‘for isaac rosenberg’ British literary tradition draws him toa figure such as Rosenberg, whose own
hybrid Anglo-Jewish identity politics put similar pressures on British literary canon
formation.
If we now turn to Longley’s poem for Rosenberg—entitled ‘For Isaac Rosenberg’
in the unpublished manuscripts,^53 though eventually published under the title ‘No
Man’s Land’—we encounter a poem about marginalization and identity politics in
family and literary history. In ‘Bog Cotton’, Longley’s reaching back through Keith
Douglas to Rosenberg illustrates the way in which the poets of the two World Wars
‘provided’ Longley, as he said in one interview, ‘with a map and compass when I
began to contemplate our own sordid little conflict’.^54 But in Longley’s ‘For Isaac
Rosenberg’ (hereafter referred to by its final title, ‘No Man’s Land’), ‘Longley’s
family and literary ghosts...converge,’^55 and Rosenberg is reimagined as both a
literary and a familial father—a theme which resonates with Longley’s statement
in one interview that the ‘two World Wars were part of my family history before
they became part of my imaginative landscape. Sometimes I listen to Owen and
Rosenbergasthoughtheyweremydad’sdrinkingandsmokingcompanions,sharing
a Woodbine behind the lines during a lull.’^56 In ‘No Man’s Land’, Longley not only
envisions Rosenberg as one of his father’s comrades but also connects Rosenberg’s
Anglo-Jewish ancestry to his own. In ‘Granny’, an early version of the first half of
‘No Man’s Land’ (1976),^57 Longley pays tribute to the forgotten life (and death)
of Longley’s ‘Jewish granny’, the late Jessica Abrahams, who, Jim Haughey writes,
‘disappeared from family history after her premature death at twenty’.^58 Longley’s
desire to recover the memory of his Anglo-Jewish grandmother (marginalized in
family history) prompts the poet’s turn to Anglo-Jewish Rosenberg (marginalized
(^53) The unpublished manuscripts and typescripts to Longley’s poem are printed here with permission
from the author, and are held in the Michael Longley archive (Co. No. 744, Box 21, folder 35),
Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Library (MARBL), Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory
University.
(^54) Longley, interviewed by John Brown, in Brown,In the Chair, 94.
(^55) Brearton,Great War in Irish Poetry, 271.
(^56) Longley, interviewed by John Brown,In the Chair, 94.
(^57) Longley, ‘Granny’, inMan Lying on a Wall(London: Victor Gollancz, 1976), 36. It is worth
pointing out that Longley’s book of poems was published by Victor Gollancz, the Anglo-Jewish,
London-born publisher and nephew of Rabbi Professor Sir Herman Gollancz. Gollancz not only
served in the British Army in the First World War, but also married Ruth Lowy, Rosenberg’s fellow ̈
classmate at the Slade School of Art in London before the War. Ruth Lowy’s mother, Mrs E. D. L ̈ owy, ̈
was one of Rosenberg’s patrons, and it has been suggested that Rosenberg was in love with Ruth Lowy ̈
at the time of her marriage to Victor Gollancz. Rosenberg did a red chalk study of ‘Ruth Lowy’s head, ̈
reclining on a pillow, curls cascading down on either side, eyes closed ina delicately subdued rapture’.
See Cohen,Journey to the Trenches, 63 and 76. For a reproduction of Rosenberg’s chalk study, see
‘Ruth L ̈owy as the Sleeping Beauty. Sanguine’ (1912), inCollected Works, 97, fig. 6(b). Gollancz also
published Jean Liddiard’sIsaac Rosenberg: The Half Used Life.
(^58) Jim Haughey,The First World War in Irish Poetry(Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press,
2002), 246.