Write an essay on Auden as the representative poet of nineteen

Write an essay on Auden as the representative poet of nineteen thirties.

“It is said that the poetry of Auden and his group appealed to the people of their generation because it sprang from a common feeling of guilt and responsibility”. Discuss.

“Auden had red to resolve the central problem raised by War as the prime example of man’s infallible nature” Do you agree?

Is it correct to say that Auden’s poetry related to the political, social and intellectual climate of the 1930’s? Give a reasoned answer.

Do you agree with the view that the poets of 1930s brought poetry and politics together?

Ans.

The Thirties a Period of Unprecedented Crisis

W. H. Auden is the most representative poet of 1930s. Just as Chaucer mirror’s the life and times of 14th century England in his poetry, just as Tennyson is the representative poet of the Victorian age, just as T. S. Eliot is the most representative poet of 1920s, in like manner Auden is the most representative poet of the thirties. The thirties were the most momentous period of English, rather world history. The thirties-in which Auden grew up and earned his reputation as a poet-were indeed years of unprecedented crisis. Although the First World War had ended but the peace that came in its wake was worst than a nightmare. Perhaps, never before had humanity faced such total threat to civilization as it did at this time. Political oppression, economic depression, large-scale unemployment and consequent misery conspired to make the life on earth a veritable hell. People came to feel that some urgent action was necessary to check the growth of this political and economic monstrosity and save the world from ruin. Even those poets who did not voice in their Poetry the voice of the times felt the necessity of leaving their ivory tower and do some concerted action. All this was echoed in the poetry of Auden as well. The social, economic and political problems of the period found their way into his poetry. In one of the poems (poem 22) of Poems 1930 he wrote:

Smokeless chimneys damaged bridges, rotting wharves and choked canals,

Tramlines buckled, smashed trucks lying on their side across the rails;

Power stations locked deserted since they drew the boiler fires,

Pylons fallen or subsiding, trailing dead high tension wires.

Black Future

This was the condition of Britain in the thirties and Auden fell sorry about the black future of his country. He wondered if things could ever be the same again:

Have things gone too far already? Are we done for?

Must we wait?

Hearing doom’s approaching foot-steps regular down

miles of straight.

But Auden was no pessimist who was going to yield so easily. He ended the poem by exhorting people to save the society from extinction.

If we really want to live, we’d better start at once to try.

If we don’t, it does ‘nt matter but we’d better star to die.

Auden and His Group

Auden was not the only poet of his generation who gave expression to these catastrophes. Stephen Spender, Louis MacNeice. C. Day Lewis and others were also equally concerned with these things. These poets aimed at expressing in their poetry attitudes and emotions that turned out to be representative of the middle-class sensibility. Since all these poets thought and wrote alike, critics called them a movement and since Auden was the most representative of them the group was called “Auden Group Movement.” Spender, who notices clearly the common features that bound these poets together, marked. “These writers wrote with near-unanimity surprising when one considers that most of them were strangers to one another, of a society coming to an end and of the revolutionary change.”

Although critics used the appellation “Auden Group Movement” to these poets, they themselves were quite unaware of any such connection. Although Auden, Spender. MacNeice and Day Lewis knew each other since the mid-thirties, they had not met together till after the publication of New Signatures in 1932. The publication of New Signatures helped in the coining of the expression-Auden Group Movement, Michael Roberts, who edited this very influential journal observed that Auden’s Poems 1930 and Day Lewis’ From Feather to Iron, published in 1931, were the earliest work in which imagery taken from contemporary life appeared as the natural and spontaneous expression of the poet’s thought and feeling. Michael Roberts also tried to draw the attention of the intellectuals to the problems of the working people and urged them to identify themselves with the oppressed classes.

Rise of Fascism

The thirties saw the rise of fascism as a political force all over Europe. This rise of fascism gave birth to concentration camps all over the, ‘waste land’ of Europe. A sensitive poet could not sit back in his ivory tower and watch the growing deterioration of political and economic life with unconcern. This was also the time when communism emerged on the political scene as a great force of great promise. The emergence of Communism gave a new hope of fighting against the fascist forces and avert the political doom which threatened entire Europe. Stephen Spender said, “The peculiarity of the 1930’s was not that the subject of a civilization in decline was new, but that the hope of saving or transforming it had arisen, combined with the positive “necessity of withstanding tyrannies.”

Poetry No More Escapist

The consciousness of the changed conditions was a major factor in the formulation of the poetic theory of the 1930’s. The poets who considered poetry as luxury writing’ had begun to change sides and became functional. So the poets of Auden Group discarded what may be termed as “pure poetry.” The reasons for this rejection are well put forward by C. Day Lewis. He said that, “pure poetry theory seems to me often the subtlest form of escapism, a compulsion exercised on the poet by the blocking of his ambition, by neglect, by disillusionment with civilization…A part from its academic tendency to divorce form from matter, I cannot believe that any such theory of poetry, built on a neurosis, is admirable or adequate.”

