WAR IN ART AND LITERATURE: LINKING ‘GUERNICA’ AND ‘ANTHEM FOR THE DOOMED YOUTH’

'GUERNICA:THE PAINTING'

                 Wars, especially the world wars, had been the central theme of many paintings, poems, short stories and novels of all languages and all nationalities throughout the 20^th century.Among them, what struck me the most is “GUERNICA’ by Pablo Picasso and ‘ANTHEM FOR THE DOOMED YOUTH’, a poem by Wilfred Owen.Both the works expresses extreme hatred for war, which reflects the disturbed mental state of their respective creators.

              While ‘Guernica’ conveys the message in a harsh tone, ‘Anthem For Doomed Youth’ dwells in a melancholy reflective mood, a helplessness.

   The opening lines of the poem:

          “What passing bells for those who die as cattle,

            Only the monstrous anger of the guns.”

 Shows the total uselessness of wars and its victims, who dies without any specified reasons.

           Similar is the staging of Guernica. The work was Picasso’s reaction to the aerial bombing and mass destruction of Guernica, a Spanish town by the Italian fascist in 1937. Picasso skillfully managed to blend Christian iconography with Spanish folk culture, showing the impact of war on all the spheres of the victimized society. The painting portrays a helpless women rushing from a building, her arms thrown wide. Agonized heads and arms emerge from the war wreckage .in the leftmost corner, a mother holding a dead infant looks upward, screaming with unbearable anguish. The invincible bull above her head (the pagan mythological creature Minotaur) symbolizes the heartless fascist, enjoying the unfolding scene of destruction from above.

The dying horse drawn from the bullfight depicts the torment of the Spanish race. The oil lamp held high shows their resistance against the forces of fascism, which in turn is metaphorically represented as a mechanized eye whose iris is actually an electric bulb.

WILFRED OWEN

         Thus, the actively expressed horrors of war in Guernica equate the actively represented agony of war in Owens’s poem, since agony, horror and hatred are all the natural reaction to a devastating war. 

          Wilfred Owen ones declared” My subject is war and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity.”A parallel conclusion can also be drawn out of Guernica: "Its inspiration is war and the horrors of war. The theme lies in the horrors of it!"

 

         Though Guernica directly portrays the horrors of the aerial bombing and its immediate effect on people and Owens’s poem exposes the meaninglessness of funerals prepared for a dead soldier, both works are alike, by revealing the true realities of meaningless wars, especially the world wars to the world. The painting portrays the agony of humanity torn between life and death whereas the poem ‘Anthem For The Doomed Youth’ represents the useless deaths of myriad soldiers through useless wars. 

     Though almost a century after their completion, both the works of human imagination continue to inspire and fascinate thousands around the world –especially Guernica, since a painting doesn’t need the tools of any language to communicate!