Prospero, the Magician-Artist:

Auden's The Sea and the Mirror

Thomas R. Thornburg

BALL STATE MONOGRAPH NUMBER FIFTEEN

Prospero, the Magician-Artist:

Auden's The Sea and the Mirror

Thomas R. ThornburgInstructor in EnglishBall State University

BALL STATE MONOGRAPH NUMBER FIFTEENPublications in English, No. 10

Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana 473061969

Excerpts from The Sea and the Mirror by W. H.Auden, copyright 1944 by W. H. Auden, are re-printed from THE COLLECTED POETRY OF W.H. AUDEN by permission of Random House, Inc.

@ Thomas R. Thornburg 1969Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 73-83289

This essay is for Mary Parrish, whotaught me when I was a Wilson boy.

Thanks

to Jon Lawry, Alfred Marks, Frances MayhewRippy, Gertrude Kane, Walter McCormack,Mary Mayfield, Mae King, and, especially,

Joseph Satterwhite.

V

Contents

1 Setting and Symbol

6 Prospero to Ariel: A Farewell to Magic

15 The Supporting Cast: The Effect of Magic

25 Caliban to the Audience: The Failure of Magic

vii

Setting and Symbol

Auden's The Sea and the Mirror is, as several scholars have sug-gested and as Frederick McDowell has emphasized, the poet's master-

piece. 1 Certainly the scope of the piece, the more than occasionallyric beauty of the verse which fills its first half, and the probing, yetspeculative intensity of the prose portion ("Caliban to the Audience")demand for the work more serious attention than readers have thus fargiven it in the twenty-four years since its appearance. Perhaps of moresignificance than its lyric passages, its frequent manifestation ofAuden's ability (rare in these times) to employ extremely difficult

traditional forms, 2 and its philosophical essence (its theme, if thepiece may be said even to possess a theme) 3 is that the work comprises

an artistic presentation of the poet's aesthetics.During his tenure as a chief man of letters in this time, Auden has

in his poetry and his critical pronouncements sought consistently toestablish what he views as the proper role of the poet, of the artist.Further, he has sought untiringly to provide to his own satisfaction ameaningful melange of what he has determined to be the three majorpostures an artist may assume, as well as to identify the three posturesthemselves. The poet has suggested, and his own work has from timeto time reflected the suggestion, that the artist may give himself simplyto entertaining his audience, that he may simply introduce his readerto "a pure world of play." 4 Besides the relatively innocent role ofentertainer, however, Auden suggests that the poet may assume therole of a magician, a kind of propagandist who works a verbal magicand whose art becomes a means of enchanting its audience—of intro-ducing its audience not to a world of play, of innocence, but to a

1 See, e.g., Frederick P. W. McDowell, "The Situation of Our Time: Auden in His AmericanPhase," in Aspects of American Poetry: Essays Presented to Howard Mum ford Jones (Columbus,

1962), ed. Richard M. Ludwig, pp. 223-55; Francis Scarfe, H. Auden (Monaco, 1949),p. 49; Mark Schorer, "Auden, Shakespeare and Jehovah," New York Times Book Review(September 17, 1944), p. 4; Edward Callan, "The Development of W. H. Auden's PoeticTheory Since 1940," Twentieth Century Literature, IV (October, 1958), 84; and Bent Sunesen,"'All We Are Not Stares Back At What We Are': A Note on Auden," English Studies, XL

(December, 1959), 430-49. Cf. Joseph Warren Beach, The Making of the Auden Canon (Minne-

apolis, 1957), p. 296.2 McDowell, "The Situation of Our Time," passim.' Its theme, according to Edward Callan, "is the relationship between art and reality." For asometime valuable assessment of Auden's subject matter, see Edward Callan, "Auden's 'NewYear Letter': A New Style of Architecture," Renascence, XVI (1963), 13-19.Hayden Carruth, "Understanding Auden," Nation, CLXXIII (December, 1951), 550.

1

world which affords a kind of intellectual and ethical surrogate of thereal world. 5 The true function of the poet, however, is neither to beentertainer (insipid, empty) nor magician (a poetic liar, for Auden,one capable of real harm). 6 For Auden, the true artist holds up forhis audience the "mirror of nature," providing for that audience thetruthful reflection of itself—of its own human condition. The properrole of the artist is that of disenchanter; he must, above all else, telltruths. The proper sphere of his art form is that of disenchantment—"its proper effect, in fact, is disenchanting." 7

But what of the fusion of the three postures—and what of thedanger of one's work becoming only a kind of magic, or perhaps mereentertainment, in spite of the artist's intention? For Auden, the artistmust somehow work a marriage in his art form between the sternrealities of the human condition and the equivalent reality—never tobe discounted—of the poetic presentation. He must, Auden wouldsay, wed Aridl and Caliban, providing the synthesis of reality andpoetic caprice. Only having provided this synthesis has the poet ful-filled his role as artist; only then might he profess to have answeredthe responsibility of his high art. Having presented a mirror for thehuman condition in his art form, the artist is necessarily incapable ofpreventing his art's being seen as a kind of magic if the audience in-sists on viewing it as such. There are areas in which the poet is power-less; having relinquished his work to its audience, he can only hope forunderstanding. 8

Whether an intended magic or not, then, for Auden the failure ofart may be said to be that of its being viewed as a kind of magic, en-chanting rather than properly disenchanting its audience. Thus it isthat Auden's Prospero is a figure representative of the failed-artist,indeed, representing Auden himself in that he realizes the potential

5 The reason for Auden's well-known intense dislike for Shelley stems probably from that poet'sclaiming poets to be "the unacknowledged legislators of the world," a phrase which for Auden"more aptly describes the secret police." For much the same reason, Auden dislikes Kipling'swork, e.g., the much-quoted lines from "If": "If you can fill the unforgiving minute / Withsixty seconds worth of distance run, / Yours is the earth and everything that's in it, / And,which is more / you'll be a man, my son" may be sound advice for potential mile runners, butonly that.

