/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18128011]

Anyone know of some good anti-war poems or books, I'm writing an essay with a thesis about young men being drawn to war because of romanticised ideas about its true nature.
thanks cuns

[Anonymous No.18128022]

Ahh yes, I remember my first year of uni.

[Anonymous No.18128024]

the things they carried. it slaps so loud i got shellshocked

[Anonymous No.18128031]

>>18128022
You got me

[Anonymous No.18128053]

>>18128011
young men are drawn to war because it is the nature of nations to pit their young men in competition

[࿇ C Œ M G E N V S ࿇ !KNDY/Ar.iI No.18128077]

THE NOTION THAT MEN ARE ATTRACTED TO WAR DUE TO A ROMANTICIZED CONCEPTION OF IT IS ITSELF A ROMANTICISTIC NOTION; MOST MEN, AND SOME WOMEN, ARE ATTRACTED TO WAR, BECAUSE THE HEALTHY HUMAN SPIRIT IS INHERENTLY ATTRACTED TO CONFLICT, AND WAR IS THE CONFLICT BY ANTONOMASIA; WAR, AND WORLD, GO TOGETHER, AND INTO THEM COMES THE HUMAN.

THE PROBLEM OF WAR IS REDUCIBLE TO A PROBLEM OF HOW TO WAGE IT, AND ON WHAT PRINCIPLES, AND IN PRO OF WHAT END; THERE IS NO PEACE, AND THERE CAN NEVER BE PEACE; ONLY AN IDIOT WOULD EARNESTLY BELIEVE THAT HUMANS SHOULD STRIVE FOR PEACE ON EARTH, WHEN, ACTUALLY, WAR IS NEVER MORE BRUTAL AS WHEN FOR PEACE; THE ONLY SEMBLANCE OF PEACE ON EARTH THAT CAN BE ACHIEVED IS MONOPOLIZATION OF THE MINISTRATION OF CONFLICT, WHICH IS WHY A UNIVERSAL EMPIRE IS THE OPTIMAL POLITICAL ORGANIZATION.

[Anonymous No.18128082]

>>18128011
Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children

Any of his plays or poems really.

[Anonymous No.18128087]

>>18128031
Don't pay attention to this guy:
>>18128077

[Anonymous No.18128088]

>O for a voice like thunder, and a tongue
>To drown the throat of war! When the senses
>Are shaken, and the soul is driven to madness,
>Who can stand? When the souls of the oppressèd
>Fight in the troubled air that rages, who can stand?
>When the whirlwind of fury comes from the
>Throne of God, when the frowns of his countenance
>Drive the nations together, who can stand?
>When Sin claps his broad wings over the battle,
>And sails rejoicing in the flood of Death;
>When souls are torn to everlasting fire,
>And fiends of Hell rejoice upon the slain,
>O who can stand? O who hath causèd this?
>O who can answer at the throne of God?
>The Kings and Nobles of the Land have done it!
>Hear it not, Heaven, thy Ministers have done it!

[Anonymous No.18128218]

>>18128077
>ARGGG WAR! WAR! WAR! ME WANT WAR!
t. 120 lbs gormless stick who has has never been in a fight and who would be dropped in an instant

[Anonymous No.18128230]

>>18128218
Have you ever seen his photo? Spot on.

[Anonymous No.18128244]

>>18128011
Don't worry about the books lads, I've sussed it.

[Anonymous No.18128245]

>>18128011
>anti-war poems
>about young men being drawn to war because of romanticised ideas
you mean beyond wilfred owen right? his poems are exactly this

[Anonymous No.18128378]

>>18128011
WWI poetry:
Wilfred Owen
Siegfried Sassoon
Isaac Rosenberg

From WWII, Keith Douglas is worth a look. "How To Kill" is his most famous I guess. The soldier-narrator is not (directly) a victim — he's the killer, not the killed. The tragedy is his dehumanisation.

If you want an example of the "old-fashioned" poetry romanticizing war which WIlfred Owen etc were reacting against, check out Rupert Brooke's sonnets "1914".
>To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
>Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary...
He basically thinks WWI is a going to be a romantic adventure.

If you want longer prose,
Goodbye To All That (Graves)
All Quiet on the Western Front (Remarque)
The Naked & The Dead (Mailer)
Catch-22 (Heller)
are obvious examples.

(The struggle between romantic & realistic views of war is nothing new, of course. Shakespeare covered it fairly comprehensively in Henry V.)

[Anonymous No.18128390]

>>18128011
male fantasies

[Anonymous No.18128397]

>>18128011
Every single british ww1 poet, https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/9-poets-of-the-first-world-war

Here's the classic:


Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
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.

[Anonymous No.18128415]

>>18128011
Flex - Wanderer between worlds
Jünger - Storm of Steel
Mason - Four Feathers

Stop being a cowad and read them.

