Nostalgia, Trauma, and the Aftermath of War: Siegfried Sassoon and W. H. R. Rivers

Abstract

Towards the end of 1944, Siegfried Sassoon reluctantly agreed to edit a collection of poems by soldiers serving in the Eighth Army during the fiercely fought invasion of Italy. Of the seventy-two entries in the collection, he specifically names only a single poem in his introduction, one which “particularly charmed” him (Introduction 11). This poem is called “Nostalgia.” Technically unremarkable, “Nostalgia” celebrates fondly recalled and comforting details of the poet’s distant home, eschewing entirely direct mention of the war and its traumatic “after-effects” (11). Sassoon’s remarks about this quiet, ordinary poem by an unheralded soldier-poet reflect an essential tension in his own autobiographical writing after the First World War, a tension between nostalgia and trauma.