Ceux qui pieusement sont morts pour la patrie: Poetry on War Memorials

Abstract

On the Great War memorials are sometimes engraved some verses, which are generally poor and aesthetically backward-looking: these monuments obey to a democratic and civic logic, that implies the neutralization of any originality or modernism. But this poetry is also a means to include the recent conflict in the national history, with the quotation of French poets who have sung the wars of the 19^th century. Victor Hugo’s “Hymn” is by far the most frequently quoted poem, particularly because of its ability to symbolically unify, in the name of patriotism, the revolutionary uprising and the defence of the territory