°Auden, "The Poet of the Encirclement," New Republic, CIX (October, 1943), 579-81; Auden,"The Guilty Vicarage: Notes on the Detective Story, by an Addict," HarPer's, CXCVI(May, 1948), 406-12; Auden, "Squares and Oblongs," Poets at Work (New York, 1948), pp.

163-81; Stephen Spender, "W. H. Auden and His Poetry," Atlantic, CXCII (July, 1953),74-79; and John Bayley, The Romantic Survival (New Jersey, 1957), p. 148.Auden, "The Poet of the Encirclement," p. 579.

8 .A. philosophical piece, what Auden would call a "Prospero dominated" piece, might becomefor its audience only an entertaining little story. See, e.g., my article "Mother's Private Ghost:A Note on Frost's 'The Witch of Coos,' " in a forthcoming issue of Ball State UniversityForum.

2

magical quality of his own ante-Sea and the Mirror verse. 9 In hismagic (symbolically, magic-art), Prospero succeeds only in partiallydisenchanting certain of the people who come under its sway, whopartake of his art. As for the two chief characters who refuse his art—Caliban and Antonio—it is Antonio who refuses the mirror becausehe "loves himself alone" and is therefore disinterested in the humancondition generally, 19 while Caliban it is who "sprawls in the weedsand will not be repaired"—who represents that very human conditionexcepted from Prospero's enchanted circle of those for whom his arthas provided only a new enchantment, those who go "like children ina ring, dancing."

The subtitle of The Sea and the Mirror is "A Commentary onShakespeare's The Tempest." Although Auden's piece employs Temp-est characters and is set on an island, little actual commentary on TheTempest exists; 11 the only direct commentary is that of Caliban in hisprose speech, and his remarks have to do with Shakespeare (as a poeticfigure), rather than the poet's Tempest. That commentary, however,is significant in that Auden suggests that Shakespeare, too, understoodthe danger of his art's becoming a kind of magic. There exists anaffinity between Auden and Shakespeare in that Shakespeare's poeticProspero is a symbolic antecedent of Auden and his use of the Pros-pero symbol. 12 Probably for both poets, and for Auden certainly,Prospero exists as the poetic persona, musingly rendering "a detachedmoving reflection of life. . . ."; 13 thus it is that the peroration of thestage manager's speech reminds us that "ripeness is all." For Auden'sProspero, in his art, has come to the knowledge that beside the mir-rored truth of his art, all the rest is indeed silence; and ripeness (theripeness, for Auden, of the coming to age in time of his art form) isindeed all, both the coming hither and the going hence.

Auden's Prospero, then, represents an artist-figure whose art isviewed as magic by his audience (the supporting cast) in the play. Itis in this fashion that Prospero becomes a magician-artist, in thismanner that the posture of magic is artistically introduced by Auden.

9 Particularly that of the 1930's, in which "he constantly recurs to the moral and cultural stateof the world— . . . he is perpetually ringing the changes on the popular slogans, 'It is laterthan you think,' and 'You can't go home again.' He is frankly and boldly didactic. . . ." SeeJoseph Warren Beach, "Poems of Auden and Prose Diathesis," Virginia Quarterly Review,XXV (July, 1949), 367.

19 A condition reflected by the novelist, who "must / Become the whole of boredom, subject to /Vulgar complaints, like love; among the just / Be just, among the filthy filthy too; / And inhis own weak person, if he can, / Must suffer dully all the wrongs of man."

u Richard Hoggart, Auden: An Introductory Essay (New Haven, 1951), p. 26.12 Shakespeare, Macbeth, ed. Francis Fergusson (New York, 1965), p. 170.12 Ibid.

3

Auden's Ariel represents a poetic presentation of the posture of enter-tainment (in himself alone, Prospero's "boy"), while Caliban's is thesymbolic manifestation of the reality of the human condition, sonecessary for the mirror of art. An excerpt from a well-known Audenessay may clarify this point:

We want a poem to be beautiful, that is to say, a verbal earthly

paradise, a timeless world of pure play, which gives us delight pre-cisely because of its contrast to our historical existence with all itsinsoluble problems and inescapable suffering; at the same time wewant a poem to be true, that is to say, to provide us with some kind

of revelation about our life which will show us what life is really

like and free us from self-enchantment and deception, and a poetcannot bring us any truth without introducing into his poetry the

problematic, the painful, the disorderly, the ugly ,14

The passage from "Robert Frost" constitutes a reiteration, actually, ofwhat Auden has said previously regarding the artistic postures, andit affords a clue towards understanding the postures as they appear in

their Sea and the Mirror form. In the excerpt, all those judgmentspreceding the semicolon are indicative of the posture of entertainment,the "poetry as play" syndrome so frequently associated with Auden;those following the semicolon, of art, for it is Caliban's "painful, prob-

lematic" world which Prospero ideally introduces. In the play, how-

ever, that painful reality escapes Prospero-poet, and his art fails of

any real significance.Besides his dramatis personae, Shakespeare's island setting is sig-

nificant for Auden's purpose in the play. Auden's use of islandimagery and allegorical landscape has been examined by at least twocritics, and Auden himself has dealt with a critical analysis of the

island in literature. 15 Of Auden's landscape imagery, Richard Hog-

gart says:

To turn abstractions into terms of allegorical landscapes seems in-deed to be characteristic of Auden's mind. Conversely, a landscapecan bring to mind, sharply and symbolically, some abstract comment

on life or the psyche. 16

Auden's penchant for the island as symbol is reflected in such poemsas "Paysage Moralise," "The Voyage," "The Orators," "Journey to

14 Auden, "Robert Frost," The Dyer's Hand (New York, 1963), p. 338.

15 Auden, The Enchafed Flood (New York, 1950). See especially "The Sea and the Desert,"

fuissim.Hoggart, Introductory Essay, p. 26.

