Faculty of Philosophy of the Jagiellonian University; Facta Ficta Research Centre in Krakow - Collegium Broscianum.

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The title of the conference is “Dread, Horror and Terror: Cultural and historical contexts”, and was held on 16 March – 17 March, 2019. Mgr D.P.G. Sheridan gave a lecture on Australian Great War Poetry, called, “As a Choir of Frogs”: Nightmares in Australian Great War Poetry, at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Faculty of Philosophy, Poland.

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Abstract

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In the poetry of two Australian Great War poets, Frederic Manning and Leon Gellert, it may be observed that soldiers formed a strange relationship with the dead. The images both haunted and tormented them, and through their poetry it may be seen that soldiers lived in a constant state of dread and fear which became an intrinsic state of the sub-conscious. Manning said that the battle fields were “the damned circles where Dante trod”, and in so saying, recognised that he was in a hell where the dead and dying would become “the carrion of rats and crows”. Gellert similarly said that he “strolled to hell” where the “world rolls wet with blood and the skinny hand of Death gropes at the beating heart”.

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            Their visions were horrific, and in many ways, they explain the supressed shell-shock realities of the post-war years many soldiers suffered. Manning notably saw in his nightmares a boy’s face, delicate and blond, coming to him out of a cloud through a mist of blood, and in this boy’s face, symbolic of innocence, he saw it as a wraith of sleep, haunting and troubling him with its trembling lips, convulsing with terror and hate. Shockingly, Manning says that it was the very mask of God, broken by the horrors of war.

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            Manning’s and Gellert’s nightmares stand as poetic examples of the soldier’s wartime hell. Gellert writes that ‘the scythe of time runs red, while a Foul Voice screams and Fear runs shrieking by the wall’. These mad images inform the reader of a mind tormented by sights too hideous to reconcile, and show the poet’s sub-conscious dread of the terror he must live with, day and night, possibly for the rest of his life. Manning also gives graphic images of the dead in the field of war. He says, “Dead are the lips where love laughed or sang”, and here we come to understand why so many war veterans didn’t want to talk about the war.

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            However, another Australian poet, Frank Westbrook, gives a glimpse of hope in his poem, “Brown Eyes”, where we can see that there were some dreams that kept safe the sanity of the soldier in war. Yet, he asks the question; “How can such two brown lustrous eyes disturb my dreams with dreams of warmer skies?” How, indeed, can a nightmare be interrupted by a dream? However, for many, the terrors of war were too strong to be disturbed by happy dreams. The nightmare of war was, for some, far too dark to shed any light of hope so that the soldier could escape the dread, horror and terror of hell’s fury.

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This paper looks at the relationship between demons and soldiers, and how the nightmares of war translated into incredibly sensitive poetry. Australian Great War poets such as Manning and Gellert, to name but two of the many, were able to give witness to the nightmares many soldiers had, but they were not able to escape their relationship with the dead of war; a relationship that they lived with throughout the years of the war and beyond.