[Anonymous No.18128454]

>>18128397
Came here to recommend this

[Anonymous No.18128497]

>>18128011

HARK! I hear the tramp of thousands,
And of armèd men the hum;
Lo! a nation’s hosts have gathered
Round the quick alarming drum,—
Saying, ‘Come,
Freemen, come!
Ere your heritage be wasted,’ said the quick alarming drum.

Let me of my heart take counsel:
War is not of life the sum;
Who shall stay and reap the harvest
When the autumn days shall come?
But the drum
Echoed, ‘Come!
Death shall reap the braver harvest,’ said the solemn-sounding drum.

‘But when won the coming battle,
What of profit springs therefrom?
What if conquest, subjugation,
Even greater ills become?’
But the drum
Answered, ‘Come!
You must do the sum to prove it,’ said the Yankee-answering drum.

‘What if, ’mid cannons’ thunder,
Whistling shot and bursting bomb,
When my brothers fall around me,
Should my heart grow cold and numb?’
But the drum
Answered, ‘Come!
Better there in death united, than in life a recreant,—Come!’

Thus they answered,—hoping, fearing,
Some in faith, and doubting some,
Till a trumpet-voice proclaiming,
Said, ‘My chosen people, come!’
Then the drum,
Lo! was dumb.
For the great heart of the nation, throbbing, answered, ‘Lord, we come!

[Anonymous No.18128513]

>>18128011
Literature during and after The great war

[Anonymous No.18128547]

sorry too lazy to type it up

[Anonymous No.18128554]

>>18128011
Your thesis is just the thesis of Red Badge of Courage

[Anonymous No.18128652]

>>18128547
who wrote this

[Anonymous No.18128702]

i think they romanticise its true nature more like. but yeah the trope you're recycling is itself a romanticisation to make war a tragic thing and reinforce a contemporary worldview over the latent inclinations many have

[Anonymous No.18128728]

>>18128011

[Anonymous No.18128731]

>>18128011
>young men

[Anonymous No.18129884]

War and Peace. Especially Nikolay's, Pierre's, and Petya's experiences with warfare

[Anonymous No.18129914]

>>18128077
Meds

[Anonymous No.18129924]

>>18128731
Do Euros really?

[Anonymous No.18129991]

>>18128077
>THE PROBLEM OF WAR IS REDUCIBLE TO A PROBLEM OF HOW TO WAGE IT, AND ON WHAT PRINCIPLES, AND IN PRO OF WHAT END; THERE IS NO PEACE, AND THERE CAN NEVER BE PEACE

EVERYTHING IS WARRRR YOU JUST HAVE TO BE ABLE TO RECOGNIZE IT IN ALL ITS GUISES!

Pretty easy to see through this type of construction, where you've set the groundwork to argue anything as a type of war. Nonetheless, maybe it's hard to tell for you because you live in a failed Cartel-controlled state, but most of the civilised world is moving towards an HR-tenored techno-corporate welfare state where your type of Nietzchean/Schmittian/80s Hollywood Action film schizo ramblings are being sterilised out of existence. You could argue that itself is a type of 'war', but anything is war on your groundwork -- its hard to take anyone with so little discernment seriously.

[Anonymous No.18130005]

>>18128011
Check up on Isaac Rosenberg. He was an incredibly influential war-poet who was killed in The Great War. Here's one of his most famous poems:

Break of Day in the Trenches

The darkness crumbles away.
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet’s poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies.
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver—what heart aghast?
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.

[Anonymous No.18130007]

>>18129924
Buddy, those are American troids.

This country is so fucked.

[Anonymous No.18130015]

>>18128077
BASED; BASED;
BASED.

[Anonymous No.18130969]

>>18128077
Based. Ignore shills

[Anonymous No.18130992]

>>18128731
They were strategic placements to try to turn the military and prevent a coup.
Tfw your military top brass are diversity hires ahahahahahaha

[Anonymous No.18131003]

>>18129991
No need to reveal your low test. Are you a burger, because ur techno-corp welfare state won't save u when ur house gets protest'd?

[Anonymous No.18131265]

>>18128011
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton

[Anonymous No.18131309]

>>18129991
Technocorporate, drug-addicted welfare states are possible and are sustained through war. How naive and stupid can you be? Get out of your suburbanite bubble, jackass.

[Anonymous No.18131800]

>>18129991
You’re retarded.

[Anonymous No.18131847]

Boots, boots. Rudyard Kipling, there is a good version on youtune that gets very hysterical by the end.

Always stuck with me.

[Anonymous No.18131858]

>>18128218
120 pound dudes are better soldiers in modern warfare you retard.

[Anonymous No.18131929]

>>18131858
This is why deinstitutionalization was bad.

