Auden on the War: A Dissent

It's the 70th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland today, an event that I do not actually remember although strictly speaking, I guess I could: I do remember the hurricane of '38.

It's also the occasion for bloggers to recall the celebrated poem by W. H. Auden on the a "low dishonest decade." The general tenor seems to be that Auden's poem is a suitable monument to the event itself -- "great," "haunted me for years," "great," "arguably one of his best works."

Well, you can't argue with this kind of success (or not very effectively). And apparently it is hard for us to imagine the day remembering his poen. But this is as good a time as any to register a note of reserve about--well, not about Auden the man, who seems to have been quite a wonderful (if sometimes impossible, but aren't we all?) person. Rather, about Auden the poet: I suspect that in the end we (or our children) will come to see that he simply isn't as wonderful as he thought he was--will come to wonder what we saw in him in the first place. I suspect he may end up as the 20th Century Longfellow--so much the voice of his time that another time will have trouble figuring him out.

This is not quite as much of a put-down as it may seem---hey, it can be fun to read Longfellow. But it is meant to be a caution about reading Auden uncritically as part of the history he lived through.

Indeed rather than his poetry, I suspect what may prove really durable is his criticism. He was a person of broad culture, and a great appreciator. I've written earlier about his lectures on Shakespeare. I still hang on to my copy of the Viking Portable Greek Reader, with its Auden introduction. Oh, and here is the Viking Portable Restoration and Augustan Poets, with an introduction co-authored by Auden.

Aside from these more obviously literary pieces there is a whole range of stuff that suggests the breadth and catholicity of Auden's interests. NYRB Classsics did us a service by reprinting his Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard. Here's a Viking Book of Aphorisms, co-edited by Auden, one of the most intelligent such collections I've ever seen. Oh, and the Penguin edition of Goethe's Italian Journey, with an Auden intro, one of the best possible introductions to Italy even today. Oh, and here's I never saw before: translations from the Norse. And it is not, stricly speaking, just literature: here is an Elizabethan Songbook, edited by Auden and his companion, Chester Kalman (and is that an uncredited Gorey drawing on the cover?): I used to have that stuff on a big ol' 33rpm LP record with Auden himself, I think, doing the voice-over. Finally, I am ever in his debt for introducing me to the cabaret songs of Jill Gomez, one of the most beguiling voices of her generation.

I suppose there is a lot more; I can't claim to be a careful student, and I have collected merely what washed up on my shore. It certainly seems to add up to quite a lot, and worth appreciating even if the verse itself might be the least of it.

Update: For a subtle critical essay on Auden the poet, go here.

Update II: Apparently I wrote this piece before. No matter; if I keep trying, I may at last get it right.

"Clear of Trumpery Little Passions": Auden on Smith

"Auden?" my friend Zoltan said, with a sneer in his voice (this was 50 years ago, but I remember it). "Auden? A writer of editorials!"

I shivered a little. I liked Auden, and I admired Zoltan, and I wasn't sure where to go with that remark.

In the fullness of time, I have come to suspect Zoltan was overdoing it. In poems like "September 1, 1939" for good or ill, he captured the temper of his time. And I do love "Herod." But in the fullness of time, I've come up with a different spin on Auden: I wonder if perhaps he isn't a better critic than poet--or at least a shrewd and insightful appreciator, whose enduring legacy may be his capacity to convey his own enthusiasms to others.

As Exhibit A, there is surely his Lectures on Shakespeare, about which the learned Patrick writes so forcefully. But there is so much more. I still have my old copy of the Portable Greek Reader, with his inimitable introduction. NYRB Classics has seen fit to republish his introduction to Kierkegaard. There's a great deal more--and wait, folks, here's one that's new to me. In Palookaville's best second hand bookstore, I discover an Auden edition of The Selected Writings of Sidney Smith (Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, New York, 1956). I'm happy to report that it is all you would expect of an Auden introduction: learned, congenial and insightful, with a special knack for putting this B-list literary celebrity into his proper context.

