11/27/2023 0 Comments The charge of the light brigadeThis is all the more frustrating because on the edges it does do some things pretty well. This makes it hard to get into as it seem to jump around in narrative without any real drive. Nolan is a fine example of this as he never manages to be an engaging character and, along with the rest of them, just comes off as larger than life characters seemingly without any significant basing in reality. I am unsure of the historical value of the writing but it doesn't manage to do much in regards characters or consistent tone (either in the film or the individuals). With stories of all manner of goings-on during the three year production of this film it is little wonder that in some regards this film is all over the place. This conflict reaches The Times and enrages Nolan, who continues his arrogance even as the Light Brigade join the forces heading through Turkey. This form of leadership feeds through his officers and brings conflict with the straight approach of Nolan. One such officer is Captain Louis Nolan, who comes under the charge of Lord Cardigan one of the old guard and a cantankerous, arrogant leader to boot. As the politicians debate a course of action, the military prepare for war, recruiting men from the working classes and officers from the ruling classes. Long afterwards, in 1890, when the aged poet was persuaded to bawl bits of his verse down a tube for primitive gramophone recordings, ‘ The Charge of the Light Brigade’ was among the selections, and when he was buried in solemn state in Westminster Abbey two years later, veterans of Balaclava lined the aisle.Russia has invaded Turkey, much to the chagrin of the British, who sees this as a threat to their dominance of the globe through their Empire. The ‘ Maud’ volume sold so well that the Tennysons were able to buy Farringford, while the Light Brigade ballad remained the most widely familiar and admired of all Tennyson’s works. No writing of mine can add to the glory they have acquired in the Crimea but if what I heard be true, they will not be displeased to receive these copies of the ballad from me, and to know that those who sit at home love and honour them.’ This was issued with a note from Tennyson: ‘Having heard that the brave soldiers at Sebastopol, whom I am proud to call my country-men, have a liking for my ballad on the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, I have ordered a thousand copies of it to be printed for them. Early in August the poet restored ‘Some one had blundered’ in what became the final version. A letter from a chaplain at the Scutari military hospital told him that the ballad was a tremendous favourite with the men and that the best thing Tennyson could do would be to send copies out to the Crimea for them. He was even less easy about the deletion, however. Critics had spoken reprovingly of rhyming ‘blundered’ with ‘hundred’ and Tennyson was uneasy about it. Tennyson had mainly been busy in 1854 writing ‘ Maud’, his own favourite among his poems, which he completed in April 1855 and published in July in a slender volume along with the Wellington ode and an altered version of the Light Brigade ballad, which left out ‘Some one had blundered’. He dashed the poem off in only a few minutes on December 2nd and sent it to the London Examiner, which printed it a week later. In Tennyson’s mind this turned into the crucial line ‘Some one had blundered’. In November he read the account of the Light Brigade’s gallant charge in The Times which spoke of ‘a hideous blunder’. It was written at Farringford, the villa on the Isle of Wight, which Tennyson and his wife Emily, enchanted by the sea views, had rented before the outbreak of the war. To the poet’s chagrin, it was far more popular than his earlier ode on the death of the Duke of Wellington, which he considered a much better piece of work. Alfred Tennyson had been Poet Laureate since 1850, but it was the Balaclava poem which carried his reputation far beyond literary and intellectual circles, turned him into the nation’s poet and made an indelible impression on what his own and subsequent generations felt about the Crimean War.
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