Professor David Peimer
German Poets of World War 1: A Contrast to the British Poets?
Summary
Professor David Peimer looks at World War I poetry, specifically works by German and British poets. He explores the contrast between the two in the use of language, in the ideas, in the role of nationalism, and many other things that come into it.
Professor David Peimer
David Peimer is a professor of theatre and performance studies in the UK. He has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and New York University (Global Division), and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Born in South Africa, David has won numerous awards for playwriting and directing. He has written eleven plays and directed forty in places like South Africa, New York, Brussels, London, Berlin, Zulu Kingdom, Athens, and more. His writing has been published widely and he is the editor of Armed Response: Plays from South Africa (2009) and the interactive digital book Theatre in the Camps (2012). He is on the board of the Pinter Centre in London.
Yes, I think Esther, you’re spot on. They capture the zeitgeist. What is going on in the world at their time? Sometimes poets capture it later. Let’s think of Shevchenko. He captures it. It’s a couple of decades later and others, but they’re able to tap in to the zeitgeist. That for me is the mark of a great writer. They can tap into their own zeitgeist and conscious or unconscious, doesn’t matter. And it speaks to something broad in human nature. So, it lasts beyond their time.
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Well, I don’t think it was, I think what I’m trying to show here is Rupert Brooke and Binyon, they romanticized it, and maybe even Kipling romanticized a little bit. I purposely left him out ‘cause he’s more complicated. But I don’t think most of these poets romanticized it. I think most of these German and English poets didn’t actually. And that’s why I think, again, Hemingway latches onto the fact that it’s the poets who articulate the horror and the futility of the values behind the war, not just the dying.