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OriginalArticle
MariellaScerri,MA1,VictorGrech,MD,PhD2
Representationsofthe1918pandemicinpoetry
1PhDMedicalHumanitiescandidate,2ConsultantPaediatrician(Cardiology),MaterDei
Hospital,Malta.
CorrespondingAuthor:
MsMariellaScerri,
18,York,N.CaruanaDingliStreet,MelliehaMLH1709,Malta
email:mariellascerriathotmaildotcom
Citethisarticleas:ScerriM,GrechV.Representationsofthe1918pandemicinpoetry.RHiME.2020;7:2008.
Submitted:02AUG2020 Accepted:03SEP2020 Published:06OCT2020
www.rhime.in 200
Abstract:The Spanishfludoesnot haveapowerfulhold onculturalmemory.Asanillness, it
erasesthecollective suffering;asa virus,itoffersa degeneratebody.Thisessay willexplore
representationsofthe1918pandemicinpoetrybyusingthreepoems:Voigt’sKyrie,Eliot’sThe
WastelandandWilliams’sSpring andAll.Theimpactofthefluon these threepoemsnotonly
consistsof itsmaterial effects,butalso resides inits metaphoricpotential. Influenza provides
anentryintomodernistdiscoursesacrossdisciplinesliterature,science,sociology,medicine
that are concerned with reconceptualising bodies of all kinds. The poems discussed in this
paperechothenarrativeofsurvivorsfromboththewarandthefluwhofeltstrandedinastate
ofexistence describableas a“living death”,a state inwhich onewas notdead, butnot quite
alive,either.Surroundedby somany whowere dying,the livingoften feltonly halfalive.The
pervasivefeelingofbeingonthethresholdoflifeanddeath,andofconfrontationbetween life
and death, captures this particular historical moment on both literal and metaphorical levels.
Thesepoemsalsoserveascontributorstomodernistconceptionsofthedrudgeryofeveryday
lifeduringapandemicandrepresentafactualdescriptionofwhatitwasliketoremainalivein
1919.Theycapture intheir verysilences bothacknowledged horrorsand horrorsthat remain
unspoken.
Key words:1918 pandemic, Health humanities, Medical humanities, Modernist literature,
Poetry
Introduction
Catherine Belling averred that “The
memories of influenza, it seems, are
surreal, and to write them is to write
nonsenseordreamsorpoetry.Perhapsthis
meant that even those who might vividly
describeinjuriestothebody(suchasthose
caused by war) would have found
themselves incapable of representing to
others the experience of having the flu”.[1]
Theturmoilcausedbyinfluenza’sfeverand
its hallucinations, and the incredible pain
and difficulty of breathing sapped away
both mental and physical energy, leaving
littleroom for selfexpressionthroughartor
literature.Estimates ofthe deathtollforthe
1918pandemic range between20 and100
million[2],yetwithfluonedidnotdieinthe
serviceofagreatcause– onesimply died.
“English,whichcanexpressthethoughtsof
Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no
words for the shiver and the headache”,
Virginia Woolfwrote in her1926essay“On
Being Ill”.[3] Woolf had witnessed the
Spanish flu’s impact first hand. On 20
October1918, shepenned inher diary “we
are…in the midst of a plague unmatched
sincetheBlackDeath”.[4]Laterinher1925
book Mrs Dalloway, set in the aftermath of
World War I, she described the lasting
trauma of war and of the illness that
succeeded it. “This late age of the world’s
experience had bred in them all, all men
and women, a well of tears” [5], she
refl ected . “Tea rs and sorrow s, cour age an d
endurance, a perfectly upright and stoical
bearing”.[5]
Unlike the Great War that preceded it but
also intersected with it, the Spanish flu
does not possess a powerful hold on
cultural memory. Scholars suggest that the
depravity of the war significantly aided the
spread of the disease, while others have
argued that the hastened end of the war
(and subsequent peace treaty) was
influenced by the pandemic.[6] As Paul
Fussell observes in The Great War and
Modern Memory, “the war that was called
Great, invades the mind…” [7] and that
“wardetachesitselffromitsnormallocation
in chronology and its accepted set of
causes and effects all pervading, both
internal a nd external at once, the essential
con dition of cons ciousn ess in t he twen tieth
century”.[7]The“GreatInfluenza”,itseems,
made for a far less compelling story.[8]
This essay will explore representations of
the1918pandemicinpoetrybyusingthree
poems: Voigt’sKyrie,Eliot’sThe Wasteland
and Williams’s Spring and All. The impact
of the flu on these three poems not only
consists of its material effects, but also
resides in its metaphoric potential.
