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Thu 28 Oct, 2004 05:22 pm
Musee des Beaux Arts W.H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
1940
beauty eh? Auden was the only thing that stuck in my brain senior year.
And a good corollary for current events too.
The image of the torturer's horse has always stayed with me.
I think if I ever started a rock band, I'd call it "The Torturer's Horse". Well, that or "Gorgeous George and the Velvettones".
Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.
Edgar, his poem "Stop all the Clocks" or "Funeral Blues" stunned me when I heard it recited on that film, (3 Weddings & a Funeral). He doesn't have many poems online and restrictions are frequently noted, perhaps because he is a modern poet. I was going to post something from an older set that I thought included him. When I picked it up, I saw that he "edited" it along with Norman Holmes Pearson.
Perhaps, though, Auden is the one who wrote this:
"Verse is almost certainly euql an perhaps superior to prose as a medium for the lucid exposition of ideas...."
Here's a poem I found online. It seems a little sing-songy and the gun reference is not my cup of tea. It's growing on me... maybe you like it?
II
That night when joy began
Our narrowest veins to flush,
We waited for the flash
Of morning's levelled gun.
But morning let us pass,
And day by day relief
Outgrows his nervous laugh,
Grown credulous of peace,
As mile by mile is seen
No trespasser's reproach,
And love's best glasses reach
No fields but are his own.
November 1931
Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)
Here are some selections from another poem written a few years after -- apparently Auden said later it was bad "both politically & artistically," but *I* like it.
"Spain 1937" by W.H.Auden
Lines 45-56, 89-93)
And the life, if it answers at all, replies from the heart
And the eyes and the lungs, from the shops and squares of the city:
"O no, I am not the Mover,
Not today, not to you. To you I'm the
"Yes-man, the bar-companion, the easily-duped:
I am whatever you do; I am your vow to be
Good, your humorous story;
I am your business voice; I am your marriage.
"What's your proposal? To build the Just City? I will,
I agree. Or is it the suicide pact, the romantic
Death? Very well, I accept, for
I am your choice, your decision: yes, I am Spain."
The stars are dead; the animals will not look:
We are left alone with our day, and the time is short and
History to the defeated
May say, "Alas," but cannot help or pardon.
Apparently he is not comfortable with the conclusions one must draw from a reading, but he says it so well, I think we can overlook Auden's protestations.
Here is an interesting one...
The Unknown Citizen
W.H. Auden
To JS/07 M 378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in a hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his
generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their
education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
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