The depth and breadth of this essay take my breath away, Jay, having read the poems you cite and Mendelsohn as well. I praise and honor what you have done here and how you tie this poems that are never fascist and tell what must be said. I add that Seamus Heaney did so as well in The Cure of Troy. In case you haven't seen this, here is Auden's unpublished poem on the dialectic:
Thank you so much, Mary. You are certainly right about Heaney -- just the same endeavor and accomplishment. I was unfamiliar with the Auden, so thank you. I found it online, too, at the New York Review of Books, as well as a separate interview with Mendelson about it. I think it I can see why the poem might have lost Auden's interest to perfect. I find it loses rhetorical force after the first three stanza, but in those stanzas, especially the opening, it is so on the mark. But who knows -- this could be reason to keep at it. Certainly, it's good that Mendelson brought it to us. Auden also told us that "poetry makes nothing happen," but maybe, maybe, maybe, its spirit activated within people who don't read poetry?
Well, Jay, I guess it’s time to break up with “September 1, 1939,” which I’ve been reading for years in Pavlovian fashion, racing toward the final stanza, which continues to move me. “We must love one another or die,” which I was able to excuse on the grounds that death is metaphorical here, is the least of this poem’s failings. It reads like a barroom sermon delivered by an old drunk. There’s little verbal invention and an over-reliance on abstract nouns. The poem fizzles beside the Yeats, which I have hardly read since my student days many lifetimes ago. I do still like the passage about “the normal heart” (which became the title of a play). And the “affirming flame” is what I, and many of us, try to show in these increasingly alarming times. It would make a good name for a Substack.
Your essay inspired me to reflect on both poems. My knowledge of Auden is spotty, but the much-criticized line about loving one another reminds me of the closing lines from “As I Walked Out One Evening,” which grows on me with each rereading: “You shall love your crooked neighbor/ With your crooked heart.” This feels closer to Auden’s true feelings about love, and flows organically from the rest of the poem.
Rona, I think your further analysis is right on -- the abstract nouns, the diminished verbal inventiveness. All that will likely follow from a rhetorical focus on making an argument, precisely what I fault in bad political poetry. Contrary to that poetry, Auden's rhetoric is gorgeous, so we're pulled in, and that, too, is what Mendelson tells us Auden was very perceptively wary of in his poetic powers. (Contrary to Auden, most poets would carry to their graves the pride of having written a "September 1.")
And I, too, have wanted nothing greater in these times than to show an affirmng flame.
You know, I've had a similar experience in both directions. I've found intellectual, critical fault with a work of art on first experiencing it but later found the holistic experience of the work overwhelmed my criticism, and I went on to continuing reward in the art. Here, I found that once I had performed this comparative analysis, I can't take the same pleasure in Auden's poem that I did for so long.
The depth and breadth of this essay take my breath away, Jay, having read the poems you cite and Mendelsohn as well. I praise and honor what you have done here and how you tie this poems that are never fascist and tell what must be said. I add that Seamus Heaney did so as well in The Cure of Troy. In case you haven't seen this, here is Auden's unpublished poem on the dialectic:
‘We get the Dialectic fairly well’
W.H. Auden
We get the Dialectic fairly well,
How streams descending turn to trees that climb,
That what we are not we shall be in time,
Why some unlikes attract, all likes repel.
But is it up to creatures or their fate
To give the signal when to change a state?
Granted that we might possibly be great
And even be expected to get well
How can we know it is required by fate
As truths are forced on poets by a rhyme?
Ought we to rush upon our lives pell-mell?
Things have to happen at the proper time
And no two lives are keeping the same time,
As we grow old our years accelerate,
The pace of processes inside each cell
Alters profoundly when we feel unwell,
The motions of our protoplasmic slime
Can modify our whole idea of fate.
Nothing is unconditional but fate.
To grumble at it is a waste of time,
To fight it, the unpardonable crime.
Our hopes and fears must not grow out of date,
No region can include itself as well,
To judge our sentence is to live in hell.
Suppose it should turn out, though, that our bell
Has been in fact already rung by fate?
A calm demeanor is all very well
Provided we were listening at the time.
We have a shrewd suspicion we are late,
Our look of rapt attention just a mime,
That we have really come to like our grime,
And do not care, so far as one can tell,
For whom or for how long we are to wait.
Whatever we obey becomes our fate,
What snares the pretty little birds is time,
That what we are, we only are too well.
(written in 1941 and never published)
Thank you so much, Mary. You are certainly right about Heaney -- just the same endeavor and accomplishment. I was unfamiliar with the Auden, so thank you. I found it online, too, at the New York Review of Books, as well as a separate interview with Mendelson about it. I think it I can see why the poem might have lost Auden's interest to perfect. I find it loses rhetorical force after the first three stanza, but in those stanzas, especially the opening, it is so on the mark. But who knows -- this could be reason to keep at it. Certainly, it's good that Mendelson brought it to us. Auden also told us that "poetry makes nothing happen," but maybe, maybe, maybe, its spirit activated within people who don't read poetry?
Well, Jay, I guess it’s time to break up with “September 1, 1939,” which I’ve been reading for years in Pavlovian fashion, racing toward the final stanza, which continues to move me. “We must love one another or die,” which I was able to excuse on the grounds that death is metaphorical here, is the least of this poem’s failings. It reads like a barroom sermon delivered by an old drunk. There’s little verbal invention and an over-reliance on abstract nouns. The poem fizzles beside the Yeats, which I have hardly read since my student days many lifetimes ago. I do still like the passage about “the normal heart” (which became the title of a play). And the “affirming flame” is what I, and many of us, try to show in these increasingly alarming times. It would make a good name for a Substack.
Your essay inspired me to reflect on both poems. My knowledge of Auden is spotty, but the much-criticized line about loving one another reminds me of the closing lines from “As I Walked Out One Evening,” which grows on me with each rereading: “You shall love your crooked neighbor/ With your crooked heart.” This feels closer to Auden’s true feelings about love, and flows organically from the rest of the poem.
Rona, I think your further analysis is right on -- the abstract nouns, the diminished verbal inventiveness. All that will likely follow from a rhetorical focus on making an argument, precisely what I fault in bad political poetry. Contrary to that poetry, Auden's rhetoric is gorgeous, so we're pulled in, and that, too, is what Mendelson tells us Auden was very perceptively wary of in his poetic powers. (Contrary to Auden, most poets would carry to their graves the pride of having written a "September 1.")
And I, too, have wanted nothing greater in these times than to show an affirmng flame.
You know, I've had a similar experience in both directions. I've found intellectual, critical fault with a work of art on first experiencing it but later found the holistic experience of the work overwhelmed my criticism, and I went on to continuing reward in the art. Here, I found that once I had performed this comparative analysis, I can't take the same pleasure in Auden's poem that I did for so long.
As it should be, I guess with many things.
Bravo, Jay, for such a timely and erudite essay. Truly impressive and necessary work!