "War Poets" and their defenders argued that the unprecedented scale of modern industrial slaughter made Yeats’s heroic ideals obsolete. To write about "Tragic Joy" while men were choking on chlorine gas was, to Owen and Sassoon, a moral lie. They believed the poet’s duty was to witness to force the civilian reader to look at the ugly truth that society wished to ignore.
Sassoon: Utilized satire, anger, and stark realism to mock the incompetence of the General Staff and the naive jingoism of the home front.
Owen: Combined lush, Keatsian language with horrific imagery to create a cognitive dissonance that forced the reader to confront the waste of youth. For Owen, the "pity" was the only bridge left between the doomed soldier and the ignorant civilian.
3. Analyzing the Schism
This debate reveals a fundamental schism in Modernist literature:
Yeats (The High Modernist Aesthete): Believed art must transcend history. The poet’s job is to build a "gold mosaic of a wall" (Sailing to Byzantium) that stands above the chaos. Suffering must be stylized, ritualized, and mythologized to be enduring. Agency is paramount.
Owen (The Witness): Believed art must confront history directly. The poet’s job is to speak for those who have been silenced. The "Pity" is a moral imperative. The loss of agency in modern war is the point it is the tragedy of modernity itself.
Yeats’s position was easy to hold from the safety of his tower (Thoor Ballylee) in neutral Ireland; it was impossible to hold from the trenches of the Somme. However, it is crucial to note that Yeats was not naive about violence. He lived through the Easter Rising of 1916 and the Irish Civil War. His objection was not to violence itself he famously celebrated the "terrible beauty" of the Easter Rising rebels but to the passivity of the WWI victim. In "Easter, 1916," he praises the rebels because they chose their sacrifice; they were active agents who transformed themselves. The WWI conscript, in his eyes, was denied this transformative agency.
Part IV: Synthesis – The Second Coming as the Ultimate War Poem
There is a profound irony in Yeats’s stance. He refused to write a "war poem" for Henry James, and he rejected Wilfred Owen for writing about the war. Yet, "The Second Coming" is universally regarded as one of the greatest poems about war, violence, and social collapse ever written.
1. The Mythological Solution
Yeats solved the problem of "passive suffering" by mythologizing the war. In "The Second Coming," he does not describe the trenches, mustard gas, treaties or specific battles. Instead, he extracts the essence of the conflict, the feeling of loss, the breakdown of structural order, the rise of brutality, the severance of communication and projects it onto a cosmic, mythological screen.
By turning the political chaos of 1919 into the "widening gyre" and the "rough beast," Yeats gave the violence a shape and a meaning within a larger system. He did not ask the reader to pity the victims; he asked the reader to fear the future. This, in his view, was the proper function of the poet. He did not "meddle" in the statesmanship of the war; he revealed the spiritual reality behind the statesmanship. He transformed the "blood and dirt" of history into the "artifice of eternity".
2. The Nuanced Verdict
Was Yeats right to remain silent?
Ethically: His dismissal of Owen’s suffering can be seen as callous, aristocratic, and disconnected from a failure of empathy from a man safe in his privilege. The "passive suffering" argument ignores the immense courage required to endure the conditions of the Western Front. It imposes a classical heroic standard on a post-heroic world.
Aesthetically: There is a compelling argument for his method. "The Second Coming" has survived as a universal text precisely because it is not tied to the specific details of WWI. It applies as well to the 21st century as it did to 1919. By refusing to document the specific "journalism" of the war, Yeats created a container that can hold the anxieties of any age.
Conclusion
Yeats’s refusal to write a "war poem" was a refusal to write propaganda or reportage. He believed poetry had to be harder, colder, and more durable than the daily news. In "The Second Coming," he achieved this ambition. He transformed the disintegration of Europe into a terrifying, beautiful, and enduring myth. He proved that a poet could remain "silent" on the politics of the day while simultaneously articulating the cry of a civilization in collapse. He did not set the statesman right; he set the nightmare to music.
4. Creativity activity:
The Silicon Gyre
Turning and turning in the widening feed The algorithm does not hear the user;
The grid breaks down;
the centre cannot hold;
Mere static is loosed upon the world, The plastic-darkened tide is loosed, and everywhere The ritual of the seasons is undone;
The best lack all attention, while the worst Are full of pixelated intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Great Reset is at hand.
