The War in the air
For a
saving grace, we didn't see our dead,
Who rarely
bothered coming home to die
But simply
stayed away out there
In the
clean war, the war in the air.
Seldom the
ghosts come back bearing their tales
Of hitting
the earth, the incompressible sea,
But stayed
up there in the relative wind,
Shades
fading in the mind,
Who had no
graves but only epitaphs
Where
never so many spoke for never so few:
Per ardua,
said the partisans of Mars,
Per
aspera, to the stars.
That was
the good war, the war we won
As if
there was no death, for goodness's sake.
With the
help of the losers we left out there
In the air, in the empty air.
Interpretation: The War in the air
The poem is called “The war in
the air” and it is written by Howard Nemerov. The main topic of the poem is the
war and it tells us the stories of the soldier who “never came home to die”
(line 2). The lyrical I speaks about the war and about the death. It feels
sorry for all the dead soldiers and about these who won a battle but lost the
war. It seems like there is no winner in the war. I guess the poem was written
after World War 1 or after World War 2. The author seems very glad to be one of
the men who survived. He is shining with
gratitude and that’s the reason because I think he was one of the soldiers. The
first line “we didn’t see our dead” supports this impression.
The second two lines of each
stanza paint a different picture maybe an image of vacuity and despair: “out
there / in the clean war, the war in the air” (lines 3-4), “in the relative
wind” (line 7), “to the stars” (line 12), and “in the empty air” (line 16). All
this images are kind of something which is hard to describe and to define
because it never ends. It is similar to the war, because it is too horrible to
describe detailed. During war there is no sureness and the normal human values
don’t count anymore. There is also compare between the soldiers who died on the
battlefield with all the blood, the bodies and the dramatic art. On the other
side the soldiers who died in the air (“The War in the air”) and struggled by
themselves and there is only blankness and nobody has seen or heard something.
This blankness is maybe another proof for the despair which the author wanted
to crush with this poem. The soldiers that survived the “The War in the air”
didn’t see their fallen comrades and all the violence and explosions and they
didn’t see the eyes and the harm of their enemies.
Maybe the “clean war”, (line
4) it “the war in the air” and maybe the author thinks it is easier to handle
all these horrible impressions if you were in the “clean war”.
In the last stanza the author
writes about the “good war” and to win a war. I think about the question if you
really can win a war without death and violence? And when life is lost, what is
won?
Information about author
Howard
Nemerov was born in year 1920 in New York City and he died in year 1991. His
parents were very wealthy and they had a store on the fifth avenue in the
center of New York. He went to the Harvard
University and got many awards for
his work in literature and lyric.
During the
World War 2 he was a pilot of the United States Army Air Forces and also of the
Royal Canadian Air Force. After the war he was a teacher for literature at many
different colleges.
He wrote
many poems about the war and violence and he tried represent these issues with
a kind or comic.
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