Assignment

INSTRUCTOR
Sir Liaquat Maseeh

Paper modern poetry

Poet: W.H AUDEN
Topic: Themes In W.H Audens Poetry
Student Name: Mubashar Razzaque
Roll No. 514-3052
Session: 514-F15

Themes in W.H Audens Poetry

After a careful and critical study of the work by
Auden, we come to know that, he is a modern poet and has a
vast range of subjects in his poetry. As for as the topic of
themes in concerned it is also a very important topic. There
are so many themes in W.H Audens poetry. We try to
highlight some of major themes in his poetry.
Some important themes are
1. Love is fleeting
2. Poetry reveals reality
3. Modern horrors
4. Death
5. Bureaucracy
6. The value of the every man
7. Suffering

Love is fleeting
While Auden is known for his poems about heady themes such as death, totalitarianism, and
the role of poetry, he is also renowned for his love poems. Many of them, such as As I
Walked Out One Evening, Lullaby, and O Tell Me the Truth About Love, feature stirring
passages about how beautiful and inspiring love can be, and Funeral Blues features a man
deeply in love with another. However, for Auden, that is not all he has to say about love.
Almost all of these poems have a sobering undercurrent of sorrow, or of the desire to
remind readers that life, and love, are short and are affected by the vicissitudes of existence
like sickness and time. Love is sweet, but it does not exist in a universe devoid of suffering,
waning of affection or, of course, death.

Poetry Reveals Reality

Audens poetry evokes the terror of living in the middle of the 20th century, when dictators
in Europe suppressed their peoples freedoms, led their countries into war, and resorted to
barbaric tactics of mass slaughter. In a few of his poems he wonders what the role of poetry
can be in the face of such nightmares, and why he should honor the death of one man when
so many were being killed on the battlefield, on the streets, and in gas chambers. Writing
about Freud, he asks, of whom shall we speak when there are so many we shall have to
mourn. In the elegy for Yeats, he asserts his belief that poetry can still lift the human spirit
and persuade us to rejoice and teach the free man how to praise. Auden is a realist in
that he understands poetry might not directly influence anything, but its habit of calling
things by their real names (the sun, the law, death, love) can bring us into a better
relationship with reality.

Modern Horrors
Auden's poetry is sometimes cerebral, sometimes brutally honest and evocative of the
historical context in which he is writing. He is renowned for addressing the issues of his day
in a moving and relevant manner. The horrors of the modern world do not escape his
incisive pen; he deals with the dictators and their mad quest for world domination, the fall
of the masses under their leaders' spell, the stultifying bureaucratic state, the Spanish Civil
War, the bleakness and perhaps impossibility of the future, the psychic side of warfare, the
bleak landscape, the martyrdom of heroes and the death of poets, the unthinking use of
modern tools, and the bludgeoning of the human spirit through the great weight of history.
Through all this, though, Auden retains some hope for the future, pointing out the freedom
that comes from recognizing our true condition whatever our circumstances are.

Death

Death is an ever-present reality in Audens poems, cutting life and love short. It affects every
man, even those of prominence and stature, like Yeats and Freud and Bonhoeffer. It can
come in the form of martyrdom, sickness, or old age, or through war. Death is a weapon
used by dictators as well as a natural part of the human cycle of life and death. Auden does
not shy away from this theme, nor the difficulties associated with it. He openly grieves for a
deceased lover, suggests the futility of the fight between soldiers and their enemies in Ode
V, and showcases how a great mind (Yeats) can be rendered useless with the onslaught of
physical erosion. Death cuts short careers (Freud) and poses difficult religious questions
(Bonhoeffer), but the living can carry their messages and restate their work, albeit at a
remove from the original. Overall, Audens poems celebrate life, while we have it, and they
directly face the fact that life is always cut short by death one way or another.

Bureaucracy and Totalitarianism

Auden lived during the age of the great totalitarian dictators Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and
Franco, and saw the rise of the bureaucratic state. His poems deal with both of these issues.
Poems including The Shield of Achilles, Fridays Child, and September 1, 1939 address
the hubris and greed that led dictators to amass armies, brainwash their citizens, and
unleash war upon the world. He catalogs the various ways the bureaucracy keeps tabs on its
citizens and tries to reduce them to statistics and figures. Governments do everything they
can to quench the human spirit, but Auden's belief in the value of poetry as well as the
enduring human spirit counteracts this malicious tendency.

The Value of the Everyman

Auden may occasionally write of great men, such as Freud, Yeats, and Bonhoeffer, but his
poetry is equally famed for its celebration of the common man. In poems like "Night Mail"
and "O Tell Me The Truth About Love," Auden's imagery and language are common, earthy.
He presents a panoply of people, rich and poor, silly and smart, busy and idle. His depiction
of love in the latter poem is not the swooning love of the Romantic poets, but love scribbled
in notes, arriving without warning while the poet is "picking my nose." Average people
populate his poems and, while he criticizes them for not paying attention to important
things ("September 1, 1939" and "Muse des Beaux Arts"), he seems to sum up his views
with the last line of "Night Mail": "For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?" Auden
remembers his brethren and neighbors of all kinds and celebrates their freedom and
individuality.

Suffering
Auden's poetry can be funny, light, and sweet, but many of his greatest works deal with the
suffering that comes from being human. He writes of the rise and rule of the dictators and
the deadening bureaucratic state; the extinguishing of the light of great men who have been
valuable to the world; the attrition of love through unfaithfulness, sickness, time, and death;
the crippling nature of pride and greed; religious doubt; warfare; and the complacency and
apathy evinced by others when we are undergoing this suffering. Sometimes we suffer at
others' hands, and sometimes we bring it upon ourselves.