Paper 4, Module 22: Text

Role Name Affiliation

Principal Investigator Prof. Tutun Mukherjee University of Hyderabad

Paper Coordinator Prof. Hariharan

Balagovindan

Institute of English, University of

Kerala

Content Writer/Author

(CW)

Dr. Sushil Kumar DB College, Sasthamkotta

Content Reviewer (CR) Dr. Jameela Begum

Former Head & Professor, Institute

of English, University of Kerala

Language Editor (LE) Prof. Hariharan

Balagovindan

Institute of English, University of

Kerala

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W. H. Auden (1907-1973)

Keywords:-

Auden – major works – influences – themes – love – politics - peace –neurosis-death – fear-

Author and his major Contributions

Wystan Hugh Auden (image 1) was born on February 21,1907 at York in a professional

middle class family. (image 2)He was the third son of George Augustins and Constance Rosallo.

W.H Auden was sent to St.Edmund’s school, where he acquired the friendship of Christopher

Isherwood(image 4). He visited Berlin in 1928 and was influenced by German poetry. In 1929

Isherwood abandoned his medical profession and joined Auden in Berlin In 1935, he

collaborated with Christopher Isherwood on a play with the title The Dog Beneath the Skin.

Auden married Erika Mann, daughter of German novelist Thomas Mann, in 1935. In 1937 he

visited Spain during the civil war and served as an ambulance driver on the Republican side. In

1938, he visited China with Isherwood. In 1938 Auden became a U.S. citizen and in 1948, he

received the Pulitzer Prize for the work The Age of Anxiety. Auden was one of three candidates

recommended by the Nobel Committee to the Swedish Academy for the Nobel Prize in

Literature in 1963.

It was at Oxford that Auden became the pivotal member of a group of writers called the

“Oxford Group” or the “Auden Generation.” He along with Louise MacNeice, Stephen Spender

and C. Day Lewis shared the name ‘Pink Poets’ and the ‘Poets of 1930’s. They are lumped

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together as a complete figure and called MacSpaunday in the acronym used to designate these

four poets.

Sir Stephen Harold Spender (1909-1995), first came to prominence as a poet of social

protest in the 1930s.He is one among the “four musketeers of the Oxford Movement”, a member

of the generation of British poets who came to prominence in the 1930s.

They together share some characteristics:

i. Their thematic content contained marks of innovation and experimental modernness.

ii. They had more intellectual and less emotional appeal.

iii. Their political involvement with communism was born out of a sense of guilt and

involvement.

iv. Sigmund Freud also influenced these poets.

v. Their common identity was reflected in their cynicism and satire.

vi. Their poetic technique was greatly influenced by Imagism, French Symbolism and

Hopkins-Eliot innovations.

The group adhered to various Marxist and anti-fascist doctrines and addressed social,

political, and economic concerns in their writings. Auden’s first book of poetry, Poems, was

privately printed by Stephen Spender in 1928. Critics have noted that Auden’s early verse

suggests the influences of Thomas Hardy, Laura Riding, Wilfred Owen, and Edward Thomas.

Stylistically, his poems are fragmentary and terse, relying on concrete images and colloquial

language to convey Auden’s political and psychological concerns. Marxism was the dominating

influence on Auden’s poetry. Auden’s poems, published in the thirties of the twentieth century, a

turbulent period in the history, show the shallowness of the disintegrating post war civilization.

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Poems (1930), The Orators (1932) and The Dance of Death (1933) show the influence of both

Freud and Marx and express contemporary political tensions, social and economic unrest.

Auden's themes in his shorter poems include the fragility and transience of personal love

("Danse Macabre", "The Dream", "Lay your sleeping head). In 1938 he wrote a series of dark,

ironic ballads about individual failure ("Miss Gee", "James Honeyman", "Victor"). All these

together with other famous poems such as "Dover", "As He Is", and "Musée des Beaux Arts" ,"In

Memory of W. B. Yeats", "The Unknown Citizen", "Law Like Love", "September 1, 1939", and

"In Memory of Sigmund Freud” appeared in his collection, Another Time (1940). The volume

also contains elegies to poets A. E. Housman, Matthew Arnold, and William Butler Yeats.

From 1942 through 1947 he worked mostly on three long poems in dramatic form, each

different from the others in form and content. Auden’s next major work, Nones, includes

another widely anthologized piece, “In Praise of Limestone,” which asserts a powerful

connection between the landscape depicted and the psychology of Auden’s characters. His prose

book The Dyer's Hand (1962) gathered many of the lectures he gave in Oxford as Professor of

Poetry in 1956–61, together with revised versions of essays and notes written since the mid-

1940s.

