Stephen Spender's "Epilogue to a Human Drama" and Toge Sankichi's
"Dying" are poems detailing the destruction of two cities, London and
Hiroshima, respectively, during or after World War II bombings. Spender wrote
"Epilogue to a Human Drama," hereafter referred to as
"Epilogue," after a December air raid of London during the Battle of
Britain, which ravaged and razed much of England from Summer 1940 until Spring
1941. Sankichi wrote "Dying" from his vivid recollections of the
surprise atomic bombing of Hiroshima, which decimated the Japanese city in less
than a second. Both the Battle of Britain and Hiroshima were horrible,
senseless, and vicious incidents that exacted gave tolls on innocent victims.
Spender endured the Battle of Britain, and Sankichi experienced the horror of
Hiroshima. The poets' responses differ greatly in style and perspective, but
each work clearly defines the ramifications of atrocities such as those
committed against Spender, Sankichi, and the populations of London and
Hiroshima.
England's Royal Air Force battled Germany's Luftwaffe from August 1940 until
May 1941. During that conflict, England was subjected to air raids day and
night. When Hitler finally withdrew his birds of war, four hundred thousand
British citizens had been killed, forty-six thousand had been seriously
wounded, and one million homes had been leveled. After one raid, a relief team
helped a woman who had covered been covered in powdered brick and plaster and
was bleeding profusely. As they aided her, she repeated four words continually
in a tone of quiet terror: "Man's inhumanity to man…Man's inhumanity to
man…" (Jablonski 148).
Stephen Spender was in London for the duration of the bombings. He saw the
demolition of surrounding buildings. He heard the droning of approaching
bombers. He smelled the smoke of raging infernos. In his autobiography World
Within World, Spender describes his mental condition during the raids as a
"trance-like condition" and describes how he forced himself to think
of places and things as merely mental concepts in order to avoid losing mental
control (285).
Hiroshima's destruction came without warning. Japanese High Command, which was
located Hiroshima's ancient castle, was alerted early to the approach of the
Enola Gay by an observation post on the island of Shikoku. The High Command
elected to sound no air raid warning because they considered it senseless to
disrupt work in local armament factories due to a single plane (Bruckner 98).
At precisely 8:15 AM local time, the fuse was lit inside the descending bomb.
Seconds later, in a blinding flash of sheer energy, several million degrees of
heat were unleashed on the people of Hiroshima. In less than a second,
eighty-six thousand one hundred men, women, and children were burned to death.
Seventy-two thousand were severely injured; many of who would die later from
atomic bomb sickness (Bruckner 99).
Many survivors of Hiroshima place thanks for their lives on "many small
items of chance or volition-a step taken in time, a decision to go indoors,
catching one street car instead of the next…"(Hersey 30). Toge Sankichi is
one such survivor. In the introduction to his poem "Dying," Sankichi
reveals that he was three kilometers from Ground Zero and preparing to visit
downtown Hiroshima when the bomb detonated (29). If he had left a few minutes
earlier, Sankichi would not have survived the first few moments. Instead, he
sustained cuts from shards of glass and atomic bomb sickness, which may have
contributed to his early demise in 1953.
Spender's "Epilogue" and Sankichi's "Dying" differ
dramatically in presentation. The titles illustrate the basic contrast.
Spender's poem is an epilogue to what he compares to a play: It is written
after a raid is over and is a reflection of what Spender has witnessed. Sankichi's
poem possesses immediacy because his narration begins at the moment of
detonation. Spender focuses his attention on the city of London as a whole.
This viewpoint is possible because he had already experienced months of
bombardment and had tried to separate himself mentally from the events
transpiring around him. Critic A.K. Weatherhead noted that Spender's poems are
"detached from the everyday things of the world" (323). This is
obviously true for "Epilogue," and Spender describes his attempts at
detachment in his autobiography (285). He surveys the effects of a "human
drama" on the city as a whole. Spender details the effects on the West
End, around St. Paul's Cathedral, and on the soul of London.
Sankichi is caught in the suddenness of the atomic strike. Hiroshima had not
suffered months of bombings as London had. Sankichi was not expecting the
attack. Sankichi cannot afford to mimic Spender's detachment. "Dying"
is not a deliberately designed reflection like "Epilogue." Instead,
it is a panicked recording of a rapid assault of chaotic images.
"Dying" depicts only what is occurring in the author's immediate
vicinity. The surprise and suddenness of the bombing prevent Sankichi from
surveying the damage on a wide scale. He is too shocked and confused to think
about anything except what is in his immediate field of vision.
Aside from difference in viewpoints, these two poems differ significantly in
style. Spender writes "Epilogue" in a series of stanzas. Possessing
no rhyming or rhythmic pattern, the stanzas are instead divided by topic. The
first stanza describes physical damage to London. Daiches's comment that
Spender "could show a quiet descriptive control in descriptive or
confessional verse" is obvious in this stanza (322). Spender paints a
verbal mural of when "the gas mains burned blue and gold / And stucco and
brick were pulverized to a cloud / Pungent with smells of mice, dust, garlic,
anxiety" (2-4). These descriptions provide emotional fuel for his
accusations in the following stanza. In the second stanza Spender discusses his
opinion that this destruction could have been prevented. In lines ten through
twelve he states that, "Then the one voice through deserted streets / Was
the Cassandra bell which rang and rang and ran / Released at last by
time," comparing the air raid warning to the prophet Cassandra, whose
predictions were always true but never heeded. In his autobiography, Spender
explicitly states that Hitler could have been stopped in the 1930s and that the
war could have been easily avoided (202). The third stanza discusses London's
resilience and leads into the metaphor of the disaster as a drama. Spender
notes that "London burned with unsentimental dignity" (16). St.