The Great Reset! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Data Troubles my sight:
somewhere in the rising sands A shape with lion body and the head of wire,
A gaze blank and pitiless as a lens, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a glowing screen, And what rough beast,
its hour come round at last, Slouches towards the coastline to be born?
5. Analytical exercise:
The Silence and the Scream: A Comprehensive Analysis of War Representations in the Poetry of W.B. Yeats, Wilfred Owen, and Siegfried Sassoon
1. Introduction: The Crisis of Representation in the Great War
The First World War, from 1914 to 1918, represented a cataclysmic rupture in the fabric of Western civilization. It was not merely a geopolitical conflict but a profound crisis of culture, language, and artistic representation. For the poets living through this era, the sheer scale of the mechanized slaughter posed a fundamental question: What is the function of poetry in the face of industrial-scale death? Does the poet have a civic duty to engage with the political and military realities of the day, or does the sanctity of art demand a withdrawal into eternal truths, shielded from the temporary noise of battle?
This report provides an exhaustive comparative analysis of these diverging philosophies. On one side of this ideological chasm stands William Butler Yeats, the established Irish master who, in his 1915 poem "On Being Asked for a War Poem," argued for a dignified silence, positing that the poet’s role is to preserve the continuity of culture and beauty rather than "meddle" in the sordid affairs of statesmanship. On the opposing side stand the "Trench Poets," specifically Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. These soldier-poets, writing from the visceral reality of the front lines, rejected silence as a form of complicity. Through poems such as Owen’s "Dulce et Decorum Est" and Sassoon’s "Suicide in the Trenches," they weaponized poetry to expose the gruesome reality of combat and to shatter the patriotic illusions held by the civilian public.
This document explores the textual, biographical, and philosophical dimensions of this conflict. It examines how Yeats’s insistence on "Tragic Joy" and his rejection of "passive suffering" clashed with the new aesthetic of "Pity" championed by Owen. By analyzing the imagery, tone, and structure of these works, we uncover a deep struggle not just over the subject of war, but over the very soul of modern literature.
2. W.B. Yeats: The Philosophy of Aesthetic Distance
2.1 The Context of the Refusal
In 1915, the literary giant Henry James approached W.B. Yeats with a request. James was compiling a charity anthology titled The Book of the Homeless, intended to raise funds for Belgian refugees displaced by the German invasion. The expectation was clear: Yeats, as a prominent man of letters, was expected to contribute a piece that engaged with the war, perhaps celebrating the Allied cause or mourning the devastation.
Yeats’s response was unexpected. He did not send a rousing anthem or a melancholic elegy. Instead, he sent a short, six-line poem that acted as a polite but firm refusal to write about the war at all. Originally titled "To a friend who has asked me to sign his manifesto to the neutral nations," and later shortened to "A Reason for Keeping Silent," the poem eventually became known as "On Being Asked for a War Poem".
This refusal was not born of laziness or indifference. It was a calculated aesthetic and political statement. Yeats was wary of the "instrumentalization" of art, the idea that poetry should serve a utility, such as propaganda or political commentary. He believed that once poetry becomes a tool for a cause, it ceases to be art and becomes rhetoric. In the specific context of 1915, with the war settling into a grim stalemate, Yeats sought to establish a boundary between the "meddling" world of politics and the timeless world of the poet.
2.2 Textual Analysis: "On Being Asked for a War Poem"
The poem itself is a masterclass in tone. It does not shout; it speaks in the measured, conversational voice of a sage.
"I think it better that in times like these / A poet's mouth be silent, for in truth / We have no gift to set a statesman right;"
The Metonymy of the Mouth:
Yeats uses the phrase "A poet's mouth" (a technique known as metonymy) to represent the poet’s entire output and influence. By stating that this mouth should be "silent," he is not advocating for a literal vow of silence, but rather a thematic silence regarding the specific, transient political issues of the war. He suggests that the noise of the "times like these" the gunfire, the political speeches, the newspaper headlines is incompatible with the true voice of poetry.
