Genteel Anarchism: Herbert Read's Poetry of Two Wars

• Published in: Literature and history Vol. 16; no. 1; pp. 59 - 76
• Main Author: Klaus, H. Gustav
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.05.2007; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: American literature; Anarchism; Autobiographies; Avant-garde; British & Irish literature; Conscientious objectors; Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns) (1888-1965); German literature; Literary criticism; Modernism; Pacifism; Poetry; Politics; Pound, Ezra (1885-1972); Read, Herbert Edward, Sir (1893-1968); Remarque, Erich Maria (1898-1970); World War I; Writers
• ISSN: 0306-1973; 2050-4594
• DOI: 10.7227/LH.16.1.4

[...]he claims, for example, in his autobiography Annals of Innocence and Experience, first published in 1940, that his anarchist beliefs reach back to his formative years before the First World War. Whatever pull is more powerful at any given moment will command adherence. [...]it is possible to account for such startling paradoxes as flirting with classicism at one moment and embracing romanticism at another, championing avant-garde art and editing the establishment Burlington Magazine, or turning to Anarchism in 1937-38 and accepting a knighthood fifteen years later.5 The point, then, is not to condemn Read's enlistment in the First World War, merely to suggest that, writing as he did in 1940, he could have acknowledged the frenzied pressure of ideological integration to which he had been subject; for other options were open and taken in the summer of 1914, right under his nose. [...]it took the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, and the part played by Anarchists in the concomitant social revolution, for Read to break out of his reserve. Quoting from Read's works is no straightforward matter, for the author did not only revise and add but also regrouped his poems in successive Collected Poems (1926, 1946, 1966). [...]the sequence 'The Scene of War' discussed in the following consisted originally of six sections, with roman numerals (1919, 1926 and 1946 versions), before 'My Company' and 'The Execution of Cornelius Vane' were aligned with the others and given the numerals VII and VIII (1966 version).