In Parenthesis

In Parenthesis is an epic poem of the First World War by David Jones first published in England in 1937. Although Jones had been known solely as an engraver and painter prior to its publication, the poem won the Hawthornden Prize and the admiration of writers such as W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot. Based on Jones's own experience as an infantryman, In Parenthesis narrates the experiences of English Private John Ball in a mixed English-Welsh regiment starting with embarcation from England and ending seven months later with the assault on Mametz Wood during the Battle of the Somme. The work employs a mixture of lyrical verse and prose, is highly allusive, and ranges in tone from formal to Cockney colloquial and military slang.

In Part 1, Ball and his battalion assemble, march to Southampton, and sail at night across the channel. In Part 2 they receive instruction and training and travel towards the front, where Ball has the shattering experience of a long-range heavy shell exploding nearby (p. 24). In Part 3 they march at night along a road and then through flooded communication trenches to a position in the front line. As Ball stands sentry, narrative realism gives way to Irish and Welsh mythic associations. Part 4 concerns a typical day in the front line, from morning stand-to to evening stand-down, alternating between fatigue duty, horrendous violence, and boredom. This day is circular in shape, with echoing allusions centring on the great, long boast of Dai Greatcoat (pp. 79–84). He is the archetypal soldier who has fought in previous historical, legendary, and scriptural conflicts and who never dies. Part 5 is a montage of events in estaminets and work parties in reserve (behind the lines) where rumours abound, culminating in their long march south towards the Somme. In Part 6 they are moved into various positions, and Ball meets and talks with friends. In Part 7 they begin their assault and fight through the day and into the night. Soldiers die whom the reader has come to know. Ball is wounded. In one later passage, the mythic Queen of the Wood visits the dead, bestowing on them garlands according to their worth (pp. 185–6). Part 7 is the most fragmented, most allusive, most lyrical part of the poem. The work is preceded by the poet's 7-page Preface and followed by his 33 pages of notes. It is accompanied (in some editions) by his frontispiece-drawing of a soldier standing in the waste land and his endpiece-drawing of a spear-pierced scapegoat.

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