The Critique of the Statesman:
The line "We have no gift to set a statesman right" is crucial. On the surface, it appears to be a statement of humility and an admission that poets lack political expertise. However, a deeper reading reveals a subtle disdain. Yeats places the "statesman" in a lower order of existence. The statesman deals with the messy, temporary mechanics of power ("meddling"). The poet, by contrast, operates in a realm of higher truths. To try to correct a statesman would be to step down from the poet's pedestal. Yeats implies that the problems of the war are the result of political failures, and art should not be dragged down to fix the mistakes of politicians.2
The Proper Audience: Youth and Age:
"He has had enough of meddling who can please / A young girl in the indolence of her youth, / Or an old man upon a winter's night."
Here, Yeats defines the true audience and purpose of poetry. He juxtaposes the public figure of the statesman with two private, intimate figures: the "young girl" and the "old man."
The Young Girl: She is characterized by "indolence" , a lazy, relaxed, carefree existence. This is a provocative word to use in 1915, when millions of young men were living lives of frantic terror and exertion in the trenches. Yeats is deliberately valorizing this "indolence." He wants to preserve a space of innocence and beauty where the war cannot intrude. He is protecting the young girl’s peace of mind from the horror of the news.
The Old Man: The image of the "old man upon a winter's night" evokes the ancient tradition of oral storytelling, folklore, and myth. It suggests a cyclical view of time. Wars come and go, but the need for a good fire story is eternal. Yeats is aligning his art with these permanent human needs: beauty (the girl) and wisdom (the old man) rather than the temporary emergency of the war.
2.3 The Irish Political Subtext
Yeats’s silence was not just aesthetic; it was also deeply political in the context of Irish nationalism. In 1915, Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, but the movement for independence was growing.
Divided Loyalties: Many Irishmen enlisted in the British Army, encouraged by leaders like John Redmond who believed it would help secure Home Rule. However, radical nationalists (the Republicans) believed that "England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity" and opposed the war effort.
The Refusal to Serve: If Yeats had written a patriotic "War Poem" for Henry James, he would have been seen as supporting the British Empire’s war. As a committed Irish nationalist, he could not do this. However, he also did not want to write a pro-German poem. "Silence," therefore, was a strategic diplomatic maneuver. It allowed him to disengage from a conflict that he felt was not truly Ireland's war.
The Contrast with "Easter 1916": It is critical to note that Yeats was not opposed to political poetry in principle. Just a year later, after the Easter Rising in Dublin, he wrote "Easter 1916," one of the most famous political poems in the English language ("All changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born"). He was willing to write about Irish violence and Irish martyrs. His refusal in "On Being Asked" was specifically a refusal to engage with the Great War, which he viewed as a mechanical, soulless slaughter of the British and German empires, lacking the "tragic joy" of the Irish struggle.
2.4 "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death": The Alternative War Poem
Yeats did eventually write about the Great War, but on his own terms. In "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" (1918), he explores the psychology of Major Robert Gregory, an Irish pilot.
The Cold Balance: The airman declares: "Those that I fight I do not hate, / Those that I guard I do not love". This is a stark contrast to the propaganda of the time, which demanded hatred of the Germans and love for the British.
The Lonely Impulse: The airman fights not for duty, law, or politicians ("public men"), but for "A lonely impulse of delight." This aligns perfectly with Yeats’s philosophy in "On Being Asked." The airman has detached himself from the "statesmen" and the "cheering crowds." He has turned war into a private, aesthetic experience, a moment of personal intensity in the clouds. Even in war, Yeats focuses on the individual's tragic choice, not the collective suffering of the trenches.
3. Wilfred Owen: The Poetry of Pity and Realism
3.1 From Romanticism to the Trenches
Wilfred Owen began his poetic life as a devotee of John Keats and the Romantics. His early influences were filled with lush imagery and a worship of beauty very much in line with the "young girl" Yeats sought to please. However, Owen’s experience in the war shattered this Romantic worldview. Enlisting in 1915 and arriving in France in 1917, he was thrust into the hell of trench warfare.
Unlike Yeats, who viewed the war from the comfort of Coole Park or London, Owen lived in the mud. He saw the industrial dismantling of the human body. He realized that the old language of poetry, the language of "glory," "honor," and "indolence" was inadequate to describe the reality of gas attacks and artillery barrages. He needed a new language.