In a way, it's a pity that Smith isn't known better: the most unlikely of preachers, the kindest and most civilized of companions, Smith probably did more than any other person to give the Anglican clergy its reputation for being more interested in cricket than theology. Auden, whose own religious impulse was strong, remarks that readers wonder "just why he was an Anglican and not, say a Unitarian." (viii). Yet Auden's respect for Smith's decency and generosity win out, and he pays him what is, for Auden, a high compliment: he mentions him in the same breath with his greater enthusiasm Kierkegaard. The Dane, as Auden recalls, had as his "chief complaint against the bourgeois ... that they were a parody of the Knights of Faith." He thinks Kierkegaard "would have appreciated ... Sidney Smith's use of bourgeois terms to define A Nice Person:"

A nice person is neither too tall nor too short, looks clean and cheerful, has no prominent features, makes no difficulties, is never displaced, sits bodkin, is never foolishly affronted, and is void of affectations. . . . A nice person is clear of trumpery little passions, acknowledges superiority, delights in talent, shelters humility, pardons adversity, forgives deficiency, respects all men's rights, never stops the bottle, is never long and never wrong, always knows the day of the month, the name of everybody at table, and never gives pain to any human being. . . . A nice person never knocks over wine or melted butter, does not tread upon the dog's foot, or molest the family cat, eats soup without noise, laughs in the right place, and has a watchful and attentive eye.

Id., xx

I don't know how many of his own terms Smith can be said to exemplify, although I'm pretty sure that he "is clear of trumpery little passions ... shelters humility, pardons adversity [and] forgives deficiency." Oh, and that Auden has "a watchful and attentive eye."

Afterthought: "Sits bodkin"--? I'm workin' on it.

Lorenzetti, and Auden on Herod

I still like last year's Christmas text, so I think I'll reprint it, along with a copy of Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Effect of Good Government (supra), which you can see frescoed on the wall of the Sala di Nove in Siena. I first saw it nine years ago, about 45 years after I first read the Auden text, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Auden (who seems to have seen everything, and read everything) had the Lorenzetti picture in mind when he wrote Herod's account. Here is a bit of detail on the Lorenzetti:

He shows us the beams outside the windows for hanging out clothing or providing leverage to haul things up from the street below, and streets with people conversing, entering houses, or cut off form our view as they ride behind buildings. Through the open arches of the large building in the foreground we gain access to the interior of an elegant shop displaying shoes and hosiery, a school where the master teaches attentive pupils form a raised desk, and a tavern with flasks of wine set on an outdoor bar. We can also see a house in the process of construction; the workmen, standing on the scaffolding they had probably put in place only the day before, are carrying building materials in baskets on their heads and laying new courses of masonry. A young woman plays a tambourine and sings while her elegantly dressed companions dance a kind of figure eight in the street. Nearby farmers arrive from the prosperous countryside, leading donkeys, driving herds of sheep, and carrying products in baskets on their heads.

Frederic Hartt, History of Italian Renaissance Art 129 (4th ed. 1994)

Now, Herod (Auden) reflects on what little he has been able to accomplish before the greast disruption:

Barges are unloading soil fertilizer at the river wharves.
Soft drinks and sandwiches may be had in the inns at reasonable prices.
Allotment gardening has become popular.
The highway to the coast goes straight up over the mountains and the truck drivers no longer carry guns.
Things are beginning to take shape.
It is a long time since anyone stole the park benches or murdered the swans.
There are children in this province who have never seen a louse, shopkeepers who have never handled a counterfeit coin, women of forty who have never hidden in a ditch except for fun.

--WH Auden, "For the Time Being,"
Published in a book of the same name (1944)

For an critique of the poem, stressing the Christian framework, go here.

The Best Shakespeare Intro: Another Nominee

Patrick Kurp says the best introductory guide to Shakespeare is the set of lectures by W. H. Auden (link). It’s hazardous to challenge Patrick on a matter of literary judgment, but I will dare to revise him by adding just one word: Auden is the second best introduction to Shakespeare. The first is the volume by Mark Van Doren--with the unadorned monicker Shakespeare, recently republished as an NYRB Classic (link).

I first read Van Doren’s intro about 52 years ago in the Kettering Library at Antioch College. I guess I thought it was CliffNotes (although we didn’t have CliffNotes); anyway, I was looking for knowledge on the cheap. I read it again in the new edition a few months ago and I’m still astonished at what a treasure I had stumbled on, all unknowing. Things I thought I “just knew” about Shakespeare—or worse, things I thought I had figured out for myself: here they all were set forth with a kind of grace and elegance that can only speak for itself. And I never suspected. Talk about pearls before swine.

I don’t have a copy of Van Doren at hand—I gave my last to a deserving (I hope) high school senior. Happily, I did just stumble on a second copy of Dan Wakefield’s warm-hearted memoir, New York in the 50s, where he recalls, inter alia, his encounter with Van Doren at Columbia.

When I saw Van Doren in class…for the first time, his hair was gray and I had no idea of his age (fifty-eight) which was anyway irrelevant for he didn’t seem old but ageless, like the visage of one of the presidents on Mount Rushmore. His face had that craggy granite look of being hewn or chiseled by hard-won experience and knowledge, but it wasn’t grim or set in a stare of stony, locked-away wisdom. His eyes gave off a love of his work (which included the students seated before him) and the world, and he had a playful and wry sense of humor.

