People, politics and the poetry of W.H.Auden

PEOPLE, POLITICS AND THE
POETRY OF W.H. AUDEN
LISA EDWARDS
ETA CONFERENCE 2015 Twitter: @raisingxplorers
#etapd

ETA 2015 - LISA EDWARDS
REPRESENTATION AND TEXT
▸ Representations of events,
personalities, situations
▸ Relationship between
representation and meaning
▸ Evaluate how medium, form,
perspective and language
inﬂuence meaning
▸ Textual forms and media of
production offer different
perspectives

REPRESENTING PEOPLE AND POLITICS
▸ Explore and evaluate different
representations of people and politics
▸ Ways in which texts represent
individual, shared or competing
political perspectives, ideas, events or
situations
▸ Representations of people's political
motivations and actions
▸ Impact of political acts on individual
lives or society more broadly

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
▸ How do political workings and
decisions affect people? Give
some current examples.
▸ What power do the 'people' have
in politics? Give some examples of
how individuals can be powerful,
and powerless, in the political
process.
▸ Does our political system work?
Why or why not?

DEFINING POLITICS
Activities associated with governance, especially the debate between parties having power.
- Oxford Dictionary

POLITICAL CARTOONS
▸ Political perspectives, ideas, events, situations?
▸ Individual? Shared? Competing?
▸ Impact of political acts on individuals/society?
▸ Political motivations? Actions?

OF THE MANY DEFINITIONS OF
POETRY, THE SIMPLEST IS STILL
THE BEST: 'MEMORABLE
SPEECH'.
W. H. Auden 1935
AUDEN'S POETRY

AUDEN AND HIS POETRY: CRITICAL RESPONSES
▸ Unremitting critic of his time
▸ Verbal and imagistic ferocity
▸ Rhetorical splendour
▸ Sings from a resonant heart
▸ Harbinger of 'The New Generation' of
English poets
▸ Captured changing moods of the time in
luminous images and magical phrases
▸ Expressing sentiments often decidedly
political

AUDEN AND HIS POETRY: CRITICAL RESPONSES
▸ Distinctive personal timbre, a
vulnerable embattled self
▸ Mould-breaker
▸ Uncrowned laureate of the age
▸ Extremely difficult to measure up or
confine
▸ An obscure, difficult, personal writer
▸ The first "modern" poet in the
dominant and ubiquitous unease at
the heart of his poetry - Larkin
▸ An American poet

AUDEN'S BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
▸ 1907-1973
▸ Grew up in Birmingham, in northern England
▸ Received scholarship to Oxford for science/engineering
▸ First collection, Poems, published in 1930 with help of
T.S. Eliot
▸ Emigrated to the U.S. in 1939 just before outbreak of
WWII
▸ Poet Chester Kallman lifelong partner
▸ Marx and Freud heavily inﬂuenced early work; later
religious and spiritual inﬂuences
▸ "Antiromantic" - analytical clarity to poems, seeking order

AUDEN'S POLITICS
▸ "Auden has been accused of changing ideas as often as
men changed hats, as though he didn't believe in
anything, or was fascinated by politics and psychology as
part of a voracious quest that would satisfy him long
enough to write a poem. Once the poem was written he
either jettisoned the structure or tacked on a new idea."
John Lucas - 'Cambridge Companion to Auden'

AUDEN'S EARLY POLITICS
▸ Auden indicted a disintegrating social and economic
system ripe for fascism 'O what is that sound?'
▸ Sympathiser with the left, but never a party member
▸ In his criticism of Franco's fascist forces in Spanish
Civil war: "I am not one of those who believe that
poetry need or even should be directly political, but
in a critical period such as ours, I do believe that the
poet must have direct knowledge of the major
political events. I shall probably be a bloody bad
soldier but how can I speak to/for them without
becoming one?" - Auden (went to Spain Jan-Mar
1937) 'Spain'
▸ Wrote 'September 1, 1939' as Germany invaded
Poland

AUDEN'S LATER POLITICS: 'NEW YEAR LETTER' - JANUARY 1 1940
▸ Few of the artists who round about 1931 began to take up
politics as an exciting new subject to write about, had the
faintest idea what they were letting themselves in for. They
have been carried along on a wave which is travelling too
fast to let them think what they are doing or where they
are going. But if they are neither to ruin themselves or
harm the political causes in which they believe, they must
stop and consider their position again. Their follies of the
last eight years will provide them with plenty of food for
thought.

'NEW YEAR LETTER'
▸ If one reviews the political activity of the world’s intellectuals
during the past eight years, if one counts up all the letters to
the papers which they have signed, all the platforms on
which they have spoken, all the congresses they have
attended, one is compelled to admit that their combined
effect, apart from the money they have helped to raise for
humanitarian purposes (and one must not belittle the value
of that) has been nil. As far as the course of political events is
concerned they might just as well have done nothing. As
regards their own work, a few have proﬁted, but how few.