Influenza provides a platform for
interdisciplinary discourse literature,
science, sociology, medicine – and serves
as a conceptual framework.[9] As an
illness, iterases the collective suffering; as
a virus, it offers a degenerate body. “Its
figurative role, then, parallels other facets
of modernity that cast doubt upon the
integrity of units the human subject, the
family, the community once considered
natural”.[9]
PersonifyingTragedy:Kyrie
Ellen Bryant Voigt’s booklength sonnet
sequence, Kyrie, remains one of the major
works about the 1918 influenza pandemic.
[10] Voigt's poetry has reflected her endless
questtounitehertwoartisticimpulses:music
and story telling, and her work as a whole
recites her need and "will to change".[11]
Both the settings and characters in the
poemsimply the localbut hermajor concern
isuniversal:“choiceandfate,andthetension
between them that constitutes human life”.
[11]
Inspired by her father’s childhood as an
orphan during the 1918 pandemic, Voigt
wanted to portray in Kyrie the irony of life.
She had no particular interest in the
pandemic, however, it occurred to her that
her father’s circumstances would resonate
with many others who had survived it, its
main victims having been young adults.[11]
Kyrie is a booklong sequence of rough,
unrhymed sonnets that vary considerably in
syntax and in rhetorical emphasis. Some
speak in the first person, some are letters
home, while others speak through the third
person. To personalise the influenza
pandemic of 1918, Voigt engages in various
literary devices. The title, “Kyrie”, is derived
fromtheGreekword“OLord”,andtherather
common name is associated with Christian
prayer. The title echoes a personal prayer,
andservestosymbolisethecircumstancesof
thecharactersinthepoems.[12]
Kyrieleapsfromoneexpressivemoment,
caughtlikeasnapshot,toanother,
eschewingbutimplyingaconnecting
narrative.Theindividualsonnetsoften
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achieveamutedeloquencethatlendsthe
subjectamonumentalsolemnity:
"Tobebroughtfromthebrightschoolyardinto
thehouse:
tostandbyherbedlikeananimalstunnedin
thepen:
againstthegridofthequilt,herhandseems
stitchedtothecuffofitssleevealthoughhe
wants
mosturgentlythehandtostrokehishead,
althoughhethinkshecouldkneeldown
thatitwouldneedtotravelonlyinches
tobrushlikeabreathhisflushedcheek,
hedoesn'tstir:allhisresolve,
allhisresourcesgointowatchingher,
hermouth,herhairapillowofblackened
ferns–
hemeanstomatchherstillnessbonefor
bone.
Nearbyhehearstheyoungerchildrencry,
andhisauntslikecarelessthieves,outinthe
kitchen."
The subject of the pandemic flu gives the
writer good reason to wallow in coughedup
blood and bile, yet in Kyrie, Voigt almost
entirely avoids the grotesque imagery that
marks some of her earlier work. Instead, a
long historical perspective overshadows and
dignifiesthe workina mannerunavailable to
the personal lyric.[12] Voigt depicts the flu
epidemic as an extension of the Great War,
thediseaseamutatedstrainofthehorrorthat
had already sickened the world and
weakened its resistance to death.[12] She
reminds us that war changes the world
forever:
“Andsothearmiescouldbedonewithwar,
andsoldierstrickledhometostudypeace.
Buttheoldgardensgrewatoughnewweed,
andtheoldUvesdidn'tfitastheyhad
before,
andwherethere'dbeenthedream,a
stranger'sface,
andwherethere'dbeenthewar,anempty
sleeve”.
In the second section, Voigt deals directly
with the circumstances people lived through.
Shewrites
"You wiped a feverbrow, you burned the
cloth.
You scrubbed a sickroom floor, you burned
themap,
What wouldn’t burn you boiled like apple
sauce."
