BOOK II ‘INFERNAL SURVIVALS’

BOOK II ‘INFERNAL SURVIVALS’ describes Wilfred Owen’s experiences after his arrival in France until he was invalided out due to shell-shock in May 1917; the ‘battles’ at Serre and Fancilly-Selencey; his arrival at Craiglockhart Officers Hospital; his treatment for ‘neurasthenia’, that is, ‘shell-shock’ – which we call today ‘post-traumatic-stress-disorder’; his gradual ‘recovery’; his meeting Sassoon; his introduction to such as H.G Wells, Arnold Bennett, Robbie Ross, Scott Moncrieff, Violet Gordon Woodhouse, Osbert Sitwell – Scarborough and Ripon – visits to London – his period of intense productivity as  a Poet, particularly at Borage Lane, Ripon  – his Medical ‘boarding’ as fit to return to the Front; the ‘conspiracies’ contending on the one hand to keep him home and, on the other, to send him back to fight.

Book II ends with his ‘apotheosisic’ experiences in August 1918 – his coming to London, his visit to Violet Gordon Woodhouse, his visit to Osbert Sitwell and the Physic Garden and his farewell to Sassoon ‘on the steps of Lancaster Gate’ – (which still exist to this day, in fact) – and including his ‘meeting’ with the ‘Harrow Boy’ on Folkestone beach – he then departs again to fight in France, taking the Ferry from Folkestone back to Calais.

Overall, this biographical novel covers the life of Wilfred Owen – January 1917 to August 1918

BOOK II ‘INFERNAL SURVIVALS’  is available to purchase on Amazon Kindle in 4 Sections as follows:-

THE SILVER SWAN
BOOK II ‘INFERNAL SURVIVALS’
SECTION 1
WAR -THE FRONT – IN ACTION – INVALIDED TO ENGLAND JANUARY TO MAY 1917

 

THE SILVER SWAN BOOK II 'INFERNAL SURVIVALS' SECTION 1 WAR -THE FRONT - IN ACTION - INVALIDED TO ENGLAND JANUARY TO MAY 1917
THE SILVER SWAN BOOK II ‘INFERNAL SURVIVALS’ SECTION 1 WAR -THE FRONT – IN ACTION – INVALIDED TO ENGLAND JANUARY TO MAY 1917

THE SILVER SWAN
BOOK II ‘INFERNAL SURVIVALS’
SECTION 2
‘REPRESSION OF WAR EXPERIENCE’ CRAIGLOCKHART HOSPITAL – MEETS SASSOON ANTHEM & POETRY – RIPON – SCARBOROUGH – LONDON – MAY 1917 TO JUNE 1918

THE SILVER SWAN BOOK II 'INFERNAL SURVIVALS' SECTION 2 'REPRESSION OF WAR EXPERIENCE' CRAIGLOCKHART HOSPITAL - MEETS SASSOON ANTHEM & POETRY - RIPON - SCARBOROUGH - LONDON - MAY 1917 TO JUNE 1918
THE SILVER SWAN BOOK II ‘INFERNAL SURVIVALS’ SECTION 2 ‘REPRESSION OF WAR EXPERIENCE’ CRAIGLOCKHART HOSPITAL – MEETS SASSOON ANTHEM & POETRY – RIPON – SCARBOROUGH – LONDON – MAY 1917 TO JUNE 1918

THE SILVER SWAN
BOOK II ‘INFERNAL SURVIVALS’
SECTION 3
LOVE AND SORROWS – THE HEREFORDSHIRE GARDNER’S BOY – RIEVAULX ABBEY – JULY 1918

THE SILVER SWAN BOOK II 'INFERNAL SURVIVALS' SECTION 3 LOVE AND SORROWS - THE HEREFORDSHIRE GARDNER'S BOY - RIEVAULX ABBEY - JULY 1918
THE SILVER SWAN BOOK II ‘INFERNAL SURVIVALS’ SECTION 3 LOVE AND SORROWS – THE HEREFORDSHIRE GARDNER’S BOY – RIEVAULX ABBEY – JULY 1918

