The Great War in Poetry

On June 28, 1914, gunfire rang out in Sarajevo, and Archduke Ferdinand and his wife fell dead, igniting a spark that would unleash a great world war across Europe, Asia, and Africa, plunging the world into an unprecedented blaze. Millions of men perished, billions of dollars were squandered, empires collapsed, and the earth and sky trembled at the magnitude of it all. The work presented here to the reader is not a dry chronicle of dates and battles, but the testimony of a poet who lived the war in all its details. He followed its events day by day, read its dispatches and newspapers, observed its stages and shifting fronts, and discerned three major truths: the vast scale of the conflict and the diversity of its weapons—including the invention of tanks, gases, and aircraft; the atrocities and violations committed on its fields against civilians and prisoners; and, finally, the great promises emerging from its ashes: the fall of tyranny, the birth of the League of Nations, and new horizons opening in aviation and science. Between this vision and these truths, Dagher composed his poems during the war and its battles, transporting the reader from the fields of Europe to the mountains of Lebanon and the plains of Egypt, where poetry intertwined with history, and emotion with analysis. This book, then, is not merely a collection of poems, but a mirror of a pivotal stage in human history, where the voice of the poet meets the echo of artillery, offering a vivid portrayal of the war that changed the face of the world.