September 1, 1939: A Biography of a Poem. Ian Sansom

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СКАЧАТЬ must suffer them all again.

      Into this neutral air

      Where blind skyscrapers use

      Their full height to proclaim

      The strength of Collective Man,

      Each language pours its vain

      Competitive excuse:

      But who can live for long

      In an euphoric dream;

      Out of the mirror they stare,

      Imperialism’s face

      And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar

      Cling to their average day:

      The lights must never go out,

      The music must always play,

      All the conventions conspire

      To make this fort assume

      The furniture of home;

      Lest we should see where we are,

      Lost in a haunted wood,

      Children afraid of the night

      Who have never been happy or good.

      The windiest militant trash

      Important Persons shout

      Is not so crude as our wish:

      What mad Nijinsky wrote

      About Diaghilev

      Is true of the normal heart;

      For the error bred in the bone

      Of each woman and each man

      Craves what it cannot have,

      Not universal love

      But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark

      Into the ethical life

      The dense commuters come,

      Repeating their morning vow,

      ‘I will be true to the wife,

      I’ll concentrate more on my work’,

      And helpless governors wake

      To resume their compulsory game:

      Who can release them now,

      Who can reach the deaf,

      Who can speak for the dumb?

      All I have is a voice

      To undo the folded lie,

      The romantic lie in the brain

      Of the sensual man-in-the-street

      And the lie of Authority

      Whose buildings grope the sky:

      There is no such thing as the State

      And no one exists alone;

      Hunger allows no choice

      To the citizen or the police;

      We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night

      Our world in stupor lies;

      Yet, dotted everywhere,

      Ironic points of light

      Flash out wherever the Just

      Exchange their messages:

      May I, composed like them

      Of Eros and of dust,

      Beleaguered by the same

      Negation and despair,

      Show an affirming flame.

Your Least Favourite Auden Poem?

      INTERVIEWER: What’s your least favourite Auden poem?

      AUDEN: ‘September 1, 1939.’

      Michael Newman, interview with W. H. Auden, The Paris Review (1972)

      Me too.

      *

      I have been trying to write a book about W. H. Auden for twenty-five years.

      It could not be described as a cost-effective enterprise.

      It may not have been the best use of my time.

      The poet cannot understand the function of money in modern society because for him there is no relation between subjective value and market value; he may be paid ten pounds for a poem which he believes is very good and took him months to write, and a hundred pounds for a piece of journalism which costs him but a day’s work.

      (Auden, ‘The Poet & The City’)

A lot can happen to someone in twenty-five years – though it hasn’t really happened to me. I have overcome no addictions. I have suffered no serious mental or physical breakdowns. There were no major achievements, no terrible lows: I am, in all regards, average to the point of being dull. There is, alas, no backstory to this story. This is not one of those books.

      It is not a book about grief.

      It is not a book about loss.

      It is not a book about some great self-realisation.

      I did not go – I have not been – on any kind of a journey with W. H. Auden.

      I do not believe that Auden provides readers with the key to understanding life, the universe and everything. Reading Auden has not made me happier, healthier, or a better or more interesting person.

      Perhaps the only strange or remarkable thing to have happened to me over the past twenty-five years is that I have been trying to write a book about W. H. Auden.

      The only possible conclusion, I suppose, after all this time, is either that I haven’t been trying hard enough, or that I’m simply not up to the job.

      Or, possibly, both.

      *

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