--Dan Wakefield, New York in the 50s 25 (1992)

I never laid eyes on Van Doren (although I guess I remember him vaguely as a TV personality of his time)—but I think it's a good description of his style: “hewn or chiseled by hard-won experience and knowledge but [not] grim or set in a stare..” Next time I lay my hands on a copy, I’ll cite some examples.

I cheated in quoting Patrick. What he really said was that Auden’s was the best and most entertaining introduction. Thus qualified, he’s probably onto something. Auden’s introduction is excellent in its own right, and it is indeed entertaining, as only Auden can be. Van Doren is subtler, less obtrusive. But in this case, much as I enjoyed Auden, I have a feeling that entertainment value may be a bit of a problem: there is a lot of invaluable Shakespeare here, but maybe just a tad too much Auden.

But it’s a small matter. The real point is that either one of them is light years ahead of any product of more recent vintage (I name no names). To match either Auden or Van Doren, you really have to go back to Johnson or Coleridge. But I’ll still end by citing just one more encomium for Van Doren. The writer says:

Professor Van Doren enlightens us, not because he has any special knowledge or private advantages, but because his love of Shakespeare has been greater than our own.

That’s quoted from the Van Doren NYRB web page. The writer is, of course, W.H. Auden.

Philology RIP

There’s a remarkable pairing on the obituary page of this mornings' New York Times. On the right, spread over four columns, we have Bruce M. Metzger, a translator of the Bible, and an authority on the New Testament in its original Greek. On the left over two columns, perhaps more of a niche player but no less worthy, Mordkhe Schaechter, as the Times calls him, “a leading Yiddish linguist.”

In another time, there used to be an academic discipline called “philology”—okay, there still is, but not what it used to be. Anyway, “philology,” in the classic sense of the “love of language”—its grammar, its syntax, its evolution, but inseparable from its literature. Language matters, “it makes us different from the beasts,” it is culture, it is what we are.

Both Metzger and Schaechter qualify as philologists in the grand sense, but with provocative differences. Schaechter’s life was an essay in preservation, or retrieval: he consecrated himself to the task of sustaining Yiddish as itself a sustaining force. Metzger’s career presents a different aspect. No doubt about his achievement in language, nor his ability: “besides Greek, Latin and Hebrew,” the Times recounts, he “knew Coptic, Syriac, Russian, German, Spanish, French and Dutch, among others.” A formidable portion of his formidable achievement was dedicated to Getting it Right—to assessing and evaluating the famously refractory corpus of Biblical manuscripts.

Yet perhaps is more visible achievement is the line in the first paragraph of the obituary: he “oversaw the publication of a widely used modern edition” of the Bible—an edition which “eliminated all the these and thous and many of the hes.” Stated plainly, for all his achievement in language, Metzger in the end committed himself to the view that language in the end is not All That Important.

It’s a irony not of his own making. Christianity has always taken a relaxed view of originalism in its textual tradition. Set aside the fact that most Americans think the Bible was written by King James: the vocation of Biblical scholars has been to get the Good News into as many languages as possible (I assume it is available in Sign Language and Klingon).

Muslims, at least, would find this incomprehensible. From one end of Indonesia to the other end of Africa, the core of the Muslim tradition is that Allah speaks with one voice, and that voice is Classical Arabic. Never mind the fact that so many reciters of the Koran have no idea what they are saying: at least they are speaking the authentic Word.

Schaechter in this sense was a lot closer to the tradition of Islam than to Christianity—exemplifying, perhaps, that Islam draws on its Hebrew roots even more directly than Christianity. His job was specifically not to make Yiddish culture available in English, but to make Yiddish culture available in Yiddish—to keep it alive as a language and a way of life.

This distinction seems to me important, but at the end of the day, the unity remains. Language is what makes us what we are. Remember Auden on Yeats.

Time that is intolerant

Of the brave and innocent,

And indifferent in a week

To a beautiful physique,

Worships language and forgives

Everyone by whom it lives;

Pardons cowardice, conceit,

Lays its honours at their feet.

--W. H. Auden, In Memory of W. B. Yeats d. Jan. 1939

Fn.: The Times obit of Metzger includes a couple of amusing examples of translational lacunae in the New Testmant. I admit I like these Biblical word games. Abraham needed a computer and Isaac asked him where he would get the hardware. “God,” said Abraham, “will provide the RAM.” Does the Bible mention fleas? Yes, God told Joseph to take his wife and Son and flea into Egypt. Language. It matters.