The Orators
The Orators : An English Study. By W. H. Auden. (Faber and Faber. 7s. 6d.)
LITERARY historians of the future are going to have a bad time of it : periods are contracting from half-centuries or gener- ations to decades. Perhaps, even schools of poetry will come to be known by years, like vintages. It will certainly seem incredible that Mr. Auden should be a contemporary of Mr. Humbert Wolfe. Yet it will not be enough to explain Mr. Auden to say that he is one of those whose boyhood coincided with the War ; it must be added that the tradition to which he belongs is that of the new current of metaphysical poetry, of which Mr. Eliot and Mr. Read are among the elder— but not yet old—writers ; there is in him something of the revolt of Rimbaud ; the chief influence, one would say, is that of St. J. Perse ; technically he has learnt from Wilfred Owen. This is not to say that Mr. Auden is unoriginal ; he is certainly so. It is merely an attempt to place him in the flow to which he belongs.
How deeply Mr. Auden differs from the Georgian poets (they are still with us) might be expressed by saying that whereas the Georgians sing from their lips, Mr. Auden sings from his viscera, as Donne did. It is perhaps, doubtful if he sings at all, except occasionally ; his words are utterances rather than song. His book, indeed, is written largely in prose, prose which has the logic, the sequences of poetry, its stresses, its concentration. It is, like most modern poetry that is worth anything, extremely difficult : the links connect- ing thought with thought are omitted : much, indeed too much, in the way of allusion is taken for granted. That it is an important poem there can be no doubt ; how good it is it will be impossible to say, not only t: WA it has been read several times, but until one has had considerable time to digest it, to let it sink in. It is not to be immediately appre- hended intellectually, though much can delight at once both in the prose and the verse (both are poetry), by the sound of the words and the succession of images, and the assonances, often internal. It is unfair to quote extracts from what must be read as a whole, but small passages of each may give some- thing of the flavour : " On the steps of His stone the boys play prisoner's base, turning their backs on the inscription, unconscious of sorrow as the sea of drowning. Passage to music of an unchaste hero from a too-strict country. March long black piano, silhouetted head ; cultured daughter of a greying ironmaster, march through fields. The hammer settles on the white-hot ingot. The telescope focusses accurately upon a recent star. On skyline of detritus, a truck, nose up. Loiterer at carved gates, immune stranger, follow. It is nothing your loss. The priest's mouth opens in the green graveyard, but the wind is against it.
* * * * Not, Father, further do prolong Our necessary defeat ; Spare us the numbing zero-hour, The desert-long retreat."
It is, no doubt, the business of a reviewer to try to state what a poem is about; it is useless (though true) to say that a poem is its own explanation. Any attempt must be crude, not to say lop-sided ; but if one were to try to state the fundamental theme of The Orators, one might suggest that Mr. Auden is intent to explode fear, especially the fear of what might happen to the individual if all the old assumptions were broken down : it is here, and in his contempt for " safety first " that he is nearest Rimbaud. One large section of the book consists of the " Journal of an Airman," a fantasy ; the airman, the modern, daring everything in his eternal campaign against " the enemy," the Old Adam of fear, of safety first, of easy compromises, which is as strong as the Devil himself because it is the masses, the respectable masses. Those who have read Mr. Auden's Poems will recognise him in The Orators, but it is a Mr. Auden who has made strides not only in his craft, but in the development of his attitude towards a coherent
Previous page
