Wystan Hugh Auden reads 'The Shield of Achilles' (1953)

W.H. Auden reads his comment on totalitarian society, published and written in 1953. I hope you enjoy the video, and please feel free to leave a comment. I do not own any rights to the recording.

[@naskray]

I've discovered Auden through my love for Brodsky, who'd been his admirer. Thank you very much for uploading his reading. His real voice and intonations are priceless to hear now.

[@ConradCecil]

@naskray Yes! Although I read some Auden at school, I didn’t really appreciate him until Brodsky led me there much later. Great to hear him read, and his intonations.

[@AppleFaction]

Auden at his best: Tragic and dystopian. Thanks for putting this up! It's remarkable to hear the man himself actually speak the words. I knew he had narrated his more famous poems but I didn't expect this one.

[@Iphonekura]

just discovering Auden, not yet completely understood all his words and meanings. but feel the urge to consume his world (created)... thank you for posting

[@firdaus8766]

The poem is a war theme poem which is based on the ancient Greek character, Achilles. Okay, I will start by analyzing the title which is “The Shield of Achilles” by my analysis the title is based on the war prowess of Achilles because he is known for his prowess as a warrior with great combat skill and a big round shield like the typical Spartan shield and you can see in the movie “300” or in the game “Warriors: Legends of Troy”. There are 67 lines and broken into 9 stanzas. “The Shield of Achilles” is blank verse type of poem. The rhyme of this poem I think is not consistence as there are many repeated group of sounds in the last word of a line in a stanza such as ABBBCDFD, ABABCDD, and ABACDFF in the first, second, and third stanzas respectively. The type of this rhyme is rhyme royal. She looked over his shoulder (A) For vines and olive trees, (B) Marble well-governed cities (B) And ships upon untamed seas, (B) But there on the shining metal (C) His hands had put instead (D) An artificial wilderness (F) And a sky like lead. (D) A plain without a feature, bare and brown, (A) No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood, (B) Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down, (A) Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood (B) An unintelligible multitude, (C) A million eyes, a million boots in line, (D) Without expression, waiting for a sign. (D) Out of the air a voice without a face (A) Proved by statistics that some cause was just (B) In tones as dry and level as the place: (A) No one was cheered and nothing was discussed; (C) Column by column in a cloud of dust (D) They marched away enduring a belief (F) Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief. (F) In the video the poem was read by Wystan Hugh Auden himself. Although quite flat in his reading but I think he is in the mood when reading it :D. I believed there are a little bit of epic and sad in the utterance. As one of many literature wonder, a poem usually contains many figurative languages. In this poem there are simile, personification, and synecdoche. - Simile e.g: and a sky like lead (1st stanza, last line). - Personification e.g: but a weed-choked field (7th stanza, last line). - Synecdoche e.g: a million eyes, a million boots in line (2nd stanza, 6th line). The poem uses third person point of view and the main character of this poem is Thetis. The poem, I think is about a war, a situation of a war in the era of Achilles. Because the poetry is indicating that the war is lost I assume it happened in the Trojan War era where Achilles and his undefeated army suffer massive defeat and that one war killed Achilles. The poem also has characters, like Hephaestos the mythical God of Smith in ancient Greek and Thetis the mother of Achilles. Last one is that the moral value of this poem, which I think is “To be a brave man, wherever you go and face the difficulties no matter the outcome”. That’s wrap things up, thank you for reading my own analysis on “The Shield of Achilles” guys. See that you give me comment and some advice. Happy Idul Fitri, Mohon Maaf Lahir dan Batin. :D

[@andrewleibs]

For me, this poem represents the height of modernism. "Who would not live long" is a great last line.

[@MrPurpledin0]

I like that way of thinking of it.

[@nebojsagalic4246]

Erm if anybody cares to hear... I`v read the Iliad and here`s the gist of the poem: The shield of Achilles was supposed to be engraved with everything that was Greek civilization Vines piety beautiful art dance etc, but Hephaestos ingraved a bunch of allussions WWI and Orwell

[@tiberiusgracchus6593]

A wonderful porn relevant to the time it was written and still relevant today. Still powerful and poignant. Just as Homer painted a picture of the destruction of Troy yet to come in the Iliad, perhaps Auden has created a tapestry of our fate.

[@bryn5108]

superb as dystopian meditation, also as description of artist refusing to deliver what his audience wants

[@DrRonArt]

+Bryn James Well-said!

[@stanmarcus1]

Wow! What else is there to say. Poetry like this has long ago disappeared. Now we have prose disguised as poems with arbitrary lines lengths about the poet's grandmother's rhubarb pie. Poetry has been democratized and has become the useless junk of poetry clubs writing what they label "poems" because they can speak English.

[@jeffgallagher9941]

Maybe someone should read this poem to Putin?

[@naskray]

He's too stupid and ignorant to get this kind of allegories and metaphors

[@ilivehighupthere]

thumbs up if SOC 250 sent you here

[@andrewleibs]

No, not in terms of scope or significance. But were one to ask me for an example of a modern poem, I'd pick this deft Trojan War - Cold War juxtaposition.

[@insidetrip101]

You'd really put this poem above Elliot's "The Wasteland"?

[@matthewlaurence3121]

@bearjew Are you not confusing Eliot for Ezra Pound?

[@TheSpiritOfTheTimes]

@bearjew Was Eliot really a fascist? A right-winger surely, a conservative, but a fascist is a bit much no?

[@matthewstokes1608]

@@TheSpiritOfTheTimes ... Certainly not. Eliot was obviously not a fascist, no. He was without equal. People do say the weirdest things.