AUDEN AND POLITICS
▸ "One can regard [Auden's] legacy as a re-envisioning of the
poet’s social role. Auden revived the art of civic poetry in the
Horatian mode: asserting the poet’s right to express himself or
herself as an individual, to speak apart from rather than for the
collective. Civic poetry has typically also involved a rejection of
radicalism. It is political, therefore, mainly in the Aristotelian sense
of being concerned with the relationship between public and
private life in general terms. Concern, however, does not imply
activism but rather a stable sense of citizenship in which private
needs are balanced against public affairs" - Robert Huddleston,
Boston Review, 'Poetry makes nothing happen' Feb 2015

'POLITICAL' PERSPECTIVES
▸ Collision between private and public
▸ Inner world of the personal and the outer
world of the political
▸ Competing perspectives of control
▸ The impact of the politics of war on the
individual and society
▸ The individual's lack of control when
faced with dominant politics and
ideology
▸ Political decisions impact individuals and
societies

FORM
▸ "A poet is, before anything else, a person
who is passionately in love with language."
Auden
▸ Varied form: ballad, ode, lyric, meditation,
elegy, satire, epitaph
▸ "In his verse, Auden can argue, reﬂect, joke,
gossip, sing, analyse, lecture, hector, and
simply talk; he can sound, at will, like a
psychologist on a political platform, like a
theologian at a party, or like a geologist in
love; he can give dignity and authority to
nonsensical theories, and make newspaper
headlines sound both true and melodious."
- Barbara Everett

STYLE
▸ On Auden's 1930s poetry: "The
omission of articles, demonstrative
adjectives, subjects, conjunctions,
relative pronouns, auxiliary verbs -
form a language of extremity and
urgency. Like telegraphese it has
time and patience for only the most
important words." - Robert Bloom
▸ "In the course of his career he
has demonstrated impressive
facility in speaking through any
sort of dramatic persona;
accordingly, the choice of an
intimate, personal tone does
not imply the direct self-
expression of the poet." - John
G. Blair
▸ "The inﬂuence of music on Auden's
verse has always been salient: even
his worst lines often 'sound'
impressive." - Jeremy Robson

'O WHAT IS THAT SOUND WHICH SO THRILLS THE EAR?' 1932
▸ Ballad form - simple narrative, climactic
event viewed from a personal perspective
▸ Dramatic duologue - question and
response - female and male?
▸ Soldiers represented as invaders, not
protectors - military as a political tool
▸ Ambiguous setting - time and place -
prophetic
▸ Male punished for political dissent?
▸ Impact of public power on private life/love
'The Death of Major Peirson' John Singleton Copley

O WHAT IS THAT SOUND WHICH SO THRILLS THE EAR?
"Oh what is that sound which so thrills the ear
Down in the valley drumming, drumming?
Only the scarlet soldiers, dear,
The soldiers coming."
Perhaps a change in orders, dear;
Why are you kneeling?
O it's broken the lock and splintered the door,
O it's the gate where they're turning, turning;
Their feet are heavy on the ﬂoor
And their eyes are burning.
▸ Fragility of human bonds when faced with
the intrusion of state forces - European
context
▸ Mechanical advance of soldiers,
juxtaposition Stanza 2 to Stanza 9
▸ Question and response changing tone
▸ Note the verbs, action through dialogue
▸ Auditory and visual imagery
▸ Exclamation, confusion of why the
personal must be dominated by the
political

SPAIN
▸ Written in 1937 after Auden visited Spain,
originally as a pamphlet.
▸ Later, repudiated it as 'dishonest'
▸ Tripartite structure - Spain's great
achievements of the past; the destruction
of the present; the possibility of the future
▸ The politics of war impact the lives of
individuals and have widespread impact
"But the lives of my friends. I inquire. I
inquire."
▸ Dominant politics can silence individuals
"As the poet whispers, startled among the
pines"

SPAIN
▸ Dense, powerful imagery
▸ Anaphora
▸ Voices of the people - the poet, the investigator
(scientist), the poor
▸ "Our day is our loss, O show us
History the operator, the
Organiser, Time the refreshing river." Rich
ﬁgurative language of hope to cleanse the
destruction
▸ "Today the fumbled and unsatisfactory embrace
before hurting."
▸ But ends in the ﬁerce present "The stars are
dead. The animals will not look. We are left alone
with our day."
▸ First person collective pronouns - mankind
suffers together

EPITAPH ON A TYRANT - JANUARY 1939
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and ﬂeets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

IN MEMORY OF W.B. YEATS
▸ Auden honours the ode/elegy form,
and W.B. Yeats 1939
▸ Three-part structure
▸ Section I: Archetypal figurative
language linking winter to death;
plosive alliteration of "dead",
"deserted", "disfigured", "dark" - the
wintry earth itself mourns the loss of
Yeats, use of geographic metaphors
as "the provinces of his body
revolted" and "silence invaded the
suburbs". "He became his admirers."
"The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living."
▸ Section II: despite his physical demise, Yeats
lives on in his poetry.
▸ "For poetry makes nothing happen; it survives /
In the valley of its saying."
‣ The limited impact of the personal on the public
- poetry itself cannot bring political change
‣ As beautiful as Yeats' political poems were
(Easter 1916) they didn't bring change
‣ Section III is beautifully formal and rhetorical. Yet
it's a biting indictment of society's misplaced
values, "intolerant of the brave and innocent"
yet "worships language and forgives everyone
by whom it lives". Auden is critical of Kipling
and Claudel.
‣ The politics of the time are referenced "In the
nightmare of the dark / All the dogs of Europe
bark."