Her descriptions are evocative, sensual and
exact. Similarly, her rhythms are controlled
and taut, fitting her subject expertly. In the
shorter first and third sections, where Voigt
workstobuildacontextbeyondthepersonal,
the tension slightly slackens.[12] The voices
are not as distinct or gripping as those that
speakoftheimmediateordeal:
"Sincewehadnolambs
Icutthecat’sthroat,Xedthedoor,
Andputthecarcassouttodrawtheflies.
I raised an upstairs window and watched
themgo,
swollen, shiny, black, greenblacked, green
eyed,
fleeing the house, taking the sickness with
them."
The lines “Since we had no lambs, I cut the
cat’s throat, Xed the door,” appear to be a
direct reference to the Passover Ritual
described during the Jewish Exile in Egypt
when the blood of the lamb applied to the
doorposts and lintels of the house protected
the household from the wrath of God which
struckdown“everyfirstbornoftheland,both
man and beast”.[13] It is also reflective of a
general helplessness in the face of such a
huge tragedy against which there appeared
to be no effective human intervention.
Pandemics lift the veil off of humankind’s
frailty and strike indiscriminately.[14] The
overwhelminganguishproducedbythedeath
of so many in so short a time, situates the
livingin avacuum with onefoot inthe realm
of life and the other on the threshold of
death.A flu death was in many ways more
pointless, less understandable, less
preventable, than a war death; the very fact
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that the mass casualties did not fit within
familiarstructures ofwar mourning, thatthey
could inspire a wideeyed grief without any
redeemingvaluetoacceptorreject,suggests
that the pandemic helped fuel familiar
modernist themes such as the frustrated
search for meaning in death, a sense of
alienationand fragmentation,andtheanxiety
over death’s sudden and often random
strikes.[9]
Through literary technique, Voigt assigns
significance to everyday objects; in doing so
shesucceedsincapturingandportraying the
individual human experience. Through the
evocative use of metaphors and
personification,thereaderrealisesthatdeath
is costly. The narrator of this poem
communicates clearly, through repeated
metaphors and personification of the bed,
howmuchistrulylostindeath:
“This is the double bed where she’d been
born,
bedofhermother’smarriageanddecline,
bedhersistersalsoripenedin,
bedthatdrewherhusbandtoherside,
bedofheronechildlostandfivedelivered,
bedindifferenttothemanybodies,
bedaroundwhichallofthemweregathered,
wateryshapesintheshadowsoftheroom,
andthebedfrailabroadtheviolentocean,
thefrightenedbeastssoclumsyandpathetic,
heavingtheirwetbreathagainstherneck,
she threw off the pile of quilts – white face
likeamoon–
andthenenteredstraightawayintoheaven.”
Thesonnetslaunchthereaders straightaway
intothecentreofthepandemic:“everybody's
dying and there's nothing you can do”. This
senseofhelplessnessreflectsthebreakdown
of social order and introduces the notion of
social death. Since time immemorial, social
death succeeded physical death with its
social aspectof death being marked byrites
likefuneralsandwakes.Yet,ifmetaphorically
speaking one is considered dead, or “as
good as dead,” social death precedes
biological death.[15] More subtly, when
others make people with lifethreatening
illness into objects of pity, define their social
existence by their predicted death, and
ignore other biopsychosocial factors, they
create the conditions for social death that
occursbeforebiologicaldeath.
Whileacknowledgingsocialbreakdown,Voigt
strivestoprovideasemblanceofnormalityto
atumultuousandterribletimebyemployinga
formal poetic form: the sonnet. The sonnet
serves as a necessary tool to convey to its
readers the enormity of this human tragedy
andpresentitwithanunderstandablecontext.
[9] Kyrie frames itself with readings of
landscape in terms of former human
presence. Like writing itself, the landscape
retains only the faintest trace of what has
gone before, but Kyrie commemorates the
act of commemoration, and reminds us how
humanemotionhasalreadyreifiedthepast.
Deathhadundonesomany:The
WasteLand
T. S. Eliot famously conjures a threshold
atmosphere in The Waste Land, which is “in
many ways a homage to the state of the
living death, though it mentions neither the
war nor the flu directly”.[9] T.S. Eliot wrote
The Wasteland during a rough time in his
writing career — his marriage was failing,
and both he and his wife had issues of
mental health. The poem is often read as a
representation of the growing
disenchantment of the postwar generation.