4

Iceland," "Atlantis," and others. Of Auden's island symbolism, JosephWarren Beach says:

. . . islands are dangerous and to be avoided because, as etymologywould indicate, they isolate us; they remove us from reality andfrom our fellows into a private dream world that weakens and be-trays us. . . . Islands are associated with sensuality and with childishdependence on one's father. . . . The island, then, is a place wherethe disturbing realities of the world are not present, and thosedisturbed by their erotic indulgences may imagine themselves pureagain, their sense of guilt washed away. . . . It is true that incrossing water you enter the realm of magic. Islands are magicaland deceptive. . . . islands stand for the illusory world of dreams,of wish-fulfillment, and whoever indulges in such dreams is boundto be cruelly disillusioned when he comes up against the worldof everyday reality. 1 7

This passage is entirely indicative of the use of the island settingand its symbolic significance for Auden's play, for the island, sym-bolically, is the place where Prospero can work what becomes hismagic. The island, having removed Prospero and most of the othersfrom reality, is exactly that "illusory world of dreams"; it is the placewhere enchantment might occur. It is Prospero's cruel disillusionmentwhich occurs when he faces the sullen mask of everyday reality-Caliban. The specific disillusionment is Prospero's failure in his art,his magic, manifested in his wish to get off his island. Thus, Auden'ssymbolical use of Shakespearean character and setting.

17 Joseph Warren Beach, Obsessive Images (Minneapolis, 1960), pp. 120-29, passim.

5

Prospero to Ariel: A Farewell to Magic

The aged catch their breath,For the nonchalant couple goWaltzing across the tightropeAs if there were no deathOr hope of falling down;The wounded cry as the clownDoubles his meaning, and 0How the dear little children laughWhen the drums roll and the lovelyLady is sawn in half.t

So the play opens with the stage manager's speech, a commentary ona situation with a circus-like aura in which ladies, gentlemen, andchildren of all ages are being entertained. The aged, who are so closeto death, are astounded at the ease with which the entertainers toywith death: all is order and precision; there are no accidents; thecouple "waltzes" across the rope. There is, in fact, even no "hope" ofwhat Auden has called "the miraculous birth"; the lovely lady is sawnin half, much to the delight of children who, for the time being, arenot going to fall through the ice "on a pond, at the edge of thewoods. . . ." 19 No one, in short, is going to be hurt by the entertain-ment. No one will die. There may be a hope that someone will fall,but the entertainers do not show it, for what the aged and the littlechildren watch in no fashion reflects their true condition, a condition,we are reminded, where there is death and where people are enter-tained and where, indeed, the "hope" that someone will fall is whatmakes the act so entertaining. So it is that the first section of the stagemanager's address is devoted to entertainment.

After a break in the text, the stage manager begins a commentaryon a typical instance of the posture of entertainment's becoming that

of magic:

0 what authority givesExistence its surprise?Science is happy to answer

This and all following excerpts from The Sea and the Mirror are taken from The Collected

Poetry of W. H. Auden (New York, 1945), pp. 351-404.19 Auden, "Musee des Beaux Arts."

6

That the ghosts who haunt our livesAre handy with mirrors and wire,That song and sugar and fire,Courage and come-hither eyesHave a genius for taking pains.But how does one think up a habit?Our wonder, our terror remains.

If the reader will recall, the posture of magic is used to advise, to givea set of values, and those who deal in magic are authorities of a sort.The question is the audience's question: "Who are those people whomake such surprising analyses of life (Existence)?" The world of fact(Science), Auden says, is willing to call all art a kind of magic; theghosts, then, are magicians, people who give advice; their tools (mirrorsand wire) are the tools of their magical trade. The second question,however, signals the failure of magic, for what "code" can we adoptto be habitually good? What outside force can teach us to lead thegood life always? No answer is given; we are still fearful, still full ofawe. And as magic inevitably fails us, just so do those who would usethe artist as magician fail us, those who actually want the artist tobecome a sort of propagandist:

• . . when the mansion of the West is a heap of smoking rubble,

• . . the helpless authorities turn as a last resort to the artist andpromise him all . . . if he will forsake the artistic life and becomean official magician, who uses his talents to arouse in the inertmasses the passions which the authorities consider socially desirableand necessary, 2 o

Thus, for Auden, the culpability of magician-artists, as well as thosewho would make the artist a sycophant to their own political purpose.

The third part of the stage manager's address, which has had todo thus far with entertainment and magic, is concerned with theposture of art; the first four lines reflect, again, the artifice of enter-tainment and magic, and the attempt of those two postures to relieveus of our actual condition. The allusion in the first four lines to orig-inal sin (Flesh/Devil) is strengthened by a capitalization which is anironical comment on the attempt of magic to absolve us of our guilt: 21

Art opens the fishiest eyeTo the Flesh and the Devil who heatThe Chamber of Temptation

Auden, "Henry James and the Artist," HarPer's, CXCVII (July, 1946), 39.22 Cf. Gabriel's speech in Auden's For The Time Being.

7

Where heroes roar and die.We are wet with sympathy now;Thanks for the evening; but howShall we satisfy when we meet,Between Shall-I andThe lion's mouth whose hungerNo metaphors can fill?

The heroes who "roar and die" in entertainment are artificial; thoseof magic are unreal; the point is that neither the entertainment northe magic will last. They are good only for "now." The "lion's mouth"metaphor rings in the "terror and wonder" again, the terror and won-der of life, the true condition; the question is, what does magic give us,where are the metaphors to fill the lion's mouth? There are, alas,none. And so, the stage manager concludes, there is only art:

Well, who in his own backyardHas not opened his heart to the smilingSecret he cannot quote?Which goes to show that the BardWas sober when he wroteThat this world of fact we loveIs unsubstantial stuff:All the rest is silenceOn the other side of the wall;And the silence ripeness,And the ripeness all.

"Who in his own backyard" has not faced the human conundrum;what "little fever," having "heard large afternoons at play," has notlonged to "be his father's house and speak his mother tongue," 22 hasnot become aware, in short, of that "smiling secret," the enigma of hisown human condition? The world of fact we love is, perhaps, only thefact we fancy it to be, wishing as we do to be enchanted. But this isnot, Auden would have us know, the world of art, for art it is thatmirrors the true reality; art, that truly disenchants. Once effected, thatripeness, once achieved, is all. The rest is silence.

