Starting with the authors mentioned above, some may find these notes maximalist and biased; most likely they will ascribe these flaws to their author's own metier. Still others may find the view of things expressed here too schematic to be true. True: it's schematic, narrow, superficial. At best, it will be called subjective or elitist. That would be fair enough except that we should bear in mind that art is not a democratic enterprise, even the art of prose, which has an air about it of everybody being able to master it as well as to judge it.
The point, however, is that the democratic principle so welcome in nearly all spheres of human endeavor has no application in at least two of them: in art and in science. In these two spheres, the application of the democratic principle results in equating masterpiece with garbage and discovery with ignorance. The resistance to such an equation is synonymous with recognition of prose as an art; and it's precisely this recognition that forces one to discriminate in the most cruel fashion.
Whether one likes it or not, art is a linear process. To prevent itself from recoiling, art has the concept of cliche. Art's history is that of addition and refinement, of extending the perspective of human sensibility, of enriching, or more often condensing, the means of expression. Every new psychological or aesthetic reality introduced in art becomes instantly old for its next practitioner. An author disregarding this rule, somewhat differently phrased by Hegel, automatically destines his work—no matter what good press it gets in the marketplace—to assume the status of pulp.
But if it were only the fate of his work, or his own, that wouldn't be too bad. And the fact that supply of pulp creates a demand for pulp isn't too bad either; to art as such it's not dangerous: it always takes care of its own kind, as the poor or those in the animal kingdom do. The bad thing about prose which is not art is that it compromises the life it describes and plays a reductionist role in the development of the individual. This sort of prose offers one finalities where art would have offered infinities, comfort instead of challenge, consolation instead of a verdict. In short, it betrays man to his metaphysical or social enemies, whose name in either case is legion.
Heartless as it may sound in many ways, the condition Russian prose finds itself in today is of its own doing; the sad thing is that it keeps perpetuating this condition by being the way it is. Taking politics into consideration is therefore an oxymoron, or rather a vicious circle, for politics fills the vacuum left in people's minds and hearts precisely by art. There must be some lesson for other literatures in the plight of Russian prose in this century, for it's still a little bit more forgivable for Russian writers to operate the way they do, with Platonov dead, than for their counterparts in this country to court banalities, with Beckett alive.
1984
On "September 1, 1939" by W. H. Auden
1
The poem in front of you has ninety-nine lines, and time permitting, we'll be going over each one of them. It may seem, and indeed be, tedious; but by doing so we have a better chance to learn something about its author as well as about the strategy of a lyrical poem in general. For this is a lyrical poem, its subject matter notwithstanding.
Because every work of art, be it a poem or a cupola, is understandably a seU-portrait of its author, we won't strain ourselves too hard trying to distinguish between the author's persona and the poem's lyrical hero. As a rule, such distinctions are quite meaningless, if only because a lyrical hero is invariably an author's self-projection.
The author of this poem, as you already know, having been made to memorize it, is a critic of his century; but he is a part of this century also. So his criticism of it nearly
· This lecture was delivered as a part of a course in modern lyric poetry at the Writing Division of the School of the Arts at Columbia University. It was taped and transcribed by Miss Helen Handley and Ann Sherrill Pyne, students in the program.
always is self-criticism as well, and this is what imparts to his voice in this poem its lyrical poise. If you think that there are other recipes for successful poetic operation, you are in for oblivion.
We are going to examine this poem's linguistic content, since vocabulary is what distinguishes one writer from another. We will also pay attention to the ideas the poet puts forth, as well as to his rhyme schemes, for it's the latter that supply the former with a sense of inevitability. A rhyme turns an idea into law; and, in a sense, each poem is a linguistic codex.
As some of you have observed, there is a great deal of irony in Auden, and in this poem in particular. I hope we'll proceed in a fashion thorough enough for you to realize that this irony, this light touch, is the mark of a most profound despair; which is frequently the case with irony anyway. In general, I hope that by the end of this session, you'll develop the same sentiment toward this poem as the one that prompted it into existence—one of love.
2
This poem, whose title, I hope, is self-explanatory, was written shortly after our poet settled on these shores. His departure caused considerable uproar at home; he was charged with desertion, with abandoning his country in a time of peril. Well, the peril indeed came, but some time after the poet left England. Besides, he was precisely the one who, for about a decade, kept issuing warnings about its—the peril's—progress. The thing with perils, though, is that no matter how clairvoyant one is, there is no way to time their arrival. And the bulk of his accusers were precisely those who saw no peril coming: the left, the right, the pacifists, etc. What's more, his decision to move to the United States had very little to do with world politics: the reasons for the move were of a more private nature. We'll talk about that somewhat later, I hope. Presently what matters is that our poet finds himself at the outbreak of war on new shores, and therefore has a minimum of two audiences to address: those at home and those right in front of him. Let's see what effect this fact has upon his diction. Now, on with this thing . . .
I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the c/er;er hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing mir private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night.
Let's start with the first two lines: "I sit in one of the dives/ On Fifty-second Street . . ." Why, in your view, does the poem start in this way? Why, for instance, this precision of "Fifty-second Street"? And how precise is it? Well, it's precise in that Fifty-second Street indicates a place that can't be somewhere in Europe. Good enough. And I think what Auden wants to play here a bit is the role of a journalist, of a war correspondent, if you wish. This opening has a distinct air of reporting. The poet says something like "your correspondent reports to you from . . ."; he is a newsman reporting to his people back in England. And here we are getting into something very interesting.
Watch that word "dive." It's not exactly a British word, right? Nor is "Fifty-second Street." For his posture of reporter they are obviously of immediate benefit: both things are equally exotic to his home audience. And this introduces you to one aspect of Auden with which we are going to deal for some time: the encroachment of American diction, a fascination with which was, I think, among the reasons for his move here. This poem was written in 1939, and for the five subsequent years his lines became literally strewn with Americanisms. He almost revels in incorporating them into his predominantly British diction, whose texture—the texture of English verse in general—gets considerably animated by the likes of "'dives" and "raw towns." And we'll be going over them one by one because words and the way they sound are more important for a poet than ideas and convictions. When it comes to a poem, in the beginning there is still the word.