Lament for the Lamenting: Siegfried Sassoon

Maikel O'Hanlon (September 27, 1999): English 354/Finley

(See peer comments by Alex Lehr)

Siegfried Sassoon's poem, "Lamentations," is the commonplace interplay between

two of the war's most disconnected participants. The immediate irony, however, is that

this irreparable schism does not span enemy lines. Rather, the acutest separation of

rationale, comprehension, and understanding occurs between the English field soldier and

his highest ranking officers. The stoic, I, in this poem is the English army's administrative

officer, while the character that endures wanton dissection at the hand of the officer is

England's gallant son. And the lasting effect of this juxtaposition between experienced,

knowing soldier and oblivious, unscathed commanding officer is that it is the trifling

perception of the officer that is lamentable.

The poem is saturated with images that intimate, and define the gulf of disparate

experiences distancing the two critical players. The opening line places the happenstance of

officer and soldier in the guard-room with the connotation, understood from the officer's

narration, that the soldier is in a manner of being detained. The guard-room, then, takes on

the quality of a guarded room, and the suggestion that the soldier is unfit in his condition to

be left unsupervised locates the first trace of pitiable irony. In essence, the soldier who

knows what war is about and what it means is kept under watch while the officer who is

naive of the war's very nuances has free reign to conduct the most important of tactical

affairs. The exasperation of this absurd situation is intensified if it is believed that the

officer has ordered this detainment as a pertinent injunction at the cost of further ignoring

the situation of international war which is more important.

The next image strengthening the insurmountable gulf between soldier and officer is

more of a representative manifestation of the space occupying the gulf, itself. The officer

recalls, "From the blind darkness I had heard his crying..." Though unlikely that the

officer is consciously admitting to being in the dark as regards his soldier's plight, it is

exactly where he is. The fact that the officer attests to hearing his soldier's cries can be

interpreted as a misapprehension on the grounds that because he is veiled in darkness,

whatever reaches the officer's senses has been altered by the not wholly permeable veil.

On account of his senses being dimmed by the darkness of ignorance, the officer can not

fully apprehend in truth the meaning or form of what registers on his senses. It follows

wonderfully, furthermore, that the officer continues his recollection by noting that he

blundered in upon his soldier. Indeed, the clumsily intrusive manner of blundering is the

only entrance that the officer could accomplish since the darkness which surrounds his

comprehension of the situation would naturally foil an assuaging and calming entrance.

The event which occurs next is likely most telling on the division of experience

between officer and soldier primarily because, at first, it does not seem to fit the reading of

the poem as done up to this point. The officer tells how a sergeant, all the while

maintaining a puzzled, but patient face, watches over the soldier who howls and beats his

chest. Initially, the dearth of emotion on behalf of the attending sergeant does not appear to

make sense because a sergeant is a member of the fighting league of army combatants, and

would thus, expectedly, show some compassion or comprehension at another fighting

man's travails. It would make sense of the officer to bear such an unemotional

countenance in the presence of extreme grief because his tasks are so far removed from the

field where grief consumes men, but not the sergeant. It is here that the prior conclusions

of the poem up to said event, once again take their familiar and intelligible shape.

Effectively, the officer, unable to process the outward manifestation of internal strife in the

soldier is likewise dumbfounded at recognizing compassion towards the horror-stricken

comrade in the face of the ministering sergeant. Able only to call on his limited sensations,

and relate in these terms as well, the officer transposes his confoundedness at the

convulsions of the soldier onto the attending sergeant.

The officer shows himself to be completely inept at rationalizing the soldier's

condition when towards the close of his recollection, he utterly separates the soldier's

consuming grief from the soldier's dejected body. Here, again, the officer has effected a

transposition, but this time in the finality of himself upon the soldier. The soldier is to be

solely of sound body like himself. The officer is nowhere near perceiving how such

mental bankruptcy could enter upon the soldier's character. This conviction puts the officer

in the position to sum his recollection into a definitive standpoint on the worth of soldiers

like the one he has observed. The officer appears to finish by saying, "In my belief/ Such

men have lost all patriotic feeling." Reading this last sentiment in the fashion of the entire

poem, however, calls up a little skepticism that it is indeed the officer who speaks this last

line. Rather, the officer's recollection seemingly fits ending with his picture of the

soldier's body lying apart from mental anguish, and it is Sassoon's voice that decidedly

takes up the final verdict. The disdain for unpatriotic men thus falls upon the ignorant

officer who bears no fervent compassion for his patriotic soldiers, and it is this apathetic

position of the officer that is lamentable.