I lived from 1890-1918.
I was from England, and am in the English category.
Born in Bristol, England on 25th November 1890 to Russian-Jewish parents, Isaac Rosenberg grew up in the East End of London and became an apprentice engraver until he went to the Slade School to study. He was in South Africa when the First World War broke out recuperating from illness, but despite poor health, in 1915 he enlisted as a private in the Army and served in the ranks on the Western Front from 1916 until he was killed in action on April 1st 1918. He was 27 years old.
Isaac Rosenberg, Charles Sorley and Wilfred Owen, were considered to be the three greatest Great War poets, and Rosenberg's poem, "Break of Day in The Trenches" is generally considered to be the greatest poem of the war.
Biography source - 120 War Poems
Portrait - National Picture Gallery
Read full description by JS...
Isaac Rosenberg was born in Bristol on 25 November 1890. His parents had emigrated from Russia a few years earlier. When Isaac was seven his father moved the family to London’s East End hoping for better-paid work. However work was just as hard to find here and conditions were bad. Isaac, whose health had never been good, developed a lung ailment. Isaac attended the Board School of St. George's before moving to Stepney Board School. The headmaster at Stepney was so impressed with Isaac’s natural gift for drawing and for writing that he allowed him to spend most of his time on them. When not at school he used to read poetry and draw with chalks on the pavements.
Isaac had to leave school at fourteen and was apprenticed to the firm of Carl Hertschel, engravers, of Fleet Street. His parents hoped that this might be a stepping-stone to a painter's career. In fact Isaac hated the work and wrote “It is horrible to think that all these hours, when my days are full of vigour and my hands craving for self-expression, I am bound, chained to this fiendish mangling machine, without hope and almost desire of deliverance”. During his apprenticeship he wrote poems in his lunch-hours, and in the evenings attended classes in the Art School of Birkbeck College.
When his apprenticeship was completed three generous Jewish women undertook to pay his tuition fees at the Slade School of Fine Art. It was there he met the painters Gertler, Bomberg, Kramer, Roberts, Nevinson, and Stanley Spencer. Isaac soon began to find that art and poetry did not nix well for him and he was drawn towards poetry. “Art is not a plaything it is blood and tears, it must grow up with one; and I believe I have begun too late” he wrote. Despite this opinion he was a reasonable draughtsman and managed to paint some good pictures, a few of which were exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery. After leaving the Slade he wanted to go to Russia, but it was hard for a Jew to get a passport at that time and he did not do so.
Isaac hoped to earn a living from his portrait drawings but in 1914 was told that his lungs were weak and he was advised to travel to a warmer climate, he decided to visit his married sister in Cape Town and sailed for South Africa in June. Whilst there he painted some pictures, gave a series of lectures on modern art, and published a few articles and poems but he was still unhappy.
On the outbreak of war in Europe he became even more restless and despite his medical problems he returned to England in 1915 and enlisted. At about this time he published a small selection of poems entitled “Youth”.
He continued writing poems whilst in training and after being posted to France. He sent many of these back to England in letters to a friend Edie Marsh. His final letter dated 28 March 1918 talking about returning to “the line” after a period of rest. He was killed before the message reached England!
Popular poetry
The darkness crumbles away
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
25 lines, 3 comments
The plunging limbers over the shattered track
Racketed with their rusty freight,
86 lines, 1 comment
Sombre the night is.
And though we have our lives, we know
16 lines
Snow is a strange white word.
No ice or frost
23 lines
Nudes -- stark and glistening,
Yelling in lurid glee. Grinning faces
25 lines
In his malodorous brain what slugs and mire,
Lanthorned in his oblique eyes, guttering burned!
29 lines
I killed them, but they would not die.
Yea! all the day and all the night
16 lines
I snatched two poppies
From the parapet’s ledge,
16 lines
Moses, from whose loins I sprung,
Lit by a lamp in his blood
8 lines
I walk and wonder
To hear the birds sing,
16 lines
Start a forum topic about this poet
