Strange Meeting By Wilfred Owen

I wanted to know more about Owen's poetry so I'm choosing a poem of his I have not heard of and studying it. I will not dug up any other sources on it until I have wrestled with the poem for a few days.

Strange Meeting

It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,—
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
“Strange friend,” I said, “here is no cause to mourn.”
“None,” said that other, “save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels,
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

“I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now. . . .”

FIRST READING

My first reading of it I thought it was about being in a 'shell-shock' ward where people had 'invisible' head wounds ("Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were") and crazy smiles ("By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.")



But I now see it is primarily about dying, going through a tunnel, arriving in Hell, and meeting the soldier you had killed and sent to Hell the day before ("I am the enemy you killed, my friend. Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed"). The shell-shock imagery still exists but Hell and the shell-shock ward blended together. It now reminds me of the great trips to Hell: Aeneid's tour of Hades, Odysseus pouring blood to summon dead shades, Dante talking to the damned in the Inferno.



The Hell described sound much closer to the dim Greco-Roman Hades than the fiery Christian Hell. The idea of the dead being sleepy and slow  but still anguished ("encumbered sleepers groaned")is very Hadean, so is the description of Hell as a "sullen hall". Greco-roman shades need be to awakened from their flickering limbo with offering of blood and the ruling god Pluto/Hades usually lives is a Great Hall. The whole speech by the dead soldier is also very Hadean with his bitterness toward the life stolen from him ("the undone years") and his boasts of prowess ("I went hunting wild after the wildest beauty in the world"). This is not a Christian underworld.

Yet in the trips of Dante, Aenid, Odysess to Hell/Hades the hero remained alive and was just visiting. In the poem it is harder to judge what is happening. Has the character of the poem just died on the battlefield and gone to Hell? Is this all a flash-back Owen is having? An imaginary conversation with the summoned shade of a dead German?

Owen calls it "Hell" but it more like Hades, and it is far more an encounter with a Doppleganger (or even a Ghost) than any prolonged underworld trip. It is a 'strange' meeting in many ways.

The Dead of 'Flander's Field' are somewhat similarly. McCrae's Dead miss the living world ("We are the Dead. Short days ago we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow") and are associated with sleep through poppies, but they are a giant mass demanding more blood sacrifice to help them sleep ("Take up our quarrel with the foe! If ye break faith with us who die, We shall not sleep.") In contrast, Owen's dead shade is an individual, who seems sick of war ("I would have poured my spirit without stint - but not through wounds; not on the cess of war") and the poem ends by inviting the character in the poem to join him in sleep. ("Let us sleep now. . . .”)

McCrae's act of poetic necromancy makes the 'Dead' into a faceless mass demanding more war under the threat of returning like zombies if their wishes are not followed. Owen's shade has a face ("that vision's face") and his speech is much more ambiguous mixing mourning with other emotions I haven't quite figured out.

VERSE 1

It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.

I really like the opening verse.

The tunnel imagery evokes everything from the mythic underworld to WWI underworld of trenches and sappers, from to those tunnels that appear in near-death experiences, to the tunnel we are born from. Exiting a tunnel is a simple but powerful image, especially since the tunnel was his means of escape ("I escaped down some ... tunnel")

The tunnel imagery is that of unimaginably solidity and materiality. It is a "granite" tunnel of "profound dull"-ness, that only something inhuman, like a Titan or a "titanic war", could effect.

It is like those moments when I've been in a mine and had that brief flicker of immense claustrophobia, or the weird shiver I get when standing on some exposed Canadian Shield and imaging what lies beneath - but taken to a mythic scale - it is the elemental Plane of Rock.  There is no place for the flesh amongst the universe of granite, no place for humans on the geological timescale.

The term 'groined' was not familiar to me, but it means a "vault formed by the intersection of two vaults"


The opening words are a clue to how to take the poem. "It seemed that" is a very cautious start to a poem but I think suggests the indistinct, possibly imaginary, nature of the following encounter with the Shade. He later calls the shade's face "that vision's face" and that might be a literally description, the poem is a vision Owen had.

Verse Two

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,—
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.


In the second verse we find the granite hall akin to a tomb with "sleepers" instead of corpses and instead of being fast asleep they are  "too fast in thought or death to be bestirred."   Either in thought or death they are completely self-absorbed, that sort of primitive narcissism is likely the catatonia of the shell-shocked - but it also describes soldier preparing to go over the top as this description from the great Eye-Deep in Hell where an English soldier states, "One felt ever question as an interruption of some absorbing business of mind... One by one, they realized that each much go alone, and that each of them was alone with himself. "

Owen "probes" the shades until one "sprang up" - like a soldier triggering a buried booby-trap with a stick - but the trap is a psychological one, he has triggered a buried thought, a shadowy doppelganger. The shades are "encumbered" not just with military gear but also (as we will later discover) a burden of "truth untold" and still unspent "weeping".

The shade that rises with "distressful hands" and "fixed eyes" is a soldier Owen had slain the in battle and in that moment of "piteous recognition" he realizes he is staring at a dead man and is in Hell.

I can now see the skeleton of similar sounding word that Owen uses in place of rhymes:
'scaped / scooped
groined / groaned,
'stirred / stared
eyes / bless.
hall / Hell

Verse Three

With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
“Strange friend,” I said, “here is no cause to mourn.”

Seeing the shade's face "grained", like wood or rock, with "a 1000 fears" Owen instinct is to comfort him pointing out that this otherworldly bunker is free from the sea of blood, noise and (barometric) pressures of the war raging in the overworld.

Here is the 'strange meeting' with a "Strange friend" - and it is a meeting with a "friend" unlike the Flander's Field zombies that howl for more German blood.

“None,” said that other, “save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,

The Shade agrees with Owen's reassurance with one exception, they should mourn they mutual loss of years and hope.  A sentiment that could be shared by the shell-shocked living - but it has a tone of secret understanding, the recognition changes from killed-and-killer to two young men, similar in hopes and dreams ("Whatever hope is yours, was my life also"). The Shade tells Owen that even grief  is muted in Hell/Hades compared to the "rich" grieving of his vigorous former life.

The Shades mourns not just their lost lives but the intensity of the life he was living, these are young men killed in their prime, these men were "wild" hunters who sought the "Wildest Beauty" not in peace, women, or peaceful women but by living an existence so vigorous that it mocked time itself.  This is an almost Nietzschean ideal.

For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.

Like Greco-Roman shades their is the concept that the young have a certain energy to discharge, and it this unspent energy that drives the restless dead. Owen/Shade's unspent weeping now must be spent ("my weeping ... now must die") in one blistering revelation of the truth: to see war from a perspective of empathy, compassion, pity and to focus this unbearable emotion until....

Now men will go content with what we spoiled.

...remorse. Remorse for all the male goodness gunned down in mud. Remorse that world will barely know what was truly lost.  WWI as the deathbed for a generation of European young men who embodied so much hope. After 1918 the West could trudge on but only in a degraded fashion - and soon future generations will not even recognize how degraded all has become. The Great War as the Great Despoiler of so much idealism, family love, faith.

Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.

This is where Owen/Shade moves into prophesizing that is the birthright of poets: Even worse than sinking into degradation, the "discontent" West will continue in the mad militarism of the first world war. Filled with boiling blood and a tigress' violence they will all plunge into more war abandoning the idea of civilizations' "progress." Owen sees the seeds of fascism & militarism sown in the bloody fields of the Somme and Vimy and knows how they will flower into more horror.