3.2 "Dulce et Decorum Est": A Direct Rebuttal
Owen’s "Dulce et Decorum Est" is perhaps the most famous war poem in the English language. It serves as a direct, angry rebuttal to the "silence" advocated by Yeats and the "Old Lie" propagated by society.
The Destruction of the Heroic Image:
The poem opens with a shocking dismantling of the soldier archetype.
"Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, / Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge".
Premature Aging: Yeats wrote of pleasing an "old man." Owen shows us young men who have been turned into "old beggars" and "hags" by exhaustion. The war has accelerated time, robbing them of the "indolence of youth" Yeats valued.
Physical degradation: The soldiers are not marching proudly; they are "limping," "blood-shod," "lame," and "blind." Owen forces the reader to look at the physical degradation of the body. There is no spiritual transcendence here; there is only pain and mud.
The Gas Attack: The Reality of "Meddling":
The central event of the poem is a gas attack.
"Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling..."
The Ecstasy of Fumbling: This brilliant phrase captures the chaotic, panicked rush to survive. It is a perversion of the word "ecstasy" (usually associated with religious or romantic joy). Here, the only "ecstasy" is the frantic terror of suffocation.
The Drowning Man: Owen describes the soldier who fails to get his mask on: "He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning". The imagery is of a man drowning in dry air, his lungs dissolved by the gas. This is the "passive suffering" Yeats despised. The soldier is not a hero making a choice; he is a victim of chemistry and timing. Owen insists that we watch this dying man so that we do not turn away or remain "silent."
The Green Sea: Through the misty panes of the gas mask, the world looks like a "green sea." This surreal image captures the nightmare quality of the trauma. It haunts the speaker's dreams: "In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, / He plunges at me". War has colonized the poet’s subconscious.
The Direct Accusation:
The poem concludes by turning the gun on the audience.
"My friend, you would not tell with such high zest / To children ardent for some desperate glory, / The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori."
The "Friend": This is often interpreted as addressing Jessie Pope (a writer of jingoistic war verses) or the civilian public in general, perhaps even figures like Yeats who prefer to look away.
The Old Lie: Owen explicitly identifies the Latin tag ("It is sweet and right to die for one's country") as a lie. By calling it "The Old Lie," he attacks the entire classical tradition that Yeats revered. He is saying that the wisdom of the "old men" is false. War is not sweet; it is "obscene as cancer".
3.3 "Exposure": The Architecture of Suffering
While "Dulce" deals with action, Owen’s poem "Exposure" deals with waiting. This poem perfectly exemplifies the "passive suffering" Yeats criticized, yet it reveals the deep psychological truth of the war.
Nothing Happens: The refrain of the poem is "But nothing happens". The soldiers are freezing to death in the snow. They are not fighting; they are simply enduring.
Nature as Enemy: The "merciless iced east winds that knife us" are just as deadly as the Germans. The men are trapped in a "No Man's Land" between life and death.
The Rejection of Home: The soldiers dream of home, but the doors are closed to them: "on us the doors are closed." They realize that the people at home (the "young girl" and "old man") cannot understand them. They are sacrificing themselves to protect a world that has already forgotten them. This profound alienation is what Owen felt compelled to write about a subject Yeats's silence would have erased.
4. Siegfried Sassoon: The Satire of the Survivor
4.1 The Accidental Hero
Siegfried Sassoon came from a wealthy, aristocratic background. Before the war, he lived the life of a "fox-hunting man," enjoying cricket and literature, a life very close to the "indolence" Yeats admired. However, the war radicalized him. He earned the nickname "Mad Jack" for his reckless bravery and was awarded the Military Cross. But as the war dragged on, he turned against it, viewing it as a war of aggression and conquest rather than defense.
Sassoon became a mentor to Wilfred Owen when they met at Craiglockhart War Hospital (where both were treated for shell shock). Sassoon encouraged Owen to channel his anger into his poetry. While Owen’s poetry is often rich and mournful, Sassoon’s is sharp, satirical, and angry.
4.2 "Suicide in the Trenches": The Shock of Simplicity
Sassoon’s "Suicide in the Trenches" is a brutal dismantling of the cheerful "soldier lad" archetype. It uses a simple, nursery-rhyme structure (iambic tetrameter, AABB rhyme scheme) to lull the reader into a false sense of security before delivering a devastating blow.
