ABSTRACT
Beauty in Trouble comes from a rather mischievous poem by Robert Graves from the 1950s: Beauty in trouble flees to the good angel. If beauty has been in trouble in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the cause of some of that trouble may be found in the trenches of 1914-18. Beauty is conventionally associated with religion, specifically Christianity; and both are vanquished, only Goliath left standing, 'Steel-helmeted and grey and grim'. The association of war and beauty was profound in 1914, particularly in Germany. This chapter argues that the First World War gives that association a new lease of life: its poets alter and interrogate what beauty means and what power it holds, yet they never give it up, nor give up on it. Both Graves and Louis MacNeice remain invested in beauty after the First World War seemingly changed all that.
