Isaac Rosenberg
Isaac Rosenberg (25 November 1890 – 1
April 1918) was an English poet of the First
World War who was considered to be one of
the greatest of all English war poets. His
"Poems from the Trenches" are recognised as
some of the most outstanding written during
the First World War.
Isaac Rosenberg was born in Bristol in
1890 to Barnet and Annie Rosenberg, who had
fled Devinsk in Lithuania to escape
anti-Jewish pogroms. In 1897 the family
moved to 47 Cable Street in a poor district
of the East End of London, and one with a
strong Jewish community. He attended St.
Paul's School around the corner in Wellclose
Square, until his family (of Russian
descent) moved to Stepney in 1900, so he
could experience Jewish schooling. He left
school at the age of fourteen and became an
apprentice engraver.
He was interested in both poetry and
visual art, and managed to find the finances
to attend the Slade School. During his time
at Slade School, Rosenberg notably studied
alongside David Bomberg, Mark Gertler,
Stanley Spencer, Paul Nash, Edward Wadsworth
and Dora Carrington. He was taken up by
Laurence Binyon and Edward Marsh, and began
to write poetry seriously, but he suffered
from ill-health.
Afraid that his chronic bronchitis would
worsen, Rosenberg hoped to try and cure
himself by emigrating to the warmer climate
of South Africa, where his sister Mina
lived.
He wrote the poem On Receiving News of
the War in Cape Town, South Africa. While
others wrote about war as patriotic
sacrifice, Rosenberg was critical of the war
from its onset. However, in order to find a
"job" and be able to help support his
mother, Rosenberg returned to England in
October 1915 and enlisted in the army. He
was assigned to the 12th Suffolk Folk
Regiment, a 'bantam' battalion (men under
5'3"). After turning down an offer to become
a lance corporal, Private Rosenberg was
later transferred to the 11th Battalion, The
King's Own Royal Lancaster Regiment (KORL).
He was sent to the Somme on the Western
Front in France where, having just finished
night patrol, he was killed at dawn on April
1, 1918; there is a dispute as to whether
his death occurred at the hands of a sniper
or in close combat. In either case, Fampoux
is the name of the town where he died. He
was first buried in a mass grave, but in
1926, his remains were identified and
reinterred, not in England, but at Bailleul
Road East Cemetery, Plot V, St. Laurent-Blangy,
Pas de Calais, France.
In The Great War and Modern Memory, Paul
Fussell's landmark study of the literature
of the First World War, Fussell identifies
Rosenberg's Break of Day in the Trenches as
"the greatest poem of the war."