Dismissing this view, Eliot commented in
1931, "When I wrote a poem called The
Waste Land, some of the more approving
critics said that I had expressed ‘the
disillusion of a generation’, which is
nonsense. I may have expressed for them
their own illusion of being disillusioned, but
that did not form part of my intention”.[16]
Critics have long considered the poem as a
statement on the post war atmosphere, but
the poem also captures the post pandemic
atmosphere. The poem is known for its
concealed meaning, particularly its subtle
switchbetween satire andprophecy andhas
become the yardstick of modern literature, a
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poetic counterpart to James Joyce's Ulysses
publishedinthesameyear.[17]
Eliotknewfirsthandwhatevenamildcaseof
the influenza virus could do to the body and
tothe mind. He himself contracted influenza,
and while his experience was not a serious
one, he records that he “is very weak”, and
his wife Vivien notes that afterwards “he is
hauntedbythefactthathismindisnotacting
as it used to do”.[19] Naturally, a range of
personal and political issues feed into the
despairof TheWasteLand, but thesense of
uncertaintycreatedbythemassivefludeaths
isweavedintothefollowinglines.[18,19]:
“UnrealCity,
Underthebrownfogofawinterdawn,
AcrowdflowedoverLondonBridge,somany,
Ihadnotthoughtdeathhadundonesomany.
Sighs,shortandinfrequent,wereexhaled,
Andeachmanfixedhiseyesbeforehisfeet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William
Street,
...
Withadeadsoundonthefinalstrokeofnine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him,
crying“Stetson!
YouwhowerewithmeintheshipsatMylae!
That corpse you planted last year in your
garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this
year?
Orhasthesuddenfrostdisturbeditsbed?
Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to
men,
Orwithhisnailshe’lldigitupagain!.”
Death is both remembered and hidden, both
everywhere, flowing on London Bridge, and
buried – but not securely.[9] Eliot may not
have had the pandemic in mind as he wrote
these lines, but he nevertheless evokes the
atmosphere of the time, one that
encompassed the sense that the dead had
beensoplentifulthattheyhadoverflowedthe
boundariesoftheliving. Indeed, thepassage
suggestsnot only the postwarand the post
pandemicatmosphere,butalsoanewkindof
threatening resurrection. The corpse planted
last year remains buried, but capable of
return, threatening to rise from its bed,
disturbed.[8]Such imagery speaks on botha
literaland figurative level. Corpseshad been
everywhere, often buried in mass graves, or
buriedwithoutamarker,orwithoutacoffin,or
even left unburied; therefore such bodies
could literally return. The corpse as memory
andas body is hidden butremains near,just
outside in the garden, capable of being dug.
[9]Onamorefigurativelevel,wemightseein
a corpse the efforts undertaken during the
pandemictoburythebodypsychologically,to
forget the flu, and to turn away from the
memory of the war. On a broader level, no
one knew in 1922 whether the flu would
return,asvirulentasever,orwhetheranother
war with Germany would unfold. We witness
here a type of modernist mourning: Eliot
recordsthe desireto pushthedead away,to
burygriefandmoveon,andatthesametime
he insists that the memory of these bodies
willalwaysreturn.[9]Theissueofsocialdeath
is also never far from the surface in The
Wasteland, aided and abetted by the same
imagery employed in the above lines. The
lines“Ihadnotthoughtdeathhadundoneso
many / sighs, short and infrequent, were
exhaled/Andeachmanfixedhiseyesbefore
hisfeet”,particularly,reinforcealossofsocial
identity, social connectedness and losses
associated with the defragmented body. The
Wastelandconveysaseriesoflossesandthe
devastationmanifestsitselfinnotbeing–that
is,people.
Eliot creates a sense of lurking, of a hidden
menace,ofdeathwaitingateverycorner,and
this threat is no way lessened by the war’s
end. He effectively captures how London –
never part of the actual war zone – remains
fullofdeathandisfarfromasafehomefront.
