Love and Deathin

W. H. Auden’s Poetry

Presenter: Hira MukhtarInstructor: Prof. Liaqat Masih

W. H. Auden

• one of the best poets of the 20th century

• exemplar of modernism along with T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound

• wildly inventive and diverse in his array of forms and styles

• wrote abstruse and highly intellectual poems having accessible language and relatable themes

W. H. Auden

• known for his poems about death, tyranny, and the role of poetry

• also renowned for his love poems

• “As I Walked Out One Evening”, “Lullaby”, and “O Tell Me the Truth About Love”, feature stirring passages about how beautiful and inspiring love can be

• “Funeral Blues” features a man deeply in love with another

W. H. Auden

“If equal affection cannot be,Let the more loving one be me.”

(The More Loving One)

For Auden, love:

• is beautiful and inspiring

• has sobering trace of sorrow

• is short lived

• is affected by sickness and time

• is sweet but death cuts it short

For Auden, death:

• is an ever-present reality

• cuts life and love short

• affects every man, even those having fame

• can come as martyrdom, sickness, old age, or through war

• is a natural end to human life

Auden’s poems

• celebrate life and love

• face the reality of death

Lullaby by W. H. Auden

Lay your sleeping head, my love,Human on my faithless arm;Time and fevers burn awayIndividual beauty fromThoughtful children, and the graveProves the child ephemeral:But in my arms till break of dayLet the living creature lie,Mortal, guilty, but to meThe entirely beautiful.

Lullaby (cont.)

Soul and body have no bounds:To lovers as they lie uponHer tolerant enchanted slopeIn their ordinary swoon,Grave the vision Venus sendsOf supernatural sympathy,Universal love and hope;While an abstract insight wakesAmong the glaciers and the rocksThe hermit's carnal ecstasy.

Lullaby (cont.)

Certainty, fidelityOn the stroke of midnight passLike vibrations of a bell,And fashionable madmen raiseTheir pedantic boring cry:Every farthing of the cost,All the dreadful cards foretell,Shall be paid, but from this nightNot a whisper, not a thought,Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Lullaby (cont.)

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:Let the winds of dawn that blowSoftly round your dreaming headSuch a day of welcome showEye and knocking heart may bless.Find the mortal world enough;Noons of dryness see you fedBy the involuntary powers,Nights of insult let you passWatched by every human love.

Lullaby

• is a love poem punctuated by death

• address to the sleeping loved one

• how love works in a mortal and imperfect world

• a bit negative but affirms the value of love

• imperfection is what makes the lover "entirely beautiful“

• thought of death is there

Lullaby

• beloved is called both "living" and "mortal“

• "find the mortal world enough" – that we should be satisfied with the here and now, and not look to God for answers

• we should accept the mortality of all life and rejoice in the meaning that death provides

• not exactly the happiest love poem but has a realistic outlook on life and death

Examples

Time and fevers burn awayIndividual beauty from

Thoughtful children, and the graveProves the child ephemeral: (3-6)

• speaker's focus on death• nothing lasts forever• children grow up and lose their beauty• everyone dies eventually

Examples

But in my arms til break of dayLet the living creature lie,Mortal, guilty but to me

The entirely beautiful. (7-10)

• sleeping beloved as a "living creature”

• won’t be living one day

• the beloved is "mortal”

• reminder that everyone will die some day

Examples

Certainty, fidelityOn the stroke of midnight passLike vibrations of a bell, (21-23)

• symbols of time passing – a clock and a bell

• reminds that time is always passing

Examples

Beauty, midnight, vision dies; (31)

• nothing lasts forever

• not just human beings die

• beauty doesn't last forever

• ideas are also mortal

• even midnight "dies" every night

Examples

Find the mortal world enough (36)

• asks his sleeping beloved to be satisfied with their earthly life

• the world and their love are enough for both of them

• no need of a god or supernatural powers

Conclusion

• Auden is a realist

• He understands poetry might not directly influence anything

• He has a habit of calling things by their real names (the sun, the law, death, love)

• It brings us into a better relationship with reality

• He doesn’t give the readers the fairy-tale like happily-ever-afters

• He shows them the real picture of life i.e. beautiful but mortal

Thank you

for your time