Keith Douglas:
“Desert Flowers” and "Vergissmeinnicht”
Introduction to Keith Douglas
Keith Douglas is one of the best soldier-poets of World War II. Some critics have said his attitude toward death and suffering can make some readers uncomfortable. But, Douglas’s approach was to give a stripped-down presentation of the often difficult realities on the battlefield, and he did not hide this with his choice of words. He described his method as “extrospective,” which means he did not want to hide the brutality of warfare, but wanted to write it honestly and directly, leaving readers to process the disturbing contents themselves. Douglas allows the images he experienced on the battlefield to speak for themselves.
Keith Douglas is one of the best soldier-poets of World War II. Some critics have said his attitude toward death and suffering can make some readers uncomfortable. But, Douglas’s approach was to give a stripped-down presentation of the often difficult realities on the battlefield, and he did not hide this with his choice of words. He described his method as “extrospective,” which means he did not want to hide the brutality of warfare, but wanted to write it honestly and directly, leaving readers to process the disturbing contents themselves. Douglas allows the images he experienced on the battlefield to speak for themselves.
Douglas came from a background filled with difficulties; his parents divorced, and his father lost interest in him. His mother was sick a lot, and they were very close to poverty. However, because Douglas had clear intellectual talent, and he was able to attend Oxford University. His tutor at Oxford was a World-War I soldier-poet, Edmund Blunden.
Douglas joined the British army in 1941, rising to the rank of captain. A year later, he joined active fighting in North Africa, disobeying orders to remain behind the lines. He ended up commanding a squadron of tanks that battled the German forces and wrote a book about his experience titled From Alamein to Zem Zem (1946). After being a part of the Allied victory over the Germans in North Africa, he transferred to active duty in Europe and participated in the D-Day invasion of Normandy. He was killed in action three days after D-Day, on June 9, 1944. Only one collection of his poetry, Selected Poems (1943), was published during his lifetime. All of his other works were published after his death.
SELECTED WORK:
Desert Flowers - Poem by Keith Douglas Living in a wide landscape are the flowers - Rosenberg I only repeat what you were saying - the shell and the hawk every hour are slaying men and jerboas, slaying the mind: but the body can fill the hungry flowers and the dogs who cry words at nights, the most hostile things of all. But that is not news. Each time the night discards draperies on the eyes and leaves the mind awake I look each side of the door of sleep for the little coin it will take to buy the secret I shall not keep. I see men as trees suffering or confound the detail and the horizon. Lay the coin on my tongue and I will sing of what the others never set eyes on. |
Interpretation
The flowers in the first line and the poem’s title comes from the poem by John McCrae, “In Flanders Fields” (1915) an elegy that compares the dead soldiers’ blood to the red color of the poppies that grow between their graves. Ever since then, red poppies have been connected with fallen soldiers. However, Douglas is really referring to Isaac Rosenberg’s poem “Break of Day in the Trenches” (1916).19 Rosenberg’s poem has the words, “Poppies whose roots are in men’s veins.” This line appears in “Desert Flowers” when we read that “the body can fill the hungry flowers.” In all three poems, the idea of poppies (or any flower) being fertilized by decaying human bodies is a common one.
The flowers in the first line and the poem’s title comes from the poem by John McCrae, “In Flanders Fields” (1915) an elegy that compares the dead soldiers’ blood to the red color of the poppies that grow between their graves. Ever since then, red poppies have been connected with fallen soldiers. However, Douglas is really referring to Isaac Rosenberg’s poem “Break of Day in the Trenches” (1916).19 Rosenberg’s poem has the words, “Poppies whose roots are in men’s veins.” This line appears in “Desert Flowers” when we read that “the body can fill the hungry flowers.” In all three poems, the idea of poppies (or any flower) being fertilized by decaying human bodies is a common one.
Douglas’s poem refers to both McCrae’s famous elegy and Rosenberg’s theme of military technology’s power to kill at random. In line two, Douglas refers directly to Rosenberg by admitting that “I only repeat what you were saying,” but he does this in his own way. Rosenberg talks about a trench rat interacting with both English and German soldiers, showing that nature doesn’t care about human warfare.
The desert rat in Douglas’s poem has a different meaning. A jerboa is a small rodent, or desert rat, living in North Africa. These rats are good at getting away from predators, making Douglas’s reference to Rosenberg’s trench rat ironic. The nickname “Desert Rats” was used for the Seventh Armoured Division of the British Army Corps in North Africa. Unlike the rat in Rosenberg’s poem that is spared from the destruction of war, even the smartest animals (and troops) become victims of the shells and hawks (bomber airplanes) that bring destruction, “slaying men and jerboas” alike. There is a loss of sympathy here, as the speaker in Douglas’s poem compares suffering men to fallen trees.
There is additional irony in “Desert Flowers” – consider the first word of the poem, “living.” A war poem that starts this way creates an ironic tone. It is also ironic that men on the battlefield notice the fragile flowers around them, not touched by the fighting. These flowers are perennial, meaning they return year after year as if reborn, unlike the soldiers. Finally, in stanza two, he says that the horrors of the battlefield are “not news,” recalling a famous antiwar novel’s title All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), by Erich Maria Remarque. This title is sarcastic since World War I was the scene of horrific massacres on the Western Front.
