The Bowmen of Shu by Guy Davenport
"The Bowmen of Shu" is a narrative centered on Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, a young French sculptor navigating the harsh realities of World War I. The title references a poem by Ezra Pound that reflects the sentiments of ancient Chinese warriors engaged in a protracted battle, mirroring the stalemate of Gaudier-Brzeska's own wartime experiences. The story juxtaposes Gaudier-Brzeska's life before and during the war, illustrating his artistic aspirations and the influences of his artistic community, including notable figures like Ezra Pound. His correspondence reveals a deep connection to the emotional landscape of both historical and contemporary conflicts, pondering themes of suffering, stoicism, and the nature of creativity amid chaos.
As the narrative unfolds, readers witness Gaudier-Brzeska's resilience in the face of adversity, his artistic endeavors even within the trenches, and his philosophical musings alongside fellow soldier Robert de Launay. The text explores the coexistence of brutality and curiosity about war, culminating in a poignant reflection on life's fragility as both men ultimately succumb to the violence surrounding them. Through its vivid imagery and personal anecdotes, "The Bowmen of Shu" offers insight into the intersection of art, history, and the human condition during one of the most tumultuous periods of the twentieth century.
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The Bowmen of Shu by Guy Davenport
First published: 1984
Type of plot: War
Time of work: 1914-1915
Locale: The World War I French-German front
Principal Characters:
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska , a modernist sculptor who died in 1915Sophie , the sculptor's wife
The Story
The title of "The Bowmen of Shu" suggests a time and place far from the World War I foxholes that readers see the story's hero, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, inhabiting. The twenty-three-year-old French sculptor, in whose work and intelligence the poet Ezra Pound discerned the signs of a twentieth century renaissance, has left his London studio for the trenches. Readers see him sleeping on mud and ice, fighting lustily, meditating on art, war, and nature, asking London correspondents about the art culture he is cut off from, and discussing labyrinths with the scholar and fellow soldier Robert de Launay. "The Bowmen of Shu" is named for a poem of the same title by Ezra Pound that Gaudier-Brzeska quotes in letters to friends in London. The poem presents the feelings of ancient Chinese warriors fighting a lingering war with a stubborn enemy. Their fight, like that of the soldiers of World War I, is a stalemate, with many battles fought but no victory. Gaudier-Brzeska savors the closeness of the centuries-old Chinese emotions to his own. The bowman who says, "Our sorrow is bitter, but we would not return to our country," Gaudier-Brzeska echoes in a letter describing the surprising stoicism he feels about his most miserable circumstances: "Whatever the suffering may be it is soon forgotten and we want the victory."
The story is a collection of images and anecdotes having to do with Gaudier-Brzeska's life before, as well as during, the war. Selections from his foxhole mail to friends are interspersed with scenes of his life before the war, as far back as his first day of school. As a child he loved to draw insects and flowers. He defied his parents' spankings with precociously stubborn and reasonable arguments. As an art student of seventeen he fell in love with Sophie, his senior by twenty-two years, whose biography, a testament of pure misery, is summarized in two pages of the story. As a sculptor, Gaudier-Brzeska showed a striking originality. He was part of the modernist movement, which included Sir Jacob Epstein, Constantin Brancusi, and Amedeo Modigliani, names whose fame, this story assures readers, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska would have surpassed had he lived. His personal manifesto on sculpture was claimed by the vorticist movement in London as the clearest statement of what they were about.
The war took him. His captain praised him for the bravery and intelligence he demonstrated to others. Bullets, bombs, and gas inhibited neither his craft ("With my knife I have carved the stock of a German rifle into a woman.") nor his theorizing: "Like the Africans I am constrained by the volume of my material, the figure to be found wholly within a section of trunk" ("the trunk" referring to the gun stock). Descended from the masons who built Chartres Cathedral, Gaudier-Brzeska watches as a cathedral burns to the ground, its lead roof melting onto the rubble. He savors the irony and pattern of his fate, trapped in the labyrinth of trenches that the anthropologist de Launay, who has made a career of studying mazes, now has the opportunity to study in actuality. The Germans constructed a real labyrinth during the war, a system of fortifications, tunnels, caves, and shelters out of which they would come to surprise the enemy. The primitiveness of war, its brutality, Gaudier-Brzeska and de Launay both see as the expression of urges people have acted out since the days of Paleolithic hunters. They stand up to it with philosophical interest and curiosity but admit its unspeakable horror, and it claims both of them. De Launay is shot through the neck, and Gaudier-Brzeska, leading a charge, is shot through the head.
Bibliography
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