[Anonymous No.18131937]

>>18131929
brainlet

[Anonymous No.18132007]

>>18128218
Le ad hominem has arrived

[Anonymous No.18132016]

>>18128011
>Anyone know of some good anti-war poems or books
Revelation, on the bible

[Anonymous No.18132017]

>>18128011
Jarhead
Dispatches
The things they carried
All quiet on the western front
Findley's the wars

[Anonymous No.18132045]

Since lots of people are posting about WWI poetry, does anyone know of a poem where he describes a horse falling on him? I remember reading it in school but I can't seem to find it, I'm British if that helps

[Anonymous No.18132150]

>>18131937
>120 lb soldier

Manlet.

[Anonymous No.18132222]

>>18130015
HOLY KEK; BASED.

[Anonymous No.18132249]

>>18128011
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_War

[Anonymous No.18132255]

>>18128024
lmao

>>18128011
tim obrien is a good rec, OP.

[Anonymous No.18132322]

>>18128011

kamikaze by Beatrice garland, learned it from my eng lit gcse anthology

Her father embarked at sunrise
with a flask of water, a samurai sword
in the cockpit, a shaven head
full of powerful incantations
and enough fuel for a one-way
journey into history
but half way there, she thought,
recounting it later to her children,
he must have looked far down
at the little fishing boats
strung out like bunting
on a green-blue translucent sea
and beneath them, arcing in swathes
like a huge flag waved first one way
then the other in a figure of eight,
the dark shoals of fishes
flashing silver as their bellies
swivelled towards the sun
and remembered how he
and his brothers waiting on the shore
built cairns of pearl-grey pebbles
to see whose withstood longest
the turbulent inrush of breakers
bringing their father’s boat safe
- yes, grandfather’s boat – safe
to the shore, salt-sodden, awash
with cloud-marked mackerel,
black crabs, feathery prawns,
the loose silver of whitebait and once
a tuna, the dark prince, muscular, dangerous.
And though he came back
my mother never spoke again
in his presence, nor did she meet his eyes
and the neighbours too, they treated him
as though he no longer existed,
only we children still chattered and laughed
till gradually we too learned
to be silent, to live as though
he had never returned, that this
was no longer the father we loved.
And sometimes, she said, he must have wondered
which had been the better way to die.

[Anonymous No.18132343]

>>18132150
Manlets are also better soldiers in modern and future warfare.
There will only be small men and large women in the future.

[Anonymous No.18133014]

>>18128077
Read this for a second I thought I was in this >>18130794 thread. I agree people have a natural attraction to conflict and we also natural want to fuck and eat lots. This reads like the coomer take on war, a fetishized world view. If there is problem with violence it is that ends up being the territory of bloated degenerates like this.

A man can fuck, he can make himself ready to fuck, but if he is healthy he will spend most of his time not fucking.

[࿇ C Œ M G E N V S ࿇ !KNDY/Ar.iI No.18133428]

>>18133014


IF YOU BELIEVE THAT I AM ADVOCATING IN PRO OF TOTAL WAR, OR CLAIMING THAT WAR IN ITSELF IS GOOD, YOU SHOULD IMPROVE YOUR READING COMPREHENSION.

[Anonymous No.18134058]

>>18133428
It's an easy mistake to make considering you begin by tying war to the health of the human spirit and claim "there is no peace, there can never be peace." There is the potential for nuance in these ideas but the choice of using all caps doesn't imply that, it implies a forcefully aggressive assertion.
I actually agree with the words your saying, in the same way I agree with someone saying "people naturally enjoy sex and it's apart of life"
But to read
>EVERYTHING EXISTS TO FUCK, CELEBACY EXISTS ONLY TO TEMPT, ONLY A FOOL WOULD DENY THE CHANCE SPILL HIS SEED
Not necessarily a terrible thought but if I posted that idea in that way those reading it would get a certain impression of how I hold that idea and what further thoughts might stem from it.
I really don't mind the ideas you're presenting, it's just that you're presenting them like a faggot and that's on you.

[Anonymous No.18134095]

[Anonymous No.18135504]

Slaughterhouse 5?

[࿇ C Œ M G E N V S ࿇ !KNDY/Ar.iI No.18135550]

>>18134058


THAT ANALOGY IS NOT APPLICABLE; YOU MISUNDERSTAND, AND THAT IS YOUR PROBLEM, NOT MINE, SINCE MY FIRST POST IN THIS THREAD CANNOT BE ANY CLEARER.

[Anonymous No.18135578]

>>18128077
The only based tripfag.

[Anonymous No.18135587]

>>18128011
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCZamGrC_Kc

Solmaz Sharif - Look

[Anonymous No.18135593]

>>18135550
Wtf are you doing at 4 carnal

[Anonymous No.18135599]

>>18128378
>Siegfried Sassoon
glory of women has the most memorable three lines of poetry i have ever read:
O German mother dreaming by the fire
While you are knitting socks to send your son
His face is trodden deeper in the mud.