Stanza 1: The Innocent Boy
"I knew a simple soldier boy / Who grinned at life in empty joy,"
Sassoon establishes the soldier as "simple" and full of "empty joy." He sleeps soundly and whistles with the larks. This connects to Yeats’s "young girl" , a figure of innocence. But Sassoon shows that this innocence is a liability in war. It is fragile and easily destroyed.
Stanza 2: The Descent into Hell
"In winter trenches, cowed and glum, / With crumps and lice and lack of rum,"
The reality of the trenches strips away the "empty joy." The "crumps" (shell explosions) and "lice" are the unromantic details of daily misery.
"He put a bullet through his brain. / No one spoke of him again."
Suicide is described with blunt, clinical detachment. The shocking finality of "No one spoke of him again" highlights the erasure of the individual. In a war of millions, a single suicide is an embarrassment to be silenced. Yeats wanted to celebrate "heroes"; Sassoon forced us to look at a boy who gave up. This is the ultimate "passive" act suicide born of despair. But Sassoon argues it is a central truth of the war.
Stanza 3: The Attack on the Crowd
"You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye / Who cheer when soldier lads march by,"
This is where Sassoon most violently diverges from Yeats. Yeats treated the civilian (the old man, the girl) with tenderness. Sassoon treats them with contempt.
The Smug-Faced Crowds: He sees the civilians as "smug." Their "kindling eye" suggests a perverse excitement at the spectacle of war, a vicarious thrill they get from sending young men to die.
The Wish for Retribution: He tells them to "Sneak home and pray you'll never know / The hell where youth and laughter go." Sassoon is not trying to "please" these people (as Yeats suggested); he is trying to traumatize them. He wants to force the horror of the trenches into their safe, comfortable lives.
4.3 "Survivors": The Living Dead
In another poem, "Survivors," Sassoon describes soldiers who have returned home with shell shock (neurasthenia).
The Stammering Disconnect: He describes them with "stammering, disconnected talk." They are physically alive but spiritually destroyed.
The Broken Promise: The poem mocks the idea that they will "soon get well." Sassoon knows they will never be the same. They are "boys with old, scared faces" echoing Owen’s "old beggars."
The Anti-Yeatsian Hero: These men are not the "tragic heroes" Yeats admired, who die with joy. These are broken men who must live with ghosts. Sassoon argues that their survival is a tragedy in itself, a "passive suffering" that continues long after the guns stop.
5. The Great Controversy: "Passive Suffering is Not a Theme for Poetry"
5.1 The 1936 Oxford Book of Modern Verse
The philosophical conflict between Yeats and the Trench Poets culminated years after the war ended. In 1936, Yeats was asked to edit The Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892-1935. This was a definitive anthology that would canonize the great poets of the era.
Shockingly, Yeats excluded Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and other major war poets from the collection.
5.2 Yeats’s Introduction: The Doctrine of Tragic Joy
In his introduction to the anthology, Yeats justified this exclusion with a now-infamous statement:
"I have rejected these poems for the quicksilver at the back of the mirror no great event becomes luminous in his mind..."
Deconstructing "Passive Suffering":
What did Yeats mean by "passive suffering"?
Lack of Agency: Yeats believed that tragedy requires a hero who acts who asserts their will against the universe (like Oedipus or Hamlet). In Owen’s poetry, the soldiers are often helpless victims of gas, weather, or machinery. They do not act; they are acted upon. To Yeats, this was pathos (pity), not tragedy.
The Absence of Joy: Yeats argued that "all skill is joyful." He believed that great art must transform suffering into something beautiful and energetic ("Tragic Joy"). He felt that Owen’s poetry was too focused on the pain itself, wallowing in "blood, dirt, and sucked sugar stick" (a phrase he used in private letters to describe Owen’s work implying it was a mix of gross realism and sentimental sweetness).
The Mirror vs. The Window: Yeats mentions the "quicksilver at the back of the mirror." He implies that the Trench Poets were just holding a mirror up to the horror, reflecting the dead wood of the war without transforming it into art. He wanted poetry to be a lamp that illuminated internal truths, not a mirror that reflected external carnage.