His later poetry consists of The Shield of Achilles (1955) City Without Walls (1969),

Epistle to a Godson(1972) and the unfinished Thank You, Fog (1974) ) include reflective

poems about language ("Natural Linguistics") and about his own ageing ("A New Year

Greeting", "Talking to Myself", "A Lullaby" "The din of work is subdued"). His last completed

poem, in haiku form, was "Archeology", about ritual and timelessness, two recurring themes in

his later years.

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T he German-Soviet pact disillusioned him and shook his faith in Communism. As a

result he abandoned Communism and took metaphysical and religious faith. Auden died in

Vienna, Austria, on September 29, 1973. (Wikipedia)

Stephen Harold Spender met the poets W.H. Auden and C. Day-Lewis, and during 1930–33. He

spent many months in Germany with the writer Christopher Isherwood. His early volumes,

Poems (1933), Vienna(1934), Trial of a Judge, a verse play (1938), and The Still

Centre (1939)—were influenced by the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke and Federico García

Lorca. Above all, his poems expressed a self-critical, compassionate personality. In the following

decades Spender, in some ways a more personal poet than his early associates, became

increasingly more autobiographical, turning his gaze from the external topical situation to the

subjective experience. His reputation for humanism and honesty is fully vindicated in subsequent

volumes—Ruins and Visions (1942), Poems of Dedication (1947), The Edge of

Being (1949), Collected Poems (1955), Selected Poems (1965), The Generous Days (1971),

and Dolphins(1994).

At the end of the 1930s, when the nature of Stalinist rule had become more evident—especially

after the Stalin-Hitler pact of 1939—Spender became disillusioned with Russian Communism.

Especially eloquent testimony of this disenchantment with Communism can be found in

Spender's essay in The God That Failed (1949).

From the 1940s Spender was better known for his perceptive criticism and his editorial

association with the influential reviews Horizon (1940–41) and Encounter (1953–67) than he

was as a poet. Spender’s prose works include short stories (The Burning Cactus, 1936),

a novel (The Backward Son, 1940), literary criticism (The Destructive Element, 1935; The

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Creative Element, 1953; The Making of a Poem, 1955; The Struggle of the Modern, 1963),

an autobiography (World Within World, 1951; reissued 1994), and uncollected essays with

new commentary (The Thirties and After, 1978).

He died in London on July 17, 1995.

Poetic Characteristics

Though intellectual and unemotional, his poetry shows a deep empathy with the essential

human condition. What distinguishes Spender’s poetry is the combination of his commitment to

the left wing political ideology with his own personal feelings and emotions. He also composed

highly moving poems on war. He beautifully expressed his personal emotions in short lyrics.

Spender was an accomplished poetic artist who used exact words. In his best poems every word

has its value for sound as well as sense.

Themes in Auden

In an age as confusing and volatile as the interwar period, it was natural that the main

themes in literature among young writers and poets would be the social, political and the

economic malaise of the period. Auden was not an exception. His works are noted for its stylistic

and technical achievements, its engagement with moral and political issues, and its variety of

tone, form and content. He was known as the spiritual physician of his generation. The central

themes of his poetry are love, politics and citizenship, religion and morals, and the relationship

between unique human beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature. Auden’s early

works are noted for the themes like love, politics, peace, neurosis, death fear, and character

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/524417.W_H_Auden

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Many of his poems, like “As I Walked Out One Evening,” “Lullaby,” and “O Tell Me

the Truth About Love,” are the finest love poems, and “Funeral Blues” features a man deeply in

love with another. But at the same time he is deeply concerned with the transience of love in

modern world. Almost all of these poems have a sobering undercurrent of sorrow, or of the

desire to remind readers that life, and love, are short and are affected by the vicissitudes of

existence like sickness and time. Love is sweet, but it does not exist in a universe devoid of

suffering, waning of affection or, of course, death.