The figure who has come his noisy way to silence, who has come tonew knowledge, is Prospero, who decides to forego his magic. Initiat-ing his farewell, Prospero notes that his leaving affects only himself;his separation from Ariel will not affect Ariel. Entertainment, if only

22 See Auden's The Quest: A Sonnet Sequence.

8

that, will continue to abound: "Ages to you of song and daring, andto me / Briefly Milan, then earth." Where Prospero goes now, deathis: ". . . at last I can really believe I shall die," which washitherto not the case at all,

For under your [Ariel's] influence death is unconceivable;On walks through winter woods, a bird's dry carcassAgitates the retina with novel images,A stranger's quiet collapse in a noisy streetIs the beginning of much lively speculation,And every time some dear flesh disappearsWhat is real is the arriving grief; thanks to your service,The lonely and unhappy are very much alive. . . .

Ariel's act continues to go on, "as if there were no death"; the ironygains weight, "thanks to your service," the lonely and the unhappy,who have seen no mirroring of their reality in Ariel's merely enter-taining mirror, are more alive than ever. Thus it is that Prospero'sfarewell is, metaphorically, the casting of his books into the sea:

But now all these heavy books are no use to me any more, forWhere I go [into reality], words of magic carry no weight: it is best,Then, I surrender their fascinating counselTo the silent dissolution of the seaWhich misuses nothing because it values nothing;Whereas man overvalues everythingYet, when he learns the price is pegged to his valuation,Complains bitterly that he is being ruined ..

So Prospero comes to reality.Before he came to that reality, however, Prospero explains that he

had resolved to flee it, to make great changes in the world:

When I woke into my life, a sobbing dwarf 23

Whom giants served only as they pleased, I was not what I seemed;Beyond their busy backs I made a magicTo ride away from a father's imperfect justice,Take vengeance on the Romans for their grammar,

Determined to fashion a new reality, Prospero had determined to getthings done, to give advice (take vengeance on the Romans for theirgrammar), to escape an "imperfect justice," a phrase which echoesAuden's discussion of true art "where we may know the Law as Love

23 Cf. Auden's "Mundus et Infans."

9

and not the law. . . ."24 Prospero had not understood that justicefor what it was—Love. 25 Now disenchanted, Prospero knows reality:

Now, Ariel, I am that I am, your late and lonely master,Who knows what magic is;—the power to enchantThat comes from disillusion. What the books can teach oneIs that most desires end up in stinking ponds, . .

One recalls the "ugly reality" of Caliban's tumbling in the pond ofhorse urine in Shakespeare's Tempest. Knowing this reality at last,Prospero addresses Ariel finally as the poetic muse, the necessary lyriccorollary to Caliban, their artistic synthesis the mirror of our humanselves, the echo of our voice:

But we have only to learn to sit still and give no orders,To make you offer us your echo and your mirror;We have only to believe you, then you dare not lie;To ask for nothing, and at once from your calm eyes,With their lucid proof of apprehension and disorder,All we are not stares back at what we are. For all thingsIn your company, can be themselves: . . .

Thus it is that the disenchantment of art occurs.Following another break in the text, Prospero speaks in typical

Audenesque song, in which he reminds us that people may not wantthe disenchantment of art; indeed, that they probably prefer magic,what "all of us, high-brow and low-brow alike, may secretly want artto be." Prospero sings:

Could he but once see Nature asIn truth she is forever,What oncer would not fall in love?Hold up your mirror, boy, to doYour vulgar friends this favour:One peep, though, will be quite enough;To those who are not true,A statue with no figleaf hasA pornographic flavour.

There are always those, Prospero says, who are not "true," those whowish to be enchanted.

Following his song, Prospero speaks of the artist's relation to hismuse, in this case, Prospero's to Arid; he speaks also of those char-

24 Auden, "The Guilty Vicarage," imssim.25 Cf. Auden's "Herman Melville."

10

acters who have come under his own magic-art's sway, who haveadopted a new enchantment. Prospero then returns to a further con-sideration of the failure of entertainment and magic (another ironicallittle song), and, following that song, he reviews his work as a magi-cian. It is at this point that one may see most clearly Auden's ownprofile under Prospero's paint.

Knowing reality, Prospero says, he is now free, for having beenconvinced of the efficacy of his magic, he had, not surprisingly, en-chanted himself. At the same time, however, Ariel's freedom (theartificial freedom entertainment provides) was a freedom of sorts. Theproblem is that entertainment wears thin; it will not last. For Pros-pero, however, "Today I am free and no longer need your freedom.. . ." For others that freedom does not exist; Ariel, Prospero knows,is potently persuasive: there will be other "likely victims" whom Arielcan lead "absurdly by their self-important noses." The Prospero-Arielunion, Prospero says, has resulted only in a kind of magic because ofthe exclusion of Caliban; that union has resulted only in an implac-able hatred (Antonio's) and an "'impervious disgrace" (Caliban,himself):

. . . thanks to us both [Ariel and Prospero] I have brokenBoth of the promises I made as an apprentice;—To hate nothing and to ask nothing for its love.

• . . Caliban remains my impervious disgrace.We did it, Ariel, between us; you found on me a wishFor absolute devotion; result—his wreckThat sprawls in the weeds and will not be repaired:My dignity discouraged by a pupil's curse,I shall go knowing and incompetent into my grave.

One recalls Shakespeare's Caliban, who worshipped his master's power,who, given speech, could curse. For Auden's Prospero, the failing isthat of the magical in literature; e.g., Caliban lies wrecked as a resultof that magic, metaphorically, in Prospero's hands. Caliban's "abso-lute devotion" is that of the fealty pledged to his magical master, whorealizes, too late, that he has failed his art.

Following a break in the text, Prospero, musing about the possibleeffect his magic has had on others in the cast, speaks specifically ofSebastian, Alonso, Trinculo, and Stephano. The magician notes thatall of these people have been changed by his magic, and "to all, then,but me, their pardons," the point being that they will never pardon

11

Prospero. They are enchanted by his magic, their lives unreal, andwhen the inevitable disenchantment occurs—magic cannot last—theywill blame him for having dabbled in their lives. The greatest worryis that for Ferdinand and Miranda:

Will Ferdinand be as fond of a MirandaFamiliar as a stocking? Will a Miranda who isNo longer a silly lovesick little goose,When Ferdinand and his brave world are her profession,Go into raptures over existing at all?

