"It would be a mistake to imagine that the poppies in Great War writings get there just because they are actually there in the French and Belgian fields.
"Flanders fields are actually as dramatically profuse in bright blue cornflowers as in scarlet poppies. But blue cornflowers have no connection with English pastoral elegiac tradition, and won't do.
...Poppies had accumulated a ripe tradition of symbolism in English writing, where they had been a staple since Chaucer.
"The same principle [of literary selection––as opposed to documentary or photography] determines that of all the birds visible and audible in France, only larks and nightingales shall be selected to be remembered and 'used.'
"One notices and remembers what one has been 'coded'––usually by literature or its popular equivalent––to notice and remember.
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"(Sometimes it is really hard to shake off the conviction that this war has been written by someone.)"
--The Great War and Modern Memory, by Paul Fussell, 1975, Oxford University Press, about literature and the First World War
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Googled "chaucer and flowers". Found this.
And from the Smithsonian magazine: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-poppy-came-symbolize-world-war-i-180960836/
ReplyDeleteAt one point I think the American Legion handmade the poppies that were given out. I have my mother's scrapbook which has several handmade poppies including one from 1943.
Kirsten
I had no idea there were also blue cornflowers in the poppy fields. Why are the poppies so important the cornflowers get ignored? Is it because the poppies are red, so represent the spilled blood of wars?
ReplyDeleteAn interesting thought. Like River, I always assumed poppies were significant because of their blood-red color.
ReplyDeleteThe author was contending that poppies already had a long history in English literature (back to Chaucer)--NOT about their color, but about their properties as a drug--sleeping and forgetting...
ReplyDelete