THE SILVER SWAN
BOOK II ‘INFERNAL SURVIVALS’
SECTION 4
SUBLIMITIES, APOTHEOSES & THE FINALITIES OF FATE, BOARDED BACK TO THE FRONT, AUGUST 1918

 

THE SILVER SWAN BOOK II 'INFERNAL SURVIVALS' SECTION 4 SUBLIMITIES, APOTHEOSES & THE FINALITIES OF FATE, BOARDED BACK TO THE FRONT, AUGUST 1918
THE SILVER SWAN BOOK II ‘INFERNAL SURVIVALS’ SECTION 4 SUBLIMITIES, APOTHEOSES & THE FINALITIES OF FATE, BOARDED BACK TO THE FRONT, AUGUST 1918

The following details the four SECTIONS of Book II and Chapters contained within each section

SECTION 1 – Book II – Length on Kindle 347 pages

  • Chapter 1 – 1917 – The Front, North-West France – experience at Serre as Officer in charge of several former German dug-outs in No-Man’s-Land
  • Chapter 2 – 1917 – Fayet and Francilly-Selencey ‘battles’ – Cérisy Casualty Clearing Station (experience/s for Hospital Barge and other poems) – Final Neurasthenia diagnosis – Invalided to England – May 1917

The Chapters – Book II – SECTION 1

  • Chapter 1 – Book II – January 1917
    The Front – North-West France – Assemblage Calvarias Golgothia – from Latin:  Calvaria  and from Hebrew: Golgöleth) – The Place of the Skull – … The awful state of the roads and the enormous weight carried, was too much for scores of men. Officers also carried full packs, but I had a horse part of the way … – SERRE – January 1917 – Owen left in charge of dug-outs in No-Man’s Land – The (blinded) Sentry – (experience/s for poems including – ‘The Sentry’) – Kills a German Scout hand to hand – (experience/s for poem ‘Strange Meeting’)
  • Chapter 2 – Book II – Spring 1917
    The German Defensive Posture – Spring 1917 – Progressive Neurasthenia – Fayet & Francilly-Selency ‘battles’  – Cérisy Casualty Clearing Station (experience/s for poem ‘Hospital Barge’ and other poems) –  Final Neurasthenia – Invalided to England, May 1917

SECTION 2 – Book II – May 1917 onwards –  Length on Kindle 699 Pages

  • Chapter 3 – 1917 – Craiglockhart 1 – Drs Rivers and Brock
  • Chapter 4 – 1917 – Mother’s visit to Edinburgh
  • Chapter 5 – 1917 – Craiglockhart 2 – Meets Sassoon – Anthem for Doomed Youth
  • Chapter 6 – 1917 – Craiglockhart 3 – Dr Brock and treatment for neurasthenia
  • Chapter 7 – November 1917 to June 1918London – Ross – Winchester – Shrewsbury – Scarborough  Ripon and again Scarborough – Dramatis Personae – Sassoon, Scott Moncrief, Robbie Ross, Arnold Bennett, H.G Wells, Leslie Gunston