For that "existing" is real; the "stocking familarity," although held inabeyance by "the hours of fuss and fury, the conceit, the expense"must inevitably occur.

Knowing that which Ferdinand and lovesick Miranda do not,Prospero is left only his wit, his irony, which are manifested in hissong. Bidding Ariel to sing, Prospero reflects, again, upon the empti-ness of the merely entertaining and the real danger of the magical.There is, he sings, the world of play only:

Sing first that green remote CockagneWhere whiskey-rivers run,And every gorgeous number mayBe laid by anyone; . . .

There is the need for enchantment, for an artificial sureness:

Tell then of witty angels whoCome only to the beasts,Of Heirs Apparent who preferLow dives to formal feasts;For shameless InsecurityPrays for a boot to lick,And many a sore bottom findsA sorer one to kick.

There is the lie of magic, what Auden has called "agit-prop" art, akind of corporative catharsis meant to serve a sinister end:

Wind up, though, on a moral note;—That Glory will go bang,Schoolchildren shall cooperate,And honest rogues must hang;Because our sound committee manHas murder in his heart:But should you catch a living eye,Just wink as you depart.

12

If that is what they want, Prospero says to Ariel, give it to them—andwink at the truth.

But the song will not suffice for Prospero, who feels "as if I hadbeen on a drunk since I was born," and who is now, knowing reality,"cold sober." Knowing his magic for what it is, Prospero says, he mustforsake it, to take the journey that "really exists." It is prescisely atthis juncture that Prospero is obviously Auden himself, reviewing, itwould seem, his ante-Sea and Mirror verse. Of that verse, John Bayley

says:

Magic persists . . . the unromantic and satirical approach can itselflead to the state of aesthetic equilibrium and completeness whichconstitutes Magic. The more perceptive and unified the approach,the greater chance that the intelligent reader will simply sit backand enjoy the situation. . . • 26

"The unromantic and satirical approach" reminds us of the "livelyspeculation" occasioned by "a stranger's quiet collapse," the "bird's drycarcass" which "agitates the retina with novel images," of which Pros-pero has already spoken. But now, Prospero says, he must take hisjourney, a journey that before might have been only a useful collec-

tion of symbols for him:

The symbols . . . were mainly these: the difficult journey fromhome, the keeping of the mountain passes, disused mines andfactories, rusting machinery, military tactics and discipline, infiltra-tion by the enemy . . . landscapes and geography (mountains,islands, cities) and the familiar features of an industrial England.

.27

Now "cold sober," Prospero says it was for him "as if through the ages

I had dreamed"

About some tremendous journey I was taking,Sketching imaginary landscapes, chasms and cities,Cold walls, hot spaces, wild mouths, defeated backs,Jotting down fictional notes on secrets overheardIn theatres and privies, banks and mountain inns,And now, in my old age, I wake, and this journey really exists,And I have actually to take it, inch by inch,Alone and on foot, . . .

26 John Bayley, The Romantic Survival, p. 162.22 Joseph Warren Beach, "Poems of Auden and Prose Diathesis," p. 367.

13

So, Prospero says, he will forsake magic, to become perhaps "justlike other old men . . . forgetful, maladroit, a little grubby, . . ."But he wonders, as Auden himself perhaps was at the time wondering,whether he can learn to "be quiet, and sit still."

. . . Can I learn to sufferWithout saying something ironic or funnyOn suffering? . . • 28

There is little doubt that Auden is thinking of himself in this context.Throughout the entirety of his long speech, Prospero reflects Auden'sprevious critical pronouncements.

Having come to his knowledge of reality, Prospero must now facedeath (the "stumping question"), but to Ariel (entertainment, minusthe reality of art itself) "that doesn't matter." So Prospero bids hismagic sprite, his "unfeeling god," to sing:

Sweetly, dangerously

Lucidly outOf the dozing tree,Entrancing, rebukingThe raging heartWith a smoother songThan this rough world,

Return to your world, Prospero says, to your "dozing tree" wherethere is no sorrow, no despair:

0 brilliantly, lightly,

Unanxious one, sing

Trembling he [Prospero] takesThe silent passageInto discomfort.

28 "He [Auden] is, perhaps, thinking of himself. . . ." Richard Hoggart, Introductory Essay,p. 216.

14

The Supporting Cast: The Effect of Magic

The speeches of the supporting cast begin with a speech by Antonio,the being outside Prospero's magic. It is Antonio who introduces whatwe may accept as the reason for Prospero's effort in his magic-art; thetruth, Antonio says, is that Prospero wanted everybody to be "recon-ciled," to love one another. Antonio, however, loves no one savehimself (as Prospero has already guessed), and he mocks Prospero andhis efforts in magic-making:

Yes, Brother Prospero, your grouping could

Not be more effective: given a fewIncomplete objects and a nice warm day,What a lot a little music can do.

Antonio delights in reminding Prospero that his magic-art is nothingmore than "a little music," and it is Antonio whose mocking refrainappears at the end of the speech of every other character, who assuresProspero that so long as he (Antonio) exists, the magician's art is afailure, no matter how the magician tries:

. . • while I stand outsideYour circle, the will to charm is still there.2 9

It is Antonio who represents those who refuse the magic because theyare suspicious of it; the suspicion itself is that the art is really onlymagic-art, enchanting, but only that. So it is that Antonio can mockProspero with his failure, for while Antonio remains himself (a stateof being which may or may not be one of phantasy), Prospero neverreally succeeds:

Your all is partial, Prospero;My will is all my own:Your need to love shall never knowMe: I am I, Antonio,By choice myself alone.

Following Antonio's speech there is a discourse by Ferdinand, whois quite obviously still caught in his "era of mirrors and muddle," and

29 See Auden's The Poet of the Encirclement," passim.

15

who is avidly in love with Miranda. Ferdinand says that it is enoughthat he and Miranda possess one another, "As world is offered world. . ." and it is this very immature line of thought that brings Pros-pero's conjecture as to whether Ferdinand will love Miranda "familiaras a stocking." But, Ferdinand says of himself and Miranda that". . . neither without either could or would possess, / The RightRequired Time, The Real Right Place, 0 Light." Ferdinand andMiranda have been enchanted by the magician-artist's work; they havenot been properly disenchanted. Antonio mocks the enchanted as wellas the enchanter: "Hot Ferdinand will never know" the passion thatis Antonio's, and which is his alone.

