Isaac Rosenberg: Birkbeck’s War Poet
Steven Connor The text of a lecture given as part of Birkbeck College’s From Mechanics to Millennium lecture series, October 30th 2000. All quotations from Rosenberg’s works are from The Collected Works of Isaac Rosenberg: Poetry, Prose, Letters, Paintings and Drawings , ed. Ian Parsons (London: Chatto and Windus, 1979), abbreviated to CW Rosenberg was educated, not in the Jewish Free School in Spitalfields, which had been his parents’ wish, but in a State school in Baker Street. Jewish religious education featured strongly in the curriculum at the school, though Rosenberg appears to have been bored and inattentive - despite his later interest in subjects from Jewish religion and history, he does not seem to have learned very much Hebrew. At the Baker Street School, which Rosenberg attended until the age of 14, his talent for sketching was encouraged, assisted by Rosenberg’s attendance at the Arts and Crafts School in Stepney Green. On leaving school, Rosenberg embarked on an apprenticeship in Carl Hentschel's, an engraving business in Fleet Street, which would in fact supply him with his living, and supplement the family income valuably until he was 20. But the work was hugely demoralising for Rosenberg. By the time he was 16, he had conceived an ambition to study at the Slade School. Knowing that this would be impossible without further training, Rosenberg enrolled for evening classes in the Art School at Birkbeck College in Chancery Lane, for nearly two years, betwen 1907 and 1908. | |
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