Thinking Activity: Auden's Poem

This blog is a thinking activity task assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad sir, to present our understanding on W. H. Auden's poems, “September 1, 1939”, “In Memory of W. B. Yeats”, and “Epitaph on a Tyrant”. 

Introduction:

This blog will connect these poems with current times like pandemics and the Russia-Ukraine war.  In the poem “September 1, 1939” Auden referred to Nijinsky and Diaghilev. So, we’ll see that poem in the context of the queer study, and we will also see if Auden really created duality in the interpretation of the poem.

Auden’s poems seem to be written in our time. In fact, the poems (September 1, 1939, and Epitaph on a Tyrant to be precise) were written in the era of World War II, but we cannot deny the fact that these poem were written about the war. We are also going through the pandemic and war phase. So, it seems that these poems are written for our time. This is a fact that we cannot break out of the cycle, in the past there were war and pandemics hit the world, in the present we are also facing that and the future will also face the same problems. This poem will keep on reminding us  that it is written for our times.

The poem “September 1, 1939” is one of the famous poems of W. H. Auden. The poem is written on the outbreak of World War II In the poem, the narrator is not disclosed but many readers and critics have interpreted the narrator as Auden himself. The very first lines of the poem are enough evidence to think that Auden himself is the narrator and the place is one of the Dives (Bar) in Fifty-second Street of New York City. Dorothy Farnan Wrote that it was written in the Dizzy Club, an alleged gay bar in New York City as if the statement in the first two lines, “I sit in one of the dives/ On Fifty-second Street…” were literal fact and not the conventional poetic fiction.

Now if we explore the poem, we find we find that the poem seems to be for our times. This poem was originally written for World War II, but we are (Ukraine to be precise) going through the same circumstances. As Auden writes,

“As the clever hopes expire

Of a low dishonest decade:

Waves of anger and fear

Circulate over the bright

And darkened lands of the earth,

Obsessing our private lives;

The unmentionable odour of death” (4-10)

The narrator is sitting “uncertain and afraid” and despairing over the past decade describing it as a dishonest decade.  If not anger, we have also experienced waves of fear through “the unmentionable odour of death” in and as the result of that fear we are experiencing the waves of anger as a war and people also who are sick of the rotten decision of the government. We have yet to know how bad the Russia-Ukraine War and its aftermath will be.

He also wrote about a tyrant in the poem “Epitaph on a Tyrant” the tyrant this poem was Adolf Hitler. In this era,  Vladimir Putin is another constantly coming name on the list of tyrants.  Just like Auden wrote, “Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after, / And the poetry he invented was easy to understand…” (1-2). This line can relate to lines from the “September 1, 1939” poem, 

“A psychopathic god:

I and the public know

What all schoolchildren learn,

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return.”

Why Russia declared war on Ukraine (click here to read this BBC article).

"Russia refuses to use the terms war or even invasion; many of its leader's justifications for it were false or irrational." This is the poetry invented by Vladimir Putin. And people are also believing that he is saving Ukraine from Nazis. "He claimed his goal was to protect people subjected to bullying and genocide and aim for the "demilitarisation and de-Nazification" of Ukraine. There has been no genocide in Ukraine: it is a vibrant democracy, led by a president who is Jewish." He wants to make Ukraine a pro- Russian Country. The Current president of Ukraine is Anti-Russian. Ukraine moved towards the European Union and the west military alliance, NATO.  Russian accused NATO of threatening "Our historical  future as a nation".

Above image is showing the allies of Ukraine and Russia but we can see many undeclared countries.

Every country knows the fact that what Russia has done/doing to the innocent civilians of Ukraine and to the country itself is not the act of saving them. Countries like India and China is not supporting Russia, neither has it opposed. On the surface it seems that they are neutral but they are just waiting for the right time and opportunity that interest them.

"All I have is a voice

To undo the folded lie,

The romantic lie in the brain

Of the sensual man-in-the-street

And the lie of Authority

Whose buildings grope the sky:"

In these lines Auden is saying that the poet cannot do anything besides unfolding the lies of the authorities, the lies that authority has filled in the brains of the "sensual man-in-the-street". They are the people who lives in their 'ivory towers' ultimately the 'man in the street' has to suffer.