The failure of magic-art with Stephano is a different failing, but afailing none the less. All Stephano has managed to do is get drunkagain, a thing at which he seems to have been fairly adept all along.While other apostrophes are addressed to other persons, Stephano'sis addressed to his own belly: "Embrace me, belly, like a bride; . . ."Stephano, yet a drunkard, has not been disenchanted at all; he canneither be seriously comic nor comically serious; he speaks of his belly,the sensual life, as "Wise nanny, with a vulgar pooh." He puns atdrinking glasses, which have helped enchant him, and mirrors (TheMirror) which have failed to disenchant him: "Exhausted glasses won-der who / Is self and sovereign, I or You?" Stephano carries on hisown phantasy; his life revolves from drinking bout to drinking bout:"A lost thing looks for a lost name." Stephano is a past failure pres-ently failing. He represents one of the many for whom the Mirror (art)offers a warped picture (I or You); consequently, Prospero's failurecontinues to be what he feared—magic-art. So, Stephano is static inhis magic world; the drunkard is oblivious and slightly self-sympa-thetic in his inebriation; and Antonio, outside the circle, continues tomock:

Inert Stephano does not knowThe feast at which AntonioToasts One and One alone.

Prospero's failure continues with Gonzalo, who has exchangedone enchantment for another, although he does not know it. He gazesback fondly on ". .. that island where / All our loves were altered .. ."and he remembers that his error was in making "Consolation anoffence." 30 Auden's Gonzalo seems to feel that it was his harping on

Cf. The Tempest, II, passim.

16

the supposed loss of Ferdinand that brought about the plot onAlonso's life, 31 and he knows that that was wrong—an enchantment.But, his enchantment continues: Gonzalo is still enchanted because hebelieves that "All have seen the Commonwealth, / There is nothingto forgive." He assuages his remembrance of having failed once 32 bypresuming (fallaciously) that even old men have their places:

Even rusting flesh can beA simple locus now, a bellThe Already There can layHands on if at any timeIt should feel inclined to sayTo the lonely—'Here I am,'To the anxious—'All is well.'

One must remember that it was Arid, doing Prospero's bidding, whobelled Gonzalo. 33 Gonzalo is not disenchanted; he has merely beengranted a different phantasy. Antonio speaks waspishly of "DecayedGonzalo" who knows nothing, really.

Adrian and Francisco are given a typical Audenesque couplet astheir only speech in the play, and the couplet has to do with theirobvious fascination with Ariel's sleight-of-hand tricks in making thebanquet disappear. Of all the characters in the play, it is Adrian andFrancisco who are entirely captivated by entertainment only. Pros-pero's attempt has no effect on this pair; Ariel, however, shows thementertainment and they adore it. They are intrigued by the playwithin the play; thus it is that they are given the droll little couplet:

Good little sunbeams must learn to fly,But it's madly ungay when the goldfish die.

Antonio refuses to be part of that audience, too. Still refusing themirror, he reminds Prospero: "Nor Adrian nor Francisco know / Thedrama that Antonio / Plays in his head alone."

Alonso's speech is addressed to Ferdinand, the heir apparent to histhrone. The speech is a rather long one, since Alonso is concernedwith past failures and his present state (misnamed success, under-standing), as well as with the future of his son. Alonso speaks alter-nately of "sunburnt" situations and "watery depths," of "fire" and"ice"; he warns Ferdinand of becoming too enamoured with himself,since time (death, which Alonso must face) will be intolerant of him:

n Ibid.32 Ibid.33 Ibid.

17

Remember as bells and cannon boomThe cold deep that does not envy you,The sunburnt superficial kingdomWhere a king is an object. 34

Alonso continues to advise Ferdinand and to employ his hot-coldimage; he tells Ferdinand to expect no help from a king's sycophantswho make magic, who do not appreciate a king's position:

• . . In their Royal Zoos theShark and the octopus are tactfullyOmitted; synchronised clocks march onWithin their powers: without, remainThe ocean flats where no subscriptionConcerts are given, the desert plainWhere there is nothing for lunch.35

Alonso says that Ferdinand, if he becomes proud and blind as Alonsowas once, can only hope for a new understanding, and a new tempest:

That the whirlwind may arrange your willAnd the deluge release it to findThe spring in the desert, the fruitfulIsland in the sea, where flesh and mindAre delivered from mistrust.

The mirror that has disenchanted Alonso has given him a new en-chantment in that he imagines all who left the island are "deliveredfrom mistrust." Alonso merely substantiates Antonio's accusation andProspero's apprehension; the failure of magic-art continues; the mirrorhas not properly disenchanted; a new phantasy is introduced. An-tonio's mocking refrain signals the failure of magic-art:

My empire is my own;Dying Alonso does not know . . .

The enchantment evidenced by the Master and Boatswain is thatof delicious, hopeless nostalgia; the two old sailors have been disen-chanted to the degree that they can take stock of what appears to betheir errant ways, but a new enchantment is imposed because of theirviewing themselves as old romantic rakes. For them, the mirror haspresented a warped picture; the art has become magic-art again.Thus, they brag a bit:

84 Ibid., Ariel's song: "Full fathoms five. . . ."85 See Richard Hoggart, Introductory Essay, p, 26.

18

At Dirty Dick's and Sloppy Joe'sWe drank our liquor straight, . . .

Thus, their disenchantment:

And two by two like cat and mouseThe homeless played at keeping house. . . .

Thus, their bravado (enchantment recurring):

I was not looking for a cageIn which to mope in my old age. . . .

Again, the disenchantment, the bravado, the enchantment in one:

The nightingales are sobbing inThe orchards of our mothers,And hearts that we broke long agoHave long been breaking others;Tears are round, the sea is deep:Roll them overboard and sleep.