The ironic tone of the first two stanzas shifts to a darker, sinister mood in the last two. When the speaker says, “I look each side of the door of sleep,” he realizes that death and sleep are close to one another, because sleep is a temporary kind of death and also because death might come up suddenly while a soldier is asleep. The coin in the last two lines of the poem is an allusion to the Greek habit of laying a coin on the tongue of a dead person to use as payment to Acheron, the ferryman of Greek mythology who took the souls of the dead across the River Styx in the underworld. This reference shows us that Douglas was completely prepared to die in battle, which he did while fighting in France on June 9, 1944. His literary model, Isaac Rosenberg also died in battle, on April 1, 1918, completing a real-life irony as well.
Form
“Desert Flowers” uses a regular stanza structure with four lines per stanza and a rhyme scheme that follows an abab, cdcd, etc. pattern. The rhymes are either full rhymes (“awake” / “take”) or “half-rhymes,” as in the pairing of “words” / “discards.” While the pleasant sounds created by the full rhymes convey the idea of order and design, a rhyme pattern this neat would not fully communicate the violent, tense imagery or the ironic tone of the poem. Thus, by using both full and half rhymes, the poet reinforces through formal poetic devices the unsettling ideas presented in the content of the poem.
“Desert Flowers” uses a regular stanza structure with four lines per stanza and a rhyme scheme that follows an abab, cdcd, etc. pattern. The rhymes are either full rhymes (“awake” / “take”) or “half-rhymes,” as in the pairing of “words” / “discards.” While the pleasant sounds created by the full rhymes convey the idea of order and design, a rhyme pattern this neat would not fully communicate the violent, tense imagery or the ironic tone of the poem. Thus, by using both full and half rhymes, the poet reinforces through formal poetic devices the unsettling ideas presented in the content of the poem.
SELECTED WORK: Vergissmeinnicht - Poem by Keith Douglas
Three weeks gone and the combatants gone returning over the nightmare ground we found the place again, and found the soldier sprawling in the sun. The frowning barrel of his gun overshadowing. As we came on that day, he hit my tank with one like the entry of a demon. Look. Here in the gunpit spoil the dishonoured picture of his girl who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht. in a copybook gothic script. We see him almost with content, abased, and seeming to have paid and mocked at by his own equipment that's hard and good when he's decayed. But she would weep to see today how on his skin the swart flies move; the dust upon the paper eye and the burst stomach like a cave. For here the lover and killer are mingled who had one body and one heart. And death who had the soldier singled has done the lover mortal hurt. Keith Douglas |
Interpretation
“Vergissmeinnicht” is a German word that translated means “forget me not.” But, it is also the name of a beautiful, very blue flower, just as it is in English. This plant’s name used to be a common expression among Germans and in the poem it has two meanings; first, as a reminder for a man not to forget his lover and also, to create the idea that the lover is like a delicate flower.
“Vergissmeinnicht” is a German word that translated means “forget me not.” But, it is also the name of a beautiful, very blue flower, just as it is in English. This plant’s name used to be a common expression among Germans and in the poem it has two meanings; first, as a reminder for a man not to forget his lover and also, to create the idea that the lover is like a delicate flower.
In this poem, within the context of war the name of the flower and the soldier, missing a girl, Steffi takes on new, darker meaning. The poem shows the brutal contrast between tender (delicate) words like the flowers and the reality of where these words are written, in a hand-written note found on the rotting corpse of a German soldier. This contrast creates an image of spoiled love. In another contrasting image, the gun is still solid, while the man who used the gun is rotting beneath it. This image brings together a personification of Eros, the god of love with a personification of Thantos, the god of death.
The poem’s speaker has mixed feelings about the dead soldier who is his enemy. First, he feels “almost content” to see his enemy conquered, but this feeling of victory is overshadowed by the sense of shared humanity with him. The speaker sympathizes with Steffi’s loss and this is shown by the word “dishonored” in stanza two. Ask yourself, what does Douglas mean by this word? Has the dead soldier dishonored Steffi by losing the fight? Is her memory dishonored because her delicate handwriting is held by dead flesh? Or is the dishonor even the winner’s, since the speaker does nothing to bury the man or remove the note from the dead man’s hand? The ambivalence (mixed feelings) is a powerful way the poet stops the reader and makes him consider the multiple meanings of honor in war.
Form
The poem follows a regular four-line stanza pattern, with eight or nine syllables per verse. The rhyme scheme of the first half of the poem is not regular: abba, aaaa, followed by paired half-rhymes in the third stanza (“ccdd”); the second half of the poem has a more regular rhyme scheme of mostly alternating full rhymes: efef, ghgh, ijij. The rhyme scheme of the stanzas one and two helps to emphasize the theme of the first eight lines: the first stanza describes a return to the same place, an idea paralleled in the abba rhyming, while the second stanza’s rhyming form reminds the reader of the idea of the dead soldier, since the rhyme and the soldier both “go nowhere.”
The poem follows a regular four-line stanza pattern, with eight or nine syllables per verse. The rhyme scheme of the first half of the poem is not regular: abba, aaaa, followed by paired half-rhymes in the third stanza (“ccdd”); the second half of the poem has a more regular rhyme scheme of mostly alternating full rhymes: efef, ghgh, ijij. The rhyme scheme of the stanzas one and two helps to emphasize the theme of the first eight lines: the first stanza describes a return to the same place, an idea paralleled in the abba rhyming, while the second stanza’s rhyming form reminds the reader of the idea of the dead soldier, since the rhyme and the soldier both “go nowhere.”