As Outka explains, “to see this atmosphere
as primarily fuelled by the war or modern
malaiseistomisstheexperientialtruthofthe
pandemic”.[9] The flu could return without
warning,andthis presentedarealthreat that
producedrational anxiety.Toignorethe fluin
The Waste Land would be to perpetuate the
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subtlewaysthefluwasevadedandsilenced.
Eliot participates in this muted treatment but
“he also captures the shadowed quality of a
traumathatishiddeninplainsight”.[9]
WilliamCarlosWilliams’sSpring
andAll
Williams is a major figure in the pantheon of
American poets. A doctor by profession, he
wasalso aprolific poetand aserious thinker
about poetry and language. The publication
of Spring and All in 1923 marked his
reputation as a major poet. Arguably, the life
of a doctor and the life of a poet influence
eachother as the poetmay make the doctor
amorehumaneandaltruisticministranttothe
sick. In return, the doctor influences the way
a poet views the world. Like Eliot’s The
Wasteland, Spring andAll is saturated in an
atmosphereofmortality.Williams’sfirstpoem,
titledonly by number(later anthologized with
the title “Spring and All”), begins without
warning in a cold and unremarkable
landscape.[20]
The“roadtothecontagioushospital”setsthe
scene – no hope is envisaged in this grim
image of life. The cold wind driven from the
northeastdoesnotbringwithitanidyllicairor
hopeful introduction commonly associated
with the tradition of spring poems. Williams
effectively juxtaposes what he faces every
day at the hospital to the lack of vitality he
witnesses in spring on his way to the
contagioushospital[21].Thedescriptionhere
isfullofimagesofillnessanddeath–“acold
wind”, “dried weeds, standing and fallen”,
“small trees with dead brown leaves”, “under
them leafless wires” [20]. Yet despite this
threshold atmosphere, life still exists and
although the landscape appears a “purplish”
bruise, it succeeds in integrating decay with
the return of life. Williams depicts in Spring
andAll adual climate: theparadoxical sense
of a reawakening towards the end of the
poem “rooted, they grip down and begin to
awaken”[20] – with the pervasivesense that
deathiseverclose,intertwinedwiththeliving.
Like Eliot, Williams records the cost of being
alive.
Discussion
Two intertwined themes cross these three
poems. There is a recurring sense that the
thresholdbetweenlifeanddeathhasbecome
strangely permeable, and cannot easily
distinguishbetweenwhatislivingandwhatis
dead. During the pandemic years, death
came with such little warning that the living
could never feel secure. This sense of a
permeable boundary between the living and
thedeadcouldalsobeexperiencedinternally.
[9] The poems discussed echo the narrative
ofsurvivorsfromboththewarandthefluwho
felt stranded in a state of existence
describable as a “living death”, a state in
which one was not dead, but also not fully
alive.[9] Such an experience could be felt
bothphysically,asanaftereffectofthebodily
hardships of both tragedies, as well as
mentally, as a psychological experience of
emotional numbness. Surrounded by so
many who were dying, the living often felt
onlyhalf alive.Thisdepiction ofbeing onthe
threshold of life and death, and of the
confrontation between life and death,
captures this particular historical moment at
bothliteralandmetaphoricallevels.
The pervasiveness of death in the above
poemsiseverywhere.InTheWasteland,Eliot
depictsthestrangeabsenceandpresenceof
the dead body, one that clearly arises from
both the war and the flu. This strange
borderland between present and absent
bodiesminglestheexperienceofthecivilians
grievingforbodiesabsentandlostinthewar
andthoselostduetotheinfluenza.[9]
Socialdeath pervadesboth Voigt’sKyrieand
Eliot’sTheWasteland. Itis in partrelated to
abandonment, where those afflicted with
disease are often seen as objects of pity,
definedbytheirillness,withtheotheraspects
of their personhood ignored. The notion of
social death takes us back in time when
during medieval times, it was dramatically
played out in the case of patients who were
diagnosed with leprosy. Rotha Mary Clay’s
TheMedievalHospitalsof Englanddescribes
how the leper is taken to church where the
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priestthrowsdustoneachofhisfeet,saying:
“Be thou dead to the world, but alive again
untoGod”.[22]Thisostracismisalsoreflected
in earlier pandemics – significantly the Black
Death. In Giovanni Boccaccio’s “Decameron”
he writes that the idea of contagion evoked
suchgreatfearthatitcausedpeople“toshun
andfleefromthesickandallthatpertainedto
them” […] “brother forsook brother, uncle
nephew and sister brother and oftentimes
wife husband: [...] fathers and mothers
refused to visit or tend their other children”.
