Volume 39, 2018
Philosophy and Literature
Tanuka Das
Pages 29-34
Auden’s Poetic Excursion into Philosophy
A Study of his English Poetry (1927-38)
Auden’s poems of the ’thirties bear witness to his social awareness and social commitment almost from the beginning. The great depression of the 30s gave Macspaunday, i.e., Macneice, Spender, Auden and Day Lewis, the conviction that it was the duty of poets to take sides in politics using poetry for that purpose. In the late 1920s the contemporary scene with its grave financial crisis was observed as a dark and sinister one. Auden, the leader of the group, found strong inspiration from the reading of Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud in the programme of using poetry to send messages, and create, and spread awareness among common people, whom he and his group saw as “sick” people. The ‘sick” people were for him either politically or psychologically, “sick”. Auden’s poems of 1927-1938 constitute a text with potential effects which call for actualization. Being university-educated, Auden would write in a language brilliantly witty, symbolic and allegorical. He was also an extremely reticent poet. Thus, was produced a complex poetic utterance fit for intelligent reception by a coterie of fellow poets. At the same time, he must reach out to the (lay) people, if - as a poet- he had to heal his fellow members of the society. The resultant dilemma was one from which he could not extricate himself successfully. Remembering how Wolfgang Iser raises the issue of readability of a text, leads to the question: did the contemporary readers of Auden find an easy job before them?