Friday, November 28, 2014

On WH Auden (3) Reciting September 1, 1939



On this day Hitler invaded Poland and WWII broke out. Thucydides was an honest historian, the originator of Political Realism which observes that the relationship between countries is based on strength and not which is in the right. His work is still studied in military academies.
Tom O'Bedlam, evidently an alias name behind the YouTube channel Spoken Verse, recites this poem with serious, resonating voice and careful attention to its rhythm, pace and pronunciation.  There is an intriguing story on this gentleman and this name, which I will come back to.  But for now, in his response to a YouTuber who said he didn't pronounce Thucydides correctly, we get a glimpse of the scholarship and care he put into his recitation:
I'm glad you're interested. Here's what an Oxford scholar said: 'The ancient pronunciation would actually be something like "Too-kü-deé-days." Which pronunciation would be "more accurate" would of course depend on usage. For example, in the conferences I've attended recently, the historian has consistently been referred to as "Thoo-síd-id-eez," rather than Thoo-kíd-id-eez."' Auden had a classical education. I used the pronunciation that seemed [to] suit the line. Thanks for posting.


Dylan Thomas (1914 - 1953) - yes, he of Do not go gentle into that good night - recites this poem with eloquent flare, as if he were a herald standing on the precipice of World War II.  One YouTuber spoke, in good measure, to my sentiment about this recitation:
the delivery owes a great deal to Laurence Olivier playing Richard III and is very dated and grand now - it sounds so affected and self-important great poem tho
Another YouTuber referred to something I will also come back to, namely, Auden's sentiments about his own poem:
There are two editions of The Collected Poetry of WH Auden: a 1945 and a 1967. Thomas is reading from the 1945 edition. The above text [i.e. in the description box on YouTube], the text most widely disseminated on the internet, is from the 1967. The currently published Collected Poetry of WH Auden (Modern Library, 2007) omits the poem entirely.

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

On WH Auden (2) Reading September 1, 1939


September 11th 2001

I took particular notice of this bit from writer Alexander McCall Smith:
Years after his death, when the World Trade Center towers were brought to the ground, traumatised New Yorkers faxed each other copies of a poem he had written for an earlier and greater crisis, “September 1, 1939”. They took comfort in his words even if many of those who received them must have had no idea who he was.
Reference: Book of a lifetime: Collected Shorter Poems by WH Auden.

I was working for a US consulting firm, and that morning of September 11th, I was in a client meeting at our Chicago office.  In fact I had come in early to beginning our meeting, and it was a curious scene in our office, as I walked my client out.  My colleagues were huddled in a small room, where we had a small TV.  When I walked back to my office, I joked Get back to work!  But they ignored me, as they were all glued to the TV.  I quickly saw what they were watching, and if memory serves me right, we saw the second plane crash into that tower, as captured in the photo above. In fact I just wrote about that date and my visit to New York City two months later: Breakthrough Ideas for the 21st Century.

I had encountered September 1, 1939 a few times before, but it wasn't until now that something resonated with me and captured me.  Perhaps it was the reference to traumatized New Yorkers, or the synchronicity of my having just written about September 11th.  But no matter, it is a prompt for me to look into and write about it.
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright 
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can 
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return. 

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We 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.
September 1, 1939, by WH Auden.

In the next article, I post two recitations of this poem.  I want to keep the printed and the video versions separate, because the former may bring us closer to when and where Auden wrote it: It was in the first few days of World War II, and he was visiting the father of his lover Chester Kallman, apparently in New Jersey, not New York City as the first two lines suggest.  Auden was evidently plunged in a dark mood, and understandably so all the world must've had that stench, that a colleague described for me, as I visited New York City two months after September 11th.

Monday, November 24, 2014

On WH Auden (1) His Liberating Effect on Me


WH Auden
I think that we should all have one book that is really important to us – a book that we love above all others.

For me, that book is W H Auden’s Collected Shorter Poems. His work has enriched my life and a copy of this book travels with me wherever I go.

My first real encounter with the work of Auden was in the early 1970s, when I was living in Belfast and working at Queen’s University. I remember the precise moment when I walked past a library shelf and happened to notice a blue-bound book entitled Collected Shorter Poems.

I borrowed this book on impulse, and thus began a love affair with a body of poetry that has lasted the rest of my life; to discover him in a city torn by conflict, seemed somehow right.
Reference: Book of a lifetime: Collected Shorter Poems by WH Auden.

