SASSOON AND OWEN’S DEPRESSIVE ANDMELANCHOLIC TONE OF LOSS

Indeed, many poets have written about wars of which they have had no direct experience. However, the poet fighters Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (1886-1967) and Wilfred Edward Salter Owen (1893-1918) have the firsthand experience and actual knowledge of what war can do, both to the body and to the psyche. During and even before The First World War, both of them, lost friends and their family members, faith in God, and finally their existence. They were homesick and depressed for being away from the family and friends and even their homeland. Sassoon’s brother was killed in the action in The Great War and he lost a very close friend as well. It was not that different for Owen as he also lost some friends as well in the battle field. However, it is obvious that the concept of loss and its depressive and melancholic tone play a major role in their poetry. Indeed, it cannot be denied that the melancholic tone, physical and mental loss such as loss of (a) friends(s), health and youth, loss of faith and trust, loss of moral identity which are all either associated with melancholia or are its symptoms, have a noticeable frequency in Owen and Sassoon’s poems. In this essay, the above mentioned motifs which are prerequisites of mourning and melancholia are discussed briefly. In consequence, loss, both physical and mental, is another issue in Sassoon and Owen’s war poetry.