Recently, I submitted a piece of work in which I agreed with the generally perceived opinion that Siegfried Sassoon's autobiographical prose is imbued with a 'nostalgic' and 'melancholic' mourning for a past long lost. Sassoon laments the loss of a pre-War England that can never exist again after the devastation of the First World War.
The point seems an appropriate one to make. Britain and her inhabitants were irrevocably changed by War. Yet, this sense of loss - of nostalgia for a more innocent past - is not unique to those affected by War and makes me wonder whether it is a point worth making at all.
Surely everyone, at some point, experiences a moment of contemplation - a remembrance of things past - where they wish to be back in a time or place they inhabited at an earlier point in their life. I felt it a few days ago.
At The Thermals concert, sipping a beer at the rear of the crowd, I observed three youths (no doubt well intoxicated) dancing and jumping in time with the music, with arms around each other at the front. From my sedate position I watched their energetic appreciation of the music with a little envy. In that moment I was transposed; I remembered what it felt like when I attended concerts in years gone by, and there was sadness.
It passed quickly as these nostalgic thoughts often do (who in their right mind would seriously want a permanent return: the sweat, the hangover, the social awkwardness). It was a lament for a time gone. A time when attending concerts with friends produced an energetic release of pent up frustration (teenage angst, I suppose).
It is not a mourning for the past on a level anywhere near that of those who went through the Great War, but a mourning nonetheless. After all that, it seems a bit too obvious to draw a conclusion that the purpose of Sassoon's autobiographical writing is to mourn for a world now gone. Mental note: more insightful answers are required....
It must be added, I still very much enjoy going to concerts, and The Thermals were excellent....
Book blog success (so they say)
4 months ago
I've been re-reading Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, and what strikes me about the nostalgia is that it's for an untroubled past that never quite existed. Sassoon has given Sherston a past very different from his own, lived entirely in an idyllic countryside full of devoted old retainers keen on cricket, hunting and looking after the gentry.
ReplyDeleteThe real pre-war age was a lot more troubled, and Sassoon himself found it so. But rewriting his life as Sherston's he creates a personal myth that has been taken up by others in later years, until for many it is an important component of the myth of the War.
George, thanks for your insightful comment (the first I have received!) and apologies for the delay in responding: I have only just noticed it!
ReplyDeleteI agree with your comment and so, I believe, did Sassoon. He went on to re-address his past in 3 further volumes of autobiography where the fictional narrator was removed. However, they are still nostalgic for a past that is not entirely accurate and, in that sense, just as artificial as the Sherston Trilogy - adding to what you call his 'personal myth'.
I wonder whether this portrayal of pre-war life is down to Sassoon being purposely enigmatic or merely the problem memory plays in any autobiographical writing.