The convoluted relationship between Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, and Robert Graves
Sassoon (left), Owen (middle) and Graves (right)
"An interesting creature, overstrung and self-conscious, a defier of convention."
(Sassoon about Graves, 1915)
"A very nice chap but his verses, except occasionally, don’t please me very much."
(Graves about Sassoon, 1915)
"He wants to travel with me after the war; anywhere — Russia for preference. And whenever I am with him, I want to do wild things, and get right away from the conventional silliness of my old life."
(Sassoon about Graves, 1916)
"I had a long talk with Robert Graves, whimsical and queer and human as ever."
(Sassoon about Graves, 1916)
"Robert might have been a great poet; he could never become a dull one. In him I thought I had found a lifelong friend to work with."
(Sassoon about Graves, 1916)
"There was something of a bitter charm in him, a sort of sallow, victimised, faithful Jester in the storm — quite impossible to describe — queer twisted smile — ungainly lankiness — rather goggling eyes. [...] His rare gaiety was like a young animal hopping in a daisied field."
(Sassoon about Graves, 1916)
"He is a very loveable creature."
(Sassoon about Owen, 1917)
"A big, rather plain fellow, the last man on earth apparently capable of the extraordinary, delicate fancies in his books."
(Owen about Graves, 1917)
"A most extraordinary good man [who] says what means very courageously."
(Graves about Sassoon, 1917)
"On Sat. I met Robert Graves... No doubt he thought me a slacker sort of sub. S.S. when they were together showed him my longish war-piece 'Disabled' (you haven't seen it) & it seems Graves was mightily impressed, an considers me a kind of Find!! No thanks, Captain Graves! I'll find myself in due time."
(Owen about Graves, 1917)
"The real thing, when we've educate him a trifle more. R.N., S.S. and myself are doing it."
(Graves about Owen, 1917)
"SS said of [RG]: he is a man one likes better after he has been with one. So it turns out in my case."
(Sassoon and Owen about Graves, 1917)
"And you have fixed my life — however short. You did not light me — I was always a mad comet, but you have fixed me. I spun around you a satellite for a month, but shall swing out soon, a dark star in the orbit where you will blaze."
(Owen to Sassoon, 1917)
"We loved each other as no men love for long."
(Owen about Sassoon, 1917)
"I don't think RG feels things as deeply as some... with all his egotism."
(Sasson about Graves, 1917)
"And I want no limelight, and celebrity is the last infirmity I desire. Fame is the recognition of one's peers. I have already more than their recognition: I have the silent and immortal friendship of Graves and Sassoon and others. Behold are they not already as many Keatses?"
(Owen about Sassoon and Graves, 1918)
"Though you do write bloody good poems I’m sorry you’re such an ass."
(Graves to Sassoon, 1919)
"I can only affirm that he was a man of absolute integrity of mind."
(Sassoon about Owen, 1920)
"There was some vague sexual element lurking in the background of our war-harnessed relationship. There was always some restless passionate nerve-racked quality in my friendship with R.G., although he has been one of my most stimulating companions. He made me self-conscious."
(Sassoon about Graves, 1922)
"I felt very affectionate toward him (only second time I’d seen him this year)."
(Sassoon about Graves, 1922)
"He is as stimulating as ever, and I take up my talk with him as though we hadn't been apart for months. [...] There is nothing mean or malicious about R.G."
(Sassoon about Graves, 1922)
"Have only just realised how impossible it is to connect it with Robert Graves (who will be one of its literary glories, when he is dead)."
(Sassoon about Graves, 1925)
"I still get absolutely dithery thinking about the War so I can’t judge Owen fairly: but I say he’s all right and risk it."
(Graves about Owen, 1926)
"Siegfried, we’re all fools and blockheads. And you and I have forgiven each other a lot in the last eleven years or so."
(Graves to Sassoon, 1927)
"Dear Siegfried is still my dear Siegfried."
(Graves about Sassoon, 1929)
"If I had met you a couple of months ago I should probably have tried to knock you down."
(Sassoon to Graves, 1930)
"You're a fad-ridden crank."
(Sassoon to Graves, 1930)
"I do know that while I was your friend you were never really open with me, or with any other of your then friends and tried to avoid their knowing each other."
(Graves to Sassoon, 1933)
"I was being sentimental, imagining back to the time when I knew and liked you — loved you was more like it."
(Graves to Sassoon, 1933)
"Owen was a weakling, really; I liked him but there was that passive homosexual streak in him which is even more disgusting than that active one in Auden."
(Graves about Owen, 1943)
"He was able to be of high significance for me both as poet and friend."
(Sassoon about Owen, 1945)
"I have, more and more, believed that he would have been incalculably valuable to me. His death made a gap in my life which has been there ever since."
(Sassoon about Owen, 1948)
"All the years and misunderstandings had melted away."
(Sassoon about Graves, 1954)
"Besides his homosexual soul-scar, he has an Enoch Arden complex — or so he once told me — and a lot of self-protective dishonesty."
(Graves about Sassoon, 1954)
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