I share Alexander McCall Smith's love for Auden; rather, for me, it is matter of being taken by Auden.  My book is W.H. Auden: Selected Poems, edited by  Edward Mendelson (1979), the literary executor for Auden's estate.  I must've bought the book when it brand spanking new.  You see, back then, I stamped the date when I purchased a book:  SEP 24 1979.  I even taped a makeshift label of my name inside an opening page.  I bought the book as part of a poetry course with Mary Kinzie at Northwestern University.  I was beginning my junior year, and it was indeed the beginning a lifelong love affair with Auden.  To learn poetry from the masters, we wrote pastiche and one I wrote came back with praise from Kinzie: That Auden had a particularly liberating effect on my poetry!  I was on Cloud Nine. 

I know the first three poems that Smith refers to: In Memory of Sigmund Freud, Lullaby, and In Praise of Limestone.  Maybe Lullaby, but the other two are hardly short poems.  Maybe the operative word is shorter, as Auden did write much lengthier fare (e.g., The Sea and the Mirror).  But, no matter, these three poems find a masterful balance of lyrical and intellectual, and they resonate very well with my personal makeup.  I've often said that the way to my heart was through my head: Provoke my thinking, stimulate my mind, capture my imagination, and you will make me love you.  In his own inimitable way, Auden taught me how to read my heart and the heart of others.

Friday, November 14, 2014

Richard Eyre Recites Douglas Dunn



A constant artist, dedicated to
Curves, shapes, the pleasant shades, the feel of colour,
She did not care what shapes, what red, what blue,
Scorning the dull to ridicule the duller
With a disinterested, loyal eye.
So Sandra brought her this and taped it up –
Three seagulls from a white and indoor sky –
A gift of old artistic comradeship.
‘Blow on them, Love.’ Those silent birds winged round
On thermals of my breath. On her last night,
Trying to stay awake, I saw love crowned
In tears and wooden birds and candlelight.
She did not wake again. To prove our love
Each gull, each gull, each gull, turned into dove.
Sandra's Mobile, by Douglas Dunn.

My, oh my, how painful indeed.  I imagine Sandra, having lived a rich, varied life, now dying in the sterile confines of a hospital room.  The speaker sits vigil, exhausted from sitting vigil, meditating on one of her paintings, somehow seeing the metaphors of her art become real.  Unrelievedly real.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Mike Leigh Recites Charles Bukowski


some dogs who sleep At night
must dream of bones
and I remember your bones
in flesh
and best
in that dark green dress
and those high-heeled bright
black shoes,
you always cursed when you drank,
your hair coming down you
wanted to explode out of
what was holding you:
rotten memories of a
rotten
past, and
you finally got
out
by dying,
leaving me with the
rotten
present;
you've been dead
28 years
yet I remember you
better than any of
the rest;
you were the only one
who understood
the futility of the
arrangement of
life;
all the others were only
displeased with
trivial segments,
carped
nonsensically about
nonsense;
Jane, you were
killed by
knowing too much.
here's a drink
to your bones
that
this dog
still
dreams about.
Eulogy of a Hell of a Dame, by Charles Bukowski. 

I've written poems like this, where I talk to the dead, for example, In Memory of D., a patient of mine who hung herself.  It's a lengthy poem, and the long section - Her Story - is me speaking to her.  Then, in the next section - Her Valedictory Song - she sings to me.  So it is for the speaker in Bukowski's poem: Even though his love has been long dead, she lives as vividly as ever in his memory, and he speaks to her in tones at once of pathos and of humor.  What a lovely piece indeed.

Monday, November 10, 2014

Richard Dawkins Recites AE Houseman



Tell me not here, it needs not saying,
     What tune the enchantress plays
In aftermaths of soft September
     Or under blanching mays,
For she and I were long acquainted
     And I knew all her ways.

On russet floors, by waters idle,
     The pine lets fall its cone;
The cuckoo shouts all day at nothing
     In leafy dells alone;
And traveler's joy beguiles in autumn
     Hearts that have lost their own.

On acres of the seeded grasses
     The changing burnish heaves;
Or marshalled under moons of harvest
     Stand still all night the sheaves;
Or beeches strip in storms for winter
     And stain the wind with leaves.

Possess, as I possessed a season,
     The countries I resign,
Where over elmy plains the highway
     Would mount the hills and shine,
And full of shade the pillared forest
     Would murmur and be mine. 

For nature, heartless, witless nature,
      Will neither care nor know
What stranger's feet may find the meadow
      And trespass there and go,
Nor ask amid the dews of morning
      If they are mine or no.
Last Poems: XL., by AE Houseman

There is quite a bit that's melancholy about this poem. Nature is abidingly beautiful, but at the same time almost cruel, because it simply doesn't care a bit about the stranger or his lost love.  So in the midst of such beauty, he feels even more alone.  A fine poem indeed, and a fine reading by Richard Dawkins.