September 1, 1939 - The worst poem W. H. Auden ever wrote

September 1, 1939
W. H. Auden
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.

[@mikefrost5129]

Wow! This is one of the best videos on a poem I've seen on booktube. Great job. Auden is one of my favorite poets, and this is one of my favorite poems (although I understand Auden's objections).

[@ami1649]

Thanks so much! I'm a subscriber and big fan of your channel!

[@mikefrost5129]

@@ami1649 If I had some kind of editing software, I'd steal you format for this video. Software aside, you reading and analysis of the poem was fantastic.

[@gulagarchipelago6015]

Very inspiring. I feel you are emotionally aligned with the content that you present🙂

[@firstlast7184]

Not a criticism, but just wanted to add something that you might consider whenever you have a conversation in the future regarding the poem: Thucydides, as you said, knows the capacity for democracy to succumb to demogogues. It's not just the 'historian Thucydides' but 'Exiled Thucydides'. He knew it from experience not just from scholarship, suggesting this is not at all something new (and because it's based on experience, the stanza seems a natural progression from the 'scholarship' of the previous stanza because here we have a scholar suffering from unearthing the whole offence, so to speak). I also remember a quote from Auden saying the 'love one another or die' is a stupid line because we must die anyway. 'Love another and die' makes more sense but he still wasn't happy. I don't have a source - memory from the late 1990s. I still love the poem, have it committed to memory. Thanks for the video. You made an old man tear up!

[@eplaneteducationplanet]

Wonderful Explanation.

[@English_L2]

Awesome analysis 🙏 very useful my exam point of view

[@timcasswell]

Great analysis. I wrote a song inspired by this poem. I will send you the link.

[@Grequierecafe]

I am reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. In this book I am now at September 1, 1939, and have sought out a video that touches on this historic day. Thanks.

[@rlsfrny]

A) you are a terrible reader; B) On September 1, 1939, it was hard to avoid the kind of raw emotion Auden expresses. From the relative calm of the 1960s in the Village, where Auden was then living, he could reflect back upon the urgency and foreboding of the day Hitler invaded Poland and shudder at his unfiltered distress. Nonetheless, the poem is filled with memorable lines and images that resonate far beyond that infamous day.

[@J0zB]

Your videos are sublime. You are a serious, committed reader and I appreciate your insight. Thank you for sharing.

[@ami1649]

Thanks so much Debby! That means a lot 😊

[@AceHardy]

📙💯

[@ElectionFraudHasConsequences]

Wow. This guy thought we were going through dark times in 2020 🤣 😢

[@ami1649]

God bless 🙏🏻