Without the symbolic manifestation of the three postures in the play,the Master-Boatswain speech is rather senseless; with it, it becomes oneof the most telling of the entire play. Antonio choruses:

Nostalgic sailors do not knowThe waters where AntonioSails on and on alone.

Probably the only truly disenchanted figure in the entire play isSebastian, and to him Auden has given what are probably the bestlines of the play. Sebastian speaks in an intricate blank-versed patternof six line stanzas, in which a crown, a dream, and a sword symbol-ically work. The dream is the dream of unreality, of phantasy, ofenchantment; the crown serves as the symbol of further enchantment;the sword serves as the symbol of reality, of disenchantment. Of course,the three symbols are turned about a bit: the sword is that with whichSebastian meant to kill Alonso, and, poetically, it becomes Sebastian'ssaving grace (his disenchantment); the crown is that which Antoniopromised him; and the dream is that sleep brought on by Ariel, which,affecting Alonso and the others, is suddenly disrupted by Ariel's song,and all are saved. Sebastian announces that his proof of mercy is thathe wakes without a crown, and that his dream was where "Prudenceflirted with a naked sword." The line is a tricky one; it wouldhave been more prudent at the time to kill Alonso than not; Antonio

19

has appealed to Sebastian's prudence to do the thing. Sebastian saysthat now he knows he was enchanted, that he envied his brother:

The arrant jewel singing in his crownPersuaded me my brother was a dreamI should not love because I had no proof, . . .

Sebastian says that the phantasy of his being was a lie, a promise ofa kingdom that was unreal. Sebastian was not only living in a phan-tasy of his own, but he was living in hope of another phantasy.Poetically:

The lie of Nothing is to promise proofTo any shadow that there is no dayWhich cannot be extinguished with some sword,To want and weakness that the ancient crownEnvies the childish head, murder a dreamWrong only while its victim is alive.

To Sebastian (a shadow, unreal) a further phantasy is given; thelie is that murder is wrong only while the victim lives (again, a phan-tasy). For Sebastian, the mirror affords a true picture:

0 blessed be bleak Exposure on whose swordCaught unawares, we prick ourselves alive!

I smile because I tremble, glad todayTo be ashamed, not anxious, not a dream.

Just Now is what it might be every day,Right Here is absolute and needs no crown,Ermine or trumpets, protocol or sword.

In dream all sins are easy, but by dayIt is defeat gives proof we are alive;The sword we suffer is the guarded crown.

Truly disenchanted, Sebastian sees himself as finally come alive;he no longer plots the murder of a king, and he sees his phantasy aswhat it is: a "guarded crown" forever denied him by the sword wesuffer—reality. This speech represents a paradigm of what Prosperohas hoped for: Sebastian has seen himself as he really is. There mayremain a problem with Sebastian. He understands that his Eden isforever distant, forever denied him, but he sees it as a "guardedcrown"; he will not accept it as the reality which it is. It may bethat Sebastian is also potentially one of those who really wish art to

20

be a form of magic. It seems that this is what Antonio thinks when hereminds Prospero that his "conscience is his own" and that "PallidSebastian does know . . ." what Antonio does. At any rate, Sebastianis the only one of the characters who has committed a complete turn-about because of what the mirror has shown him; he is also the onlyone who has helped himself to see at least a portion of reality. How-ever that may be, Sebastian's speech does reflect the three posturesonce more: Sebastian's phantasy is that of the dream, and a differentphantasy is offered him wth the symbol of the "guarded crown." Thefirst works as Sebastian's personal enchantment; the second works asthat enchantment worked by Ariel (at Prospero's bidding) whenAriel causes the king and his ministers to fall asleep. The art, theproper disenchantment for which Prospero has been striving, comesabout with Sebastian's "accidental pricking" on the sword of reality—"bleak Exposure." Sebastian, more than any other person in thedrama, is disenchanted by the mirror of Prospero's art.

The speech of Trinculo is like that of Stephano in that Trinculois another for whom the mirror affords no disenchantment. Trinculo'spredicament, however, is one brought on by himself; he has been solong a clown that he can no longer be approximately serious; he mustalways make jokes. His role is that of a rather familiar pseudo-tragicfigure: he is a sad clown. He can make others laugh, but he cannotmake himself happy—he cannot find happiness.

Mechanic, merchant, king,Are warmed by the cold clownWhose head is in the cloudsAnd never can get down.

Trinculo, curiously enough, has a reality of his own much like thatof Antonio. Trinculo's reality is a magic world where no one cantouch him, but the problem is that he can touch no one either. Hisreality becomes the usual jocularity one associates with clowns, butfor him the joke is forever, yet not funny to him. He is a "coldclown":

Into a solitudeUndreamed of by their fatQuick dreams have lifted me;The north wind steals my hat.

Trinculo longs only for the lost Eden of his innocent childhood:. the red roof where I/ Was Little Trinculo." But Trinculo is

21

one who refuses the mirror; he has been captivated by himself toolong; he is forever the enchanted one. The cold clown recognizes hisparadox, that he who can make others laugh will never laugh himself,but he is aloof, clinging to his particular reality. Trinculo's greatestthreat ("A terror shakes my tree,/ A flock of words fly out,") is, ofcourse, that his magic might fail him, that no one laugh at his jokes.It is only then that his reality might cease to exist and that he mightbe forced to face a new reality, to become disenchanted. This threatis so great and the fear of the failure of magic so overwhelming thatTrinculo wishes for death:

Wild images, come downOut of your freezing sky,That I, like shorter men,May get my joke and die.

Following Trinculo's speech the usual mocking refrain from An-tonio appears, but Auden seems to have been preparing for Antonio'sclosing remarks directly before Caliban's prose address in this instance.Antonio comments on the paradox of the entire cast as he closesTrinculo's speech:

Tense Trinculo will never knowThe paradox AntonioLaughs at, in woods, alone.