Auden's poetry is sometimes cerebral, sometimes brutally honest and evocative of the

historical context in which he is writing. He is renowned for addressing the issues of his day in a

moving and relevant manner. The horrors of the modern world do not escape his incisive pen; he

deals with the dictators and their mad quest for world domination, the fall of the masses under

their leaders' spell, the stultifying bureaucratic state, the Spanish Civil War, the bleakness and

perhaps impossibility of the future, the psychic side of warfare, the bleak landscape, the

martyrdom of heroes and the death of poets, the unthinking use of modern tools, and the

bludgeoning of the human spirit through the great weight of history. Through all this, though,

Auden retains some hope for the future, pointing out the freedom that comes from recognizing

our true condition whatever our circumstances are. http://www.gradesaver.com/w-h-auden-

poems/study-guide/themes

Auden’s work is noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with

moral and political issues, and its variety in tone, form and content. The central themes of his

poetry are love, politics and citizenship, religion and morals, and the relationship between unique

human beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature. His poetry is considered versatile

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and inventive, ranging from the tersely epigrammatic to book-length verse, and incorporating a

vast range of scientific knowledge.

Spender’s Poetry

Nine Experiments (1928) and Oxford Poetry (1930) struggle to achieve effective forms

to explore issues of self and value. Twenty Poems (1930) and Poems (1933) that concentrate on

the themes of love and friendship and the pressure on the poet of the contemporary political

scene belong to the first phase of his poetic career. In this first phase or the Marxist phase, he

was acutely sensitive to the social and political problems of his time.

The long poem, “Vienna” (1934), owes its origin to the infamous attack on the Viennese

workers in their own quarters (May, 1934) by the Government of Austria under Dolfuss. Here

Spender had avoided all conceits, fables and symbols. This evidently put a greater strain on his

thought and language. This poem gave rise to a misinterpretation of Spender’s political and

social faith.

The sympathetic tone of Spender can be seen in the lines: “The voice of the poor, like birds/that

thud against a sullen pane, / Have worn my heart, in the poem “Appeal”

The collection Twenty Poems of 1930 shows the typical Spendarian conflict between his

basic romanticism and his strong understanding of the harsh realities of society. This distinct

duality emerged from the centre of his self. He shows his resolution to overcome the romantic

relapses by avoiding his fascination for the past and the future in the Poem “Always Between

Hope and Fear “contained in Twenty Poems:

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Cancel that heaven and abyss

Whose blues and reds roar back to madness,

Avoid these chasms and steep gaps in space

Sense should grope on all fours…

The Still Centre (1939) is another collection of Spender’s poems where the poet

consciously resists all attempts, as he states in the Preface, “to dwarf the experience of the

individual….For this reason, in my most recent poems, I have deliberately turned back to a kind

of writing which is more personal, and I have included within my subjects weakness and fantasy

and illusion”. Most of the poems here refer to the Spanish Civil War, and the outlook represented

therein is thus explained by Spender himself: “As I have decidedly supported one side–the

Republican–in that conflict (Spanish Civil War), perhaps I should explain why I do not strike a

more heroic note. My reason is that a poet can only write about what is true to his

own experience….Poetry does not state truth, it states the conditions within which something felt

is true.” It is therefore evident that Spender could not avoid a defeatist outlook which hovers

round his Spanish poems.

The lyrical effusion has expressed in many poems. One such poem is on “An Elementary

School Class-Room in a Slum”:

“All of their time and space are foggy slum

So blot their maps with slums as big as doom.

Unless, governor, teacher, inspector, visitor,

This map becomes their window and these windows

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That open on their lives like crouching tombs

Break, O break open, till they break the town

And show the children to the fields and all their world

Azure on their sands, to let their tongues

Run naked into books, the white and green leaves open

The history theirs whose language is the sun.”

In the Second phase he made a kind of retreating journey into a self sufficient poetic

world of truth and peace. The poetic output of this time was devoid of propagandist vein, and

filled with the themes of love, self, the horror of war, and pity and personal sorrow with imagery.

Important volumes in this phase include Ruins and Visions(1942),Poems of dedication(1947),

the Edge of Being(1949), Collected poems(1955),Selected Poems(1964),the Generous

Days(1969),recent Poems(1978) and Collected Poems(1986)

As a poet Spender emerges more as a socially committed and less as an innovator of

modern technique. However he handles words, images and rhythms when engulfed with

emotional fervor and social propaganda. It was through this powerful imagery that he had given

utterance to the complex experiences of war and life.

Analysis of Spender’s poems

[Stephen Spender, “The Truly Great” from Collected Poems 1928-1953. Copyright © 1955 by

Stephen Spender. Reprinted by permission of Ed Victor Ltd.

Source: Collected Poems 1928-1953 (Random House Inc., 1955)]

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“I think continually of those who were truly great” is an untitled poem that first appeared in New

Signatures, a collection of poetry selected by Michael Roberts to offer an imaginative and

intellectual blend that would deal positively with the problems of the twentieth century.

