Thinking Activity: W.H. Auden's Poems

 Hello friends!

 I am going to discuss W.H. Auden's poem. This task was given by Dr. Dilip Barad sir.

About W.H. Auden :- 

Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York, England, on February 21, 1907. He moved to Birmingham during childhood and was educated at Christ Church, Oxford. As a young man he was influenced by the poetry of Thomas Hardy and Robert Frost, as well as William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Old English verse. At Oxford his precocity as a poet was immediately apparent, and he formed lifelong friendships with two fellow writers, Stephen Spender and Christopher Isherwood.

This blog discuss to Auden's three poems which are 'Sept, 1 1939, Epitaph on a Tyrant, and In Memory of W. B. Yeats. 

Auden's poems seem to be written in our times for 2022. Justify this in context of pandemic and Russia-Ukraine war.

Let's discuss  Epitaph on a Tyrant…

 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.

W. H. Auden spent some time in Berlin during the 1930s, and it was here that he probably wrote ‘Epitaph on a Tyrant’, which was published in 1939, the year that the Second World War broke out. The specific tyrant Auden had in mind, then, was probably Adolf Hitler, though the poem can be analysed as a study in tyranny more generally, too.

We start with the word ‘Perfection’, which is immediately undermined by the qualifying clause ‘of a kind’. Something is either perfect or it is not; there is no such thing as perfection ‘of a kind’. This shows the unrealistic nature of the tyrant’s dream, which often stems from a desire to create some kind of utopia. The poetry the tyrant wrote, we are told, was easy to understand.

This suggests someone who believes art should be democratic and enjoyed by everybody, and such anti-elitism appears to be a positive trait at first. But the late Geoffrey Hill observed, in defence of difficult art, ‘that genuinely difficult art is truly democratic. And that tyranny requires simplification.’ Although we like to talk of difficult poetry as elitist and anti-democratic, perhaps it is the poetry which tries to fob us off with overly simplistic black-and-white depictions of the world which is the truly anti-democratic art.

And besides, what does it mean to talk of somebody having ‘invented’ poetry? Poetry is made, composed, written, created – but invented suggests that the tyrant wishes to take credit for having come up with the idea of poetry itself, or at least a whole new kind of poetry.

The ‘easy to understand’ poetry of the tyrant then feeds into the cliché in the next line, about him knowing folly ‘like the back of his hand’. This seems to be deliberate cliché, a ready-to-wear idiom that everyone can hear, understand, and interpret. But it also summons the more sinister idea of the back of one’s hand – used as a weapon for discipline or control of another – which reminds us that this is a tyrant’s hand, and that the same hand that pens all that accessible poetry also wields weapons to crush those who step out of line.

Again, this is a cliché – though here, a cliché with a twist. We usually speak of bursting into laughter, although bursting with laughter is not unheard of either. But given that this is a tyrant these senators serve, their (forced, false) laughter would be excessive as if they actually were in danger of exploding with the effort. And then comes the final chilling line: when the tyrant is angry or unhappy, children are killed in the streets because he lashes out and loses any remaining shreds of his humanity.

In this Auden's poems are related to pandemic and war. Then Epitaph on a Tyrant compares the Russia and Ukraine War to the start of the Russia - Ukraine war. Putin has been President of Russia in long time.

Now let's discuss  Sept,1,1939.

The poem, ‘1st September, 1939’ by W.H. Auden, was occasioned by Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939. In this poem, the poet expresses his shock at the news. In the present stanza, he expresses his view that Germany alone is not to blame for starting the Great War. He says that correct research into the thinking of the German people from Martin Luther’s times to the present age can lead us to the conclusion that the Germans are great lovers of national freedom, self-respect, and national honor. The researches can also reveal the whole nature of the offense which lies embedded in the Versailles Treaty of 1918 and which has inflicted a great psychological wound on the German mind.

When we saw Hitler's invasion of Poland today, it was the same as Putin's invasion of Ukraine. World War ll is similar to today's situation of Ukraine- Russia.

Let's discuss In memory of W.B. Yeats.

In ‘In Memory of W.B. Yeats’ Auden taps into themes of life after death, the power of poetry, and the human condition. The powerful and wide-ranging themes are discussed within the context of Yeats’ life and death. Auden uses an exacting tone and direct language to depict the events around Yeat’s death. The mood is at times uplifting and at others concerning and worrying. There are many dark images and many fewer hopeful ones. 

We can say that after the Corona PandemicMany people died in the Corona pandemic but it had no effect on the world except for empathy. World was affected with economic breakdown and not many people died.

To wind up,  three poems are relates to today's situation. 

Thank you

Words :992