5.3 The Critical Backlash
Yeats’s exclusion of the war poets caused a scandal.
The Shift in Sensibility: By 1936, the public mood had shifted. The anti-war sentiment of Owen and Sassoon had become the dominant view. Yeats’s aristocratic desire for "joy" in battle seemed out of touch with the democratic reality of mass slaughter.
The Defense of Pity: Critics argued that "pity" was a valid theme for poetry. They contended that witnessing and warning (as Owen did) was a form of action. By refusing to look away, the Trench Poets were performing a moral act.
Auden’s View: The poet W.H. Auden, a generation younger than Yeats, struggled with Yeats’s influence. He eventually moved away from Yeats’s grand, mythical style toward a more human, grounded poetry, partly in reaction to this kind of aloofness.
6. Comparative Synthesis
6.1 Data Comparison of Key Themes
The following table synthesizes the divergence in how these poets treated the fundamental elements of war:
Feature
W.B. Yeats ("On Being Asked...")
Wilfred Owen ("Dulce et Decorum Est")
Siegfried Sassoon ("Suicide in the Trenches")
Role of the Poet
Silencer / Preserver: To keep the sacred flame of art burning; to ignore the temporary noise of politics.
Witness / Prophet: To warn the generation; to speak for those who cannot speak; to provoke pity.
Satirist / Accuser: To attack the complacency of the civilian; to shock the reader with brutal truth.
Contrast / Shock: "Larks," "whistling" vs. "lice," "crumps," "bullet in brain." Innocent vs. Horrific.
View of the Soldier
Heroic or Irrelevant: Either a tragic hero (Irish Airman) or not worth mentioning if just a passive victim.
Victim / Martyr: A human being destroyed by machinery and lies; an "old beggar" before his time.
Dupe / Casualty: A "simple boy" betrayed by the "smug crowds" and the military machine.
Attitude to Audience
Protective: Wants to "please" them and keep them innocent.
Confrontational: Accuses them of believing "The Old Lie."
Hostile: Calls them "smug-faced" and wishes them knowledge of hell.
Temporal Focus
Cyclical / Mythic Time: Focus on the eternal human condition, ignoring the specific date.
Immediate / Traumatic Time: Focus on the "now" of the trauma ("Gas! Quick, boys!").
Psychological Time: The loss of the future ("youth and laughter go"); the haunting of the survivor.
6.2 The Validity of Both Perspectives
While history has largely sided with the humanitarian realism of Owen and Sassoon, a nuanced understanding requires us to see the value in Yeats’s position as well.
The Danger of Obsession: Yeats warned that if poetry becomes entirely consumed by political rage and physical horror, it loses its "shape" and becomes mere journalism. He feared that the "passive suffering" of the war would overwhelm the creative spirit.
The Necessity of Truth: However, Owen and Sassoon demonstrated that there are moments in history when "beauty" is a lie. When the reality is a gas attack, writing about "indolence" is an act of denial. They expanded the boundaries of poetry to include the ugly, the broken, and the pitying.
7. Conclusion: The Unresolved Dialogue
The dialogue between the silence of W.B. Yeats and the screams of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon remains one of the most vital debates in literature. It is a debate about the artist's responsibility in times of disaster.
Yeats proposed a Strategy of Survival. He believed that civilization survives only if we protect its highest values: myth, beauty, joy from the corrosive acid of war. His poem "On Being Asked for a War Poem" is a fortress built to keep the war out. It is an assertion that the "statesman" does not own the poet’s soul.
Owen and Sassoon offered a Strategy of Witness. They believed that civilization is only worth saving if it confronts its own darkness. They tore down the fortress and forced the reader to stand in the mud. They proved that "passive suffering" is not merely a valid theme for poetry, but perhaps the only honest theme for a century defined by mechanized slaughter.
After all, First World War literature requires both voices. We need Owen to tell us what the gas felt like, to strip away the "Old Lie" and force us to pity the dying man. But we also need Yeats to remind us of the "young girl" and the "old man" , the enduring humanity that exists outside the trenches, the life that we are trying to preserve, and the "tragic joy" that allows the human spirit to endure even when the center cannot hold.
Here is Youtube Video upon this blog:
Here is Presentation of Yeats The Silence The Scream and The Poet's War:
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