[23] The city was full of corpses “every day
and at every hour that the amount of holy
groundforburialswascertainlyinsufficientfor
the ancient custom of giving each body its
individual place”. No proper burials were
given and “when all the graves were full,
huge trenches were dug in all of the
cemeteriesofthechurchesandintothemthe
new arrivals weredumped by the hundreds”.
[23] More recently, the concept of social
death for the afflicted individual has been
describedinthecontextofHIVAIDS.Initially,
AIDS activism was considered a means to
resist the occurrence of social death and
combatthisthreat.[15]
In an act of compensation to the underlying
threadofsocialdeathinpandemicnarratives,
Elizabeth Outka’s Viral Modernism serves to
portray the flu pandemic of 1918 and its
severity detailing the death toll in rather
gruesome detail.[25] Outka describes this as
“a sensory and affective history of the
pandemic” asserting that these details—the
distinctive description of the symptoms, the
sight of dead bodies piled up and the sound
of church bells to mourn for the dead
—illuminate “the pandemic’s fragmented
tracesintheliteratureandthe largerculture”.
[24]
To depict the flu, these poets had to record
the gaps as well as the atmosphere that
those gaps produced. Fragmentation and
experimentation characterises literary
modernism: such narratives are imbued with
“mythandmourningandcynicism”.Emphasis
is given to the untold violence which
accompanied World War I and the
innovations which ensued. Conventionally,
World War I is understood as the central
trauma of the modernist era, but the
devastating effects of the pandemic cannot
be forgotten and they “must have been
formativelytraumaticforthelostgenerationof
artists and authors, as well”, Outka insists.
[25] Locating the flu in modernism requires
more than merely adjusting our focus – it
needs a special type of lens to fully
understand the destruction and havoc it
created.[25]
Whether or not the pandemic is recorded or
addressed,itdidhappen,sweepingtheglobe
with terrible devastation. Much might be
gained by weaving the flu back into the
culturalandemotionalclimateofthepostwar
era, particularly for understanding the sheer
levelofgrief experienced by thepopulace.[9]
By 1919, almost everyone in Britain and
America and across the globe had lost a
friend, child, parent, or spouse on the
battlefields,totheflu,orboth.Deathsin both
tragedies were usually sudden and seemed
to follow no particular logic. This precarious
atmosphere of mortality and the haunting
presenceofrealandimagined corpsesmake
theirwayintoliterature.[9]
Literaturesuccessfully capturesthe elements
ofdiseasethat aredifficultto represent.Our
perceptionoftheworlddependsonahealthy
body and its experiences. Literature can
capture the “invisible, strange conversation
thathappensbetweenthebodyandthemind”.
[26] The three poems succeed in doing
exactly this. They serve as contributors to
modernist conceptions of the drudgery of
everydaylifeduringapandemic.Itisperhaps
uninspiring, then, that rather than offering a
direct account of the flu, these poets –
whetherdeliberatelyor not–evokeaclimate
recording how death, the corpse, and guilt
pervaded the post war, post pandemic
atmosphere. This disappearing act also
reflects the flu’s history, echoing its early
erasure,followedbyitsgradual restorationto
the public record and imagination. Yet,
regardless of their approach, these poems
representa factualdescription ofwhat itwas
www.rhime.in 206
liketo remainalive in1919, reflectingin their
verysilencesboth acknowledgedhorrors and
horrors that remain unspoken. T.S. Eliot and
William Carlos Williams’ have embraced the
flu and the pandemic in different ways;
readers can witness the devastating impact
theflu had onboth these poets.Writing from
a historical context, Ellen Bryant Voigt,
although not directly involved, effectively
portrays what it is like to witness the horrors
ofdeathduringthe1918pandemic.
Works of literature will always convey and
evoke a wide range of emotions. Kyrie, The
Wasteland, and Spring and All manage to
elicit the zeitgeist of the moment, and the
poemsare justas relevantnow,besetas we
arewiththeCOVID19pandemic.
www.rhime.in 207
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