Artistic Autonomy versus Social Obligation

Thus there were two contrasting positions-artistic autonomy and social obligation. Poets of the thirties had to make a choice between the two. Since a poet was not only a poet but also a human being it was natural that he should give expression to his social obligations. The two ideals of poetical autonomy and social obligation coalesced in the poetry of Auden. He believed that poetry was not only a medium of human sensibility but a product of social responsibility. Auden and the poets of his group brought poetry and politics together. These poets were committed to the politics of the time. Auden’s commitment to the politics becomes evident from the refrain of his poem “Spain”:

Tomorrow the rediscovery of romantic love

But today the struggle.

Commenting upon the political commitment of Auden and his group Hoggart observed: “So these poets deliberately declared ‘poetical martial law’; for although the best form of action might be hard to discover, something had to be done, and action itself was valuable… They believed some public action to be necessary and undertook it: Auden, Spender and other poets went to Spain during the Civil War.” The Spanish Civil War had inspired many poets on both sides of the Atlantic. Michael Roberts also concurred with this view and said: “Poetry is here turned to propaganda, but it is propaganda for a theory of life which may release the poet’s energies for the writing of pure poetry”.

Faith in Communism

In the thirties political commitment was synonymous with faith in Communism. It gave a weapon with which to fight fascism. It was the promise of a golden millennium. Communism was an assurance that art would flourish in freedom. Today we might be surprised at the vast number of people who came under the influence of Communism, but it is a pointer to the fact that the democratic institutions of the day had lost all meaning. There were many reasons why the intellectuals and poets of the thirties came under the impact of Communism. The age was the period of despair and it seemed to answer the need of the age. Then, the philosophy of Communism seemed to be in tune with the growing spirit of materialism and science. It seemed to possess the qualities that could make it into a religion of twentieth century. These, perhaps, are the reason why intellectuals of Europe were dazzled by its appearance and became prepared to sacrifice everything at its altar. In The Dance of Death Auden wrote:

We shall build tomorrow

A new clean town

With no more sorrow

Where lovely people walk up and town.

At the end of the play Karl Marx appears and announces the death of Capitalism which is personified by a dancer. He says the dancer was put to an end because “the instruments of production have been too much for him.” However, Auden was never very ecstatic about Marx and Marxism. Auden himself wrote in 1955: “Looking back, it seems to me that the interest in Marx taken by myself and my friends…was more psychological than political: we were once interested in Marx in the same way that we were interested in Freud, as a technique of unmasking middle class ideologies, not with the intention of repudiating our class, but with the hope of becoming better bourgeois.” The same opinion is also held by Monroe K. Spears who said that Auden’s interest in Marxism was nothing better than intellectual curiosity: “Auden clearly never believed that political values were ultimate, transcending moral and religious ones; his Marxism, which was always unorthodox, was essentially another dimension added to the psychological analysis which was itself always potentially religious.”

Politics: An Intellectual Curiosity

Thus we can say that, at best, Auden’s interest in politics in general, and Marxism in particular, was nothing better than an intellectual curiosity. Still, it was a pervading influence on him between 1935 and 1938. It never acquired the prestige and power of faith with Auden and his Group. Commenting upon the leftist writers of the thirties, Spender wrote: “Communism had not provided the young writers with a belief, but it did provide them with a bad conscience. And if it be said that the debate was crude and puerile, it should be remembered that the young writers argued with their eyes stared into the eyes of the victims of concentration camps, and all the deed of the coming war.” He affirmed with great vehemence that “it the history of literary ideas of the 1930s is ever written, I am sure that what I have written will be vindicated.” For nearly all writers, Communism was a matter of conscience, not of belief.

Auden’s Political Commitment

It seems that many writers and critics have tried to exaggerate the extent of Auden’s political commitment. He was no doubt.., interested in politics and became involved in it, but his involvement in politics and especially Marxism was a passing phase. The glamour of Marxism wore off and Auden went to the extent of leaving politics. I-us life began as a quest for a basis for life and poetry which would save him and the world from disaster. Standing before the shrine of Communism, Auden. For a while, felt that his quest for panacea has come to an end. However, it did not take him long to realize the danger involved in upholding political dogma through poetry. So he left politics altogether. When, his friend Stephen Spender, asked him the reason for abandoning politics, his comment was: “In the 1930s I thought that war could be stopped by opposing Fascism: We failed to do this so I realized that subsequently nothing that I could do would be effective.” He came to the conclusion that taking up arms against evil in the name of politics is a dangerous thing for poetry.