‘Come On, Come Back’

Stevie Smith

Stevie Smith

Florence Margaret "Stevie" Smith was born in 1902 in Yorkshire, England.

Her father left the family when she was very young; her mother died when she was a teenager.

She lived in London with her sister and a spinster aunt, an important figure in her life, known as “the lion”.Smith died in London in 1971 from a brain tumour.One of the most common topics to appear in her writing is death. She was prone to bouts of depression and had a preoccupation with death, seeing it as a consolation.

"Being alive is like being in enemy territory.“ Stevie Smith

The Cold WarA nuclear arms race began after WW2 assuperpowers in the East and West begantesting powerful new weapons. The rising ofthe Iron Curtain intensified the threat ofmass destruction and led to the NuclearFear of the 1950s and 1960s

Read the following extracts from women affected by war…

'I can't work, and I keep forgetting things. The doctor said it was traumatic epilepsy and explained that it was caused by the war. He told me that I had experienced many terrible things, that I should try to regain control of my life, but that it would be very difficult.' (A woman who as a teenager in the 1980s had fought in the civil war in El Salvador)'War is mad, crazy; and it makes you crazy as well. All you can think about is whether in a minute it will be your turn to die.' (A survivor of the Rwanda massacre in 1994, when she was only 18)

- 'With tears in her eyes, she told me she had already died four times: that's the number of times the guards had simulated her execution. On one occasion they had stood her against a wall, told her she was going to be shot, and fired blanks at her...As we talked, it was clear that something had indeed died in her. She was only 15, and I was filled with silent rage about her torments.' (Iranian women accused of political offences)

Can war ever be justified if the effects extend beyond the battlefield?

Memel(Modern day Klaipėda) German name for coastal

town in Lithuania.

Significant war references to Memel:

Memel came under German rule after the Napoleonic Wars, but was reclaimed by Lithuania when the Memel Statute was signed by 4 countries, including Britain, in 1923. Nazism became popular in Memel and anti-Semitism grew; when the Nazis were elected to govern it in 1938 the Jewish population began a mass exodus. Lithuania handed Memel back to Germany without resistance.

Who are these Famous Female warriors?

BoudiccaG.I. JaneEllen Ripley (Alien)Joan of Arc

The story of the poem

• …A future war.

• The girl described is a soldier called Vaudevue.

• She has returned from a battlefield called Austerlitz.

• She is badly injured from a chemical attack and has lost her memory.

• She drowns herself in a lake.

The poem makes us think about:

• War is timeless

• The impact of mass destruction

• The loss of identity in a war; how it changes you.