ЕНГЛЕСКИ БОГ МАРС
English God Mars

Summary/Abstract: The essay focuses upon the poetry of a rather large group of young poets who took part in the World War I. Before the war they were known as Georgian poets and the lines they produced were dreamy, escapist and romantic celebrating the beauties of English countryside. The horrors of the trench warfare transformed them thoroughly. Strong patriotic feelings and readiness to serve King and Country gave way to the utmost despair and the desire to question the ideals of British society and the authority in general including the most supreme one. Our aim is to track the changes in their poetic technique that proved to be essential for the introduction of modernism in Britain and to the creation of the so-called “myth of war“. The most important part of the analysis deals with their apostasy or the desire to challenge the basic principles of Christianity by infusing their lines with rather blasphemous mood. This is the core of their apophatic, poetic treatment of the grim everyday trench reality which means that they were constantly in search of a god that is hidden from them (deus absconditus) . The conclusion we reached shows that their poetic achievement is, in spite of the dark and destructive atmosphere they created, nothing but a decisive, revolutionary step towards a new modernist aesthetics.

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