The poet pays a posthumous tribute to great men like ancient historians, artists or poets. The

poem is an attempt to depict what makes a person truly great.

“I think continually of those who were truly great” is written in free verse with three stanzas

containing eight, seven, and eight lines, respectively. The meter of the poem is highly varied,

containing fine examples of most meters used in English poetry. While this poem settles into no

regular meter, line length, or rhyme scheme, it is, nonetheless, highly musical with its

syncopated rhythms and sharp images.

An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum

“An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum” was first published in 1964 in Stephen

Spender's Selected Poems. The poem has since appeared in several collections, including

Collected Poems 1928-1985, published in 1985. “An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum”

is perhaps the best example of Spender's political voice resonating throughout a poem. In this

poem, Spender expresses his ideological positions on government, economics, and education.

The students in this classroom are underprivileged and malnourished. The capitalistic

government is supposed to supply equal opportunity for education, but the classroom in the slum

offers little hope for change or progress for its lower-class students. This poem, written during

the time of the Civil Rights movement in the United States, is fitting both in its commentary

about race issues in American education and as a Socialist proclamation against capitalism and

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social injustice in general. Although Spender was British, his extreme left-leaning political

ideologies were in response to the global question concerning social injustice.

The theme of poverty is principal to the poem "An Elementary School Classroom in a

Slum." Spender creates a crisp image of children in poverty through his descriptions of dire

situations and mal-nourished students, revealing a sad, hidden segment of society that was

prevalent throughout the world. He is not commenting directly on any particular nation in his

poem; instead, he exposes the widespread neglect of children of all nationalities, races, and

ethnicities. It is poverty that has caused the students in "An Elementary School Classroom in a

Slum" to be "weighed-down," "paper-seeming," diseased, and "twisted." Spender believes this

poverty is created through the oppressive power of capitalism.

This poem was written during the American Civil Rights movement, and although

Spender was British, the injustice that occurred in the United States was a global issue that

affected the entire world, especially close English-speaking allies like Britain. Spender was

affected by the struggles for equality in the United States because of his staunch dedication to

social and political reforms. Although this poem was written during this time of oppressive racial

injustice in America, Spender does not directly focus on a select group of underprivileged

children, based on race, religion, or creed. Instead, he hones the content of his poem and remarks

about the social injustice imposed upon all children, making it much more difficult to ignore.

When the spotlight is cast upon a select group of individuals, certain members of particular

groups are able to shrug their shoulders or cast a doubtful eye at the authenticity of the group's

plight. However, when the spotlight is cast upon children writ large, no one can turn a blind eye.

Regardless of their upbringing, history, race, or ethnicity, children are innocent beings dependent

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on the helping hands of humanity. Without aid, children are effectively left to die, and adults

who do not help are left with an undeniable sense of guilt and worthlessness. Spender cultivates

these emotions in his poem and uses them to his advantage, delivering a powerful message about

poverty, its effect on children, and the oppressive power of money.

The Pylons

The installation s of the modern technological world and their consequences on the

sleepy countryside form the theme of The Pylons. When it first appeared, it was hailed as a

typical of spender and his associates and the term ‘Pylon School’ or ‘Pylon poets’ has often been

used to describe them.

The literal meaning of pylon points to tall metallic post that hold electric wires. In the

poem Spender feels that they are an intrusion to the peaceful country life.

In the first stanza gives a detailed picture of the beautiful village with a rural background.

the hills are full of stories,and the cottages in the hills are made of stones. the roads which were

broken reached villages which the poet refers as ‘hidden villages’

The poet laments that on these hills that ‘pylons’ that has electric wires have been built. He

compares these pillars to giant naked girls. Then he contrasted the past county side, full of green

chestnut with the present ‘dry brook’.

The pylons which carry the energy for building the cities of the future destroy the calm,

serenity and beauty of Briton’s unspoilt countryside’s. What is striking about the poem is the

poet’s love for the virgin village and the relentless admiration for the inventions of the modern

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science and technology. It expresses with equal delicacy the poet’s ambivalent attitude. The

pylons stand out against the sky like ‘whips of anger ‘, while the villages harbor the hidden

sources of power and strength.

Throughout his poetic career the element of social consciousness remains palpable either

in the early poetry of social concern or in the later poetry of introspection. Though he was

profoundly influenced by the age of science and technology, he didn’t over rule his concern for

the social reality around him. In this way he strongly survives as a major poetic voice in the

history of 20th century British literature.