The paradox that so amuses Antonio is that of the other charactersin the play who think that they have been disenchanted when, inreality, they have merely accepted another form of enchantment asa substitute for their past enchantment. The crux of the paradox isthat art, which is meant to disenchant, has been turned about by thepersons reflected in the mirror, so that the mirror affords a warpedpicture in that no one is properly disenchanted (witness the problemremaining with Sebastian); rather, all are given a new enchantment—hence, art becomes magic-art again. The paradox continues simplybecause the magician-artist knows that his art has failed, but thosereflected in the mirror are convinced that the art has succeeded, thatthey are actually disenchanted. So it is that Antonio, who knowinglyrejects the mirror, chides Prospero with the magnitude of his failure,for, actually, Prospero wanted all to love and understand one another.By their enchantment, their blindness to reality, the characters in theplay will never fully understand one another; if they do happen occa-sionally to love one another, it will be for the wrong thing, for, by

22

definition, they are still living an enchantment—they do not know thereal. Too, if they ever do become disenchanted, they will (perhapsrightly) blame Prospero for his having dabbled in magic-art. Theabsolute manifestation of Prospero's failure will be that which hefears: the potential reality (disenchantment) of Ferdinand and Mirandaif they discover that their love is not really love at all, but a prolongedenchantment brought about by the magician—Miranda's own father.

The fact that the failure of Ferdinand and Miranda manifests thefailure of all the magic-art itself is the reason for the appearance ofMiranda's speech near the end of the second major section of the play.

Miranda's speech reflects her enchantment; she exists in a never-never land of childhood happiness where the only change in the inno-cent garden is that of the shifting seasons, and in which all of thecharacters of childhood fiction—a Dear One, a Black Man, a Witch,an Ancient, a Good King—play harmlessly about her. The constantrefrain is that of innocence ("And the high green hill sits always bythe sea") and of unknowing enchantment ("My Dear One is mine asmirrors are lonely"). Miranda's refrain signals the enchantment mis-taken for disenchantment of the whole cast—i.e., those who have beenworked on by the magic. Ferdinand belongs to Miranda only "asmirrors are lonely"; that is to say, he loves her as much as she cansay he loves her. The unhappy truth is that of which she is unaware:

Ferdinand really is hers only as The Mirror is lonely; they are en-chanted still and will become disenchanted only when The Mirror isno longer "lonely"—when it gives a true reflection and they see them-selves as they are. But, Miranda insists that he and she are truly

disenchanted:

He kissed me awake, and no one was sorry;The sun shone on sails, eyes, pebbles, anything,And the high green hill sits always by the sea.

Miranda says that all are really happy:

So, to remember our changing garden, weAre linked as children in a circle dancing:My Dear One is mine as mirrors are lonely,And the high green hill sits always by the sea.

The circle to which Miranda alludes is precisely the problem ofwhat has occurred; all have been joined in a magic circle by Prospero'sworkings; consequently, all are enchanted—Miranda, like the others,

23

is happy but not disenchanted, so the danger remains of her becoming"familiar as a stocking," of her later disenchantment.

Following Miranda's speech is the usual mocking reminder byAntonio and, since it is Antonio's last speech, he finally reminds Pros-pero that the "magic circle" has failed. Antonio is not included in theenchantment; his enchantment is his own:

One link is missing, Prospero,My magic is my own;Happy Miranda does not knowThe figure that Antonio,The only One, Creation's 0Dances for Death alone.

Antonio is not like the others; he will not love because he refuses themirror; he refuses to be disenchanted, to see himself as someone whoshould love. 36

So ends die second major portion of The Sea and the Mirror.Prospero has attempted to show all of the other characters reality;he has tried to disenchant them through the mirror-world of his art,and has failed. None of the characters have been truly disenchanted;some have lost their old enchantments only to find new ones; somehave kept their own magic, their own enchantment lingers on. Twohave remained basically untouched by Prospero's attempt. Those forwhom the art has become magic-art are Ferdinand and Miranda,Stephano, Gonzalo, and Alonso; those who have their own magic orwho have been dazzled by entertainment are the Master and Boat-swain, Trinculo, and Adrian and Francisco. Antonio is outside thecircle, outside the mirror's scope; he wills to love no one but himself.The other who has been affected by Prospero but who has revolted,who "sprawls in the weeds and will not be repaired" is Caliban. It isCaliban who is given the last major address to the audience; indeed,his prose speech is longer than the rest of the entire play. In hisspeech, Calibart reiterates what Prospero has hinted at in his verse.

36 Antonio seems to represent the sort of figure whom Auden has called the "negative religoushero"; his sense of proportion has become so warped that he is committed to his "truth inan absolute passion of aversion and hatred." See The Enchafed Flood, pp. 97-105; see also,Auden, The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard (New York, 1952), pp. 18-19.

24

Caliban to the Audience: The Failure of Magic

Caliban, who symbolizes the reality art must encompass, speaks tothree audiences on the problems of the artist and the audience. First,Caliban speaks to what we may assume to be the shade of Shakespeare.The remarks to Shakespeare are probably intended to be addressed toall artists, to all successful poets. Caliban then addresses himself tothe young men in the audience, the would-be artists. After the addressto the young men, Caliban turns to the people in the audience wholong for the lost world of their innocent childhood, who want theartist to return them to it by magical means. Caliban's rambling dis-jointed James parody is at times rather turgid, but it does appearthat the audience as a whole is divided into two parts, the unsuccess-ful who want magic and the successful persons who want entertain-ment. The declaration of what ultimately must constitute art appearsin the postscript to the play, in which entertainment and reality aresymbolically wrought together. This unification is what constitutes art.

The whole postscript to the play is devoted to Ariel's address toCaliban. Symbolically, entertainment admits its affiliation with reality;Ariel must always be associated with Caliban. The echo by theprompter reiterates this essential unification, a unification whichresults in true art. If the reader is confused by the appearance ofCaliban and the eventual unification of Caliban and Ariel, he needonly remember that Caliban serves symbolically as the brute fact ofthe human condition, the recognition of which is part of art. Theunification of entertainment and reality is amplified by the real humanbeing outside the play's scope. The prompter's echo—"I"—reaffirms theunification.

Very little critical commentary on Caliban's speech has been made;however, F. W. Dupee and Joseph Warren Beach, both Auden scholars,have mentioned Caliban's speech in conjunction with their studies ofAuden. F. W. Dupee says that Caliban ". . