Soldiers' Poems: Isaac Rosenberg's (British)

¶ … soldiers' poems: Isaac Rosenberg's (British) poem and August Stramm's (German) poem in translation Comparison: Isaac Rosenberg and August Stramm Both Isaac Rosenberg and August Stramm were soldiers during World War I. Rosenberg was a British soldier; Stramm a German. Their distinct and contrasting poetic styles exemplify the literary differences between their two nations' war poetry at this historical point in time.

While both poets use images of the natural world to illustrate the impersonal and horrific nature of war, Rosenberg adopts the elegiac style typical of British trench war poets, while Stramm has a harsh, unconventional and expressionist way of addressing this theme. Isaac Rosenberg's poem "On receiving news of war" implies that the natural order of universe has been torn asunder because of man's decision to wage war. The act of warfare is compared to a killing, chilling frost that strikes in summer: "Snow is a strange white word.

/ No ice or frost / Has asked of bud or bird/For Winter's cost." The winter of war cuts short the summertime of youth. Rosenberg's poem uses concrete images of snow, cold, and dust and relatively conventional, elevated archaic language to mourn the loss of young men. Rosenberg uses complete sentences and conventional rhyme schemes as he speaks of the crimson curse of blood and the metaphorical kiss of death that turns young lives to mold. War is imagined as a physical form with fangs. "Red fangs have torn His face.

/ God's blood is shed." In contrast, the German soldier August Stramm presents words in rapid-fire succession in his poem "War grave." The poem's list is designed to hit the reader like a round of gunfire. Instead of the crafted image of the snow that begins Rosenberg's poem, Stramm merely says: "Flowers impudent/Dust shyly./Flare/Water/Glast/Forgotten." The impudent flowers mock the sacrifice of the men who lie amongst the dust.

There is a flare in the background, the flowers are watered by rain, and time goes on as men are forgotten. Not a single wasted word exists in this tribute to the waste of young life. Ideologically, the great difference between Rosenberg's conventional ode to the dead and Stramm's symbolic work is the presence of God: in Rosenberg's poem, God is a.