Paul's Cathedral is used in the stanza to symbolize that dignity. On December
29, 1940, the cathedral stood virtually unscathed as buildings surrounding it
were consumed by blazes. Emergency crews around the cathedral noticed that an
incendiary was lodged in the building's dome, readily to fall inside and
destroy the centuries-old church. To everyone's amazement, the incendiary fell
the other way and rolled off the dome onto the street below, leaving the
cathedral intact (Jablonski 146). This connotation provides the power behind
Spender's use of the cathedral as a metaphor for London's dignity. The final
stanza is the metaphor of the bombing as a play. Spender makes London, home to
innumerable stages, as a grand stage on which "there were heroes, maidens,
fools, / Victims, a Chorus" (27-28). He defines the actions of the players.
"The heroes," presumably the RAF, fight bravely. "The
fools" try to make light of the situation with jokes. "The
victims" wait for help. "The Chorus," who are the volunteer
relief crews, help victims make sense of the circumstances by "Praising the
heroes, deploring the morals of the wicked / Underlining punishment, justifying
Doom to Truth" (34-35).
While "Epilogue" is reflective and deliberate, "Dying" is
immediate and urgent. Sankichi's style bears no semblance of order. It begins
with alarm and ends with confusion. There is no attempt to make sense of what
has happened. While Spender uses symbolism, Sankichi has no need for it. His
vivid images of gory chaos communicate on much stronger frequencies than any
possible symbol. There is no thoughtful debate or metaphoric explanation.
Sankichi fires direct descriptions that explain all possible dimensions of
terror. The opening lines send the reader hurtling into alarm. Sankichi begins:
!
Loud in my ear: screams.
Soundlessly welling up,
pouncing on me:
space, all upside down. (1-5)
The lines are terse and blunt, reading like the panicked descriptions of a man
short of breath, which is precisely what they are. Sankichi's brief but harsh
verse arrests the attention of the reader, bludgeoning him with frenzied
depictions of pain and chaos. The first line, consisting of only an exclamation
point, explains a shock so powerful that no words could describe its impact.
Sankichi realizes that he is on fire. He douses himself with water, and
"The clothes I splash water on / burn, drop off: / gone" (24-26). It
is an additional five lines, probably actually less than a second, before he
realizes that a sheet of molten lead is attached to his back. He screams in
agony as "Eddies / of flame and smoke / blow down on my broken head"
(36-38). Sankichi succeeds in transmitting horror by not describing the horror.
He simply describes what is horrible: He does not need to say that it is
horrible for the reader to understand the feeling. Sankichi describes "stomachs
distended like great drums" along the road (56). He sees bits of flesh, an
eyeball, and brain matter. As the reader becomes overwhelmed by these terrible
images, so does Sankichi. His body still shrieking with pain, he falls to the
ground. His shock quickly becomes confusion. Sankichi's last lines are:
Why?
Why here
by the side of the road
cut off, dear, from you;
why
must
I
die
? (78-86)
These two works and authors take very different approaches to the destruction
occurring around them. Spender is detached and reflective; Sankichi is involved
and immediate. They do, however, share confusion as to what is happening to
their respective cities. Spender, surveying the damage, realizes this could
have been prevented. Sankichi, witnessing unimaginable horror, simply asks
"Why?" (78). Each of these poems serve as a testament to readers who
have never experienced war of the often imagined but never fully comprehended
costs of war and man's inhumanity to man.
Works Cited
Bruckner, Karl. The Day of the Bomb. Trans. Frances Lobb. New York: D. Van
Nostrand Company Inc., 1962, 98-99.
Daiches, David. The Present Age in British Literature. N.p.: Indiana University
Press, 1958, 48-49. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Carolyn Riley.
Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1973, 322.
Hersey, John. Hiroshima. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1946, 30.
Jablonski, Edward. Terror from the Sky. New York: Doubleday and Company, 1971,
144-148.
Sankichi, Toge. Introduction. "Dying." by Sankichi. Trans. Richard H.
Minear. Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern
and Postmodern Poetry Volume Two. Ed. Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris. Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1998, 29.
Sankichi, Toge. "Dying." Trans. Richard H. Minear. Poems for the
Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry
Volume Two. Ed. Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris. Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1998, 29-31.
Spender, Stephen. "Epilogue to a Human Drama." Collected Poems. New
York: Random House, 1955, 134-135.
Spender, Stephen. World Within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966.
Weatherhead, A.K. "Stephen Spender: Lyric Impulse and Will."
Comtemporary Literature. Vol. 12, No. 4. N.p.: Regents of the University of
Wisconsin, 1971, 451-465. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Carolyn
Riley. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1973, 323.