THE UNKNOWN CITIZEN (1939)
▸ Satirical elegy to 'Modern Man' noted only
by his number in the subtitle, 'Js/07/m/
378'
▸ Dedicatory information, "This Marble
Monument is Erected by the State" -
suggests someone of importance
▸ Begins with tone of adulatory testimony,
yet the content reported on in bureaucratic
terms is anything but praiseworthy - satire,
mock elegy - impersonal third person
ofﬁcialese
▸ Cumulation of orthodox behaviours -
Auden criticises blind conformity to the
state and modern consumerist behaviour
▸ "He was found by the Bureau of
Statistics to be / One against whom
there was no ofﬁcial complaint"
▸ "And that his reactions to
advertisements were normal in every
way... And had everything necessary to
Modern Man."
▸ Capitalisation indicates ironic
bureaucratic importance
▸ "Was he free? Was he happy? The
question is absurd: / Had anything
been wrong, we should certainly have
heard."

THE UNKNOWN CITIZEN
▸ Auden warns of blind acceptance of
public expectations - the loss of the
individual to conform with the state
▸ The political here is not just the
government, but its bureaucracy,
and the consumerism as a tool of
economic, and thus political control
▸ There is no longer a collision
between private and public - the
public world has consumed the
private

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939
▸ The persona lyrically meditates on
the state of the world on the day of
Hitler's invasion of Poland
▸ First person meditation of the 'low
dishonest decade' of the 1930s, with
'waves of anger and fear //
Obsessing our private lives'. Here the
impact of the public on the private.
Political machinations have wide-
reaching emotional impacts.
▸ 'Those to whom evil is done / Do evil
in return.' - Allusion to Hitler; 'Linz',
'huge imago'
▸ Rich historical allusion-
'Thucydides knew / All that speech
can say / About Democracy, / And
what dictators do'. Athenian father
of political realism - state and
individuals dominated by fear and
self-interest - Sparta versus Athens.
War is not new. Human nature
▸ Return to the bar, 'Faces along the
bar / Cling to their average day...
Lost in a haunted wood, / Children
afraid of the night' - imagery, verb
choices, metaphor

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939
"For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone."
"There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die"

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939 - POLITICS
▸ Political actions impact individuals and
societies on a global scale
▸ Individuals can't be separated from politics -
politicians ARE people
▸ Personal experiences affect public life
▸ War is inevitable and unavoidable - humans
crave power
▸ Lack of engagement in politics by the people -
focus on consumer culture
▸ Connecting to others most important - the
private drives the public at the most basic
level

THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES (1952)
▸ Uses an episode from Homer's Iliad to
meditate on the modern world -
violence and brutality
▸ Goddess Thetis looks over the
shoulder of Hephaestos, the god of ﬁre
and metal working, as he makes a
shield for Achilles
▸ Classical imagery of "vines and olive
trees, / marble and well-governed
cities" has been replaced with "artiﬁcial
wilderness / And a sky like lead."

THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES
▸ Contrast the most important rhetorical
device - what should be contrasted
with what is
▸ This juxtaposition emphasised by the
two different stanza forms.
▸ As Thetis looks over Hephaestos'
shoulder the reader's gaze in ancient
Greece. Short, eight three-stress lines.
▸ Modern scenes in seven-line form
rime royal - iambic pentameter,
ababbcc - contrast is striking visually
and aurally - powerful imagery of
destruction and suffering

THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES
▸ Irony in that Thetis would expect a
shield, an instrument of war, to be a
thing of beauty, decorated with
peaceful scenes
"Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign."
‣ Achilles as a metaphor for modern
politics - doomed - no peace can come
from the politics of war - even the
strong fall

MODELLING RELATED TEXTS
▸ "The Pedestrian" - short story by Ray
Bradbury
▸ "30% (Women and Politics in Sierra
Leone)" - short film by Anna Cady and
Em Cooper
▸ "Guernica" - painting by Pablo Picasso
▸ "V for Vendetta" - film by James
McTeigue
▸ "I met the walrus" - short film/
animation by John Raskin
▸ Animal Farm by George Orwell

PABLO PICASSO: GUERNICA (1937)

ETA 2015 LISA EDWARDS
COMMON HURDLES
▸ Students not exploring texts as representations of the relationships between
people and politics
▸ Students writing too generally about politics affecting people
▸ Instead, focus on rubric terms:
1. Political perspectives, ideas, events, situations, motivations, actions,
individual, shared, competing
2. War is politics; politics is war
3. Political action of civil war
4. Personal engagement in political process
5. Where the private world and public world of politics collide

THANK YOU
lisa.g.edwards@det.nsw.edu.au
lisaedwards.net

People, politics and the poetry of W.H.Auden

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