The Chapters – Book II – Section 2

  • Chapter 3 –  Book II
    Craiglockhart I – Dr Brock and Dr Rivers – Tuesday, 19th June 1917 – they decide which patients to take individually – they discuss Sassoon and Owen Wilfred Owen and Dr Brock – first meeting – Wednesday, 27th June 1917 at Craiglockhart
  • Chapter 4 – Book II
    The Mother Comes To Edinburgh to visit her son (apparently strangely unwillingly) – July 1917 – visit to the Newboults’ tiny house and ‘Chubby Cubby’ (experience/s for poem ‘Sweet is your antique body, not yet young’)
  • Chapter 5 – Book II
    Craigkockhart II – Siegfried Sassoon’s Open Letter to the Nation – Circumstances of his being at Craiglockhart (when not actually neurasthenic!) – Owen meets Sassoon – joint work on Poem ‘Anthem 1’ – Owen and Sassoon further hone text of ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ – – ‘Anthem II’ – Sassoon and Owen have further discussions about ‘Anthem’ various versions are considered – Sassoon writes suggestions on a draft of the poem – poem is ‘finalized’. Descriptions of Sassoon’s and Owen’s natures (and Sassoon’s poetic ‘agenda’) contrasted.
  • Chapter 6 – Book II
    Craiglockhart III  – Dr Brock – Relationship and various experiences of (mostly ‘quack’) treatments – ‘Soldier’s Dream’ poem – assessment – Dr Brock  – example – “Owen, about earlier to-day … I’ve thought about it … I can now assure you that you are now no longer neurasthenic … no longer neurasthenic … I assure you … but … a warning also … you are still recovering from it … there will be set-backs, but they will not be neurasthenia … but rather its aftermath …”
  • Chapter 7 – Book II
    CRUX  ARTIS – ARS CRUCIS  –The bird sings … He does not have an answer …  He sings because he has a song to sing … A very important formative chapter – November 1917 to June 1918London – Ross – Winchester – Shrewsbury – Scarborough  Ripon and again Scarborough – Dramatis Personae – Sassoon, Scott Moncrief, Robbie Ross, Arnold Bennett, H.G Wells, Leslie Gunston  – intense work on new poems and revising of poems – Borage Lane house at Ripon – light army duties for ‘recovery’ from shell-shock.

SECTION 3 – Book II – Length on Kindle 67 pages

  • Chapter 8 – Jones and visit to the ruins of Rievaulx Abbey – July 1918.

The Chapter – SECTION 3 – Book II

  • Chapter 8
    Jones and Owen visit to the ruins of Rievaulx Abbey – July 1918 – Exegesis – Jones, Owen’s batman, (described by Owen variously as a ‘Herefordshire gardener’s boy’ and, ‘homosexual-coded’, probably, as a ‘Londoner’). They swim together  – Jones’ past – beginnings of an intimate, homo-erotic relationship.

SECTION 4 – Book II – Length on Kindle 465 pages

  • Chapter 9
    August 1918 – Last month in England – home-life-apotheosis – important visits and meetings – e.g., Sassoon, Sitwells, Violet Gordon Woodhouse, ‘Harrow Boy’ – machinations to prevent his going and his being sent back to the Front – final Medical Board at which is was ‘boarded’ fit – ‘resignation to fate’ – Final Embarkation for France

The Chapter – Book II – Section 4

  •  Chapter 9 – Book II
    AUGUST 1918 – APOTHEOSIS and APODEĂEMOSIS – Of Gods and Dreads or GRAND LYRIC SUITE IN NINETEEN PARTS or 19 Studies in the Minor Keys – Aphorism : Reality’s unreality is its own reality.

A truly ‘apotheotic’ chapter.
Of all that I have written, this chapter has a very special place for me – in the sense of Berlioz’s comment towards the end of his life, that his Requiem would always have a special place for him.

For Owen, August 1918 was utterly fateful – both in very good and in very bad ways.

In the end the ‘bad’ won, in the sense that he is sent back to France – resigned to what might happen.

The meeting with the Harrow Boy is quite extraordinary – he related it in two letters – one to his Mother and another to Sassoon.

It is too like the finale of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice to be taken as completely an actuality.

In my opinion, he met this Boy, but it was also a ‘bliss-experience’ – and becomes his own personal experience similar to that described in Death in Venice – but his vision is of life, not of death – it is a visionary meeting with Eros in all the god’s best guises.

The novel follows that scenario – and leaves open whether the meeting was wholly fact or wholly hallucinatory vision, or partly reality and partly hallucination.

The whole month for him was fateful in the extreme – particularly his examination by the Medical Board, whose (false) finding, eventually, was that he was fit to return to the Front.

The ‘odd’ circumstances surrounding this are related in this chapter.

Today, we now know that post-traumatic-stress-disorder cannot be cured by the sort of treatments used at Craiglockhart – the best they could do was to make patients merely functional to go back to fight – solely to turn them into instinctive and ‘robotic’ soldiers.

Owen clearly suffered from PTSD – Dr Brock made him functional  … as a soldier-automaton – but that was all – when he returned to France it is more than probable that he was still a PTSD sufferer.

This chapter – indeed the whole novel – adopts this scenario – PTSD is in the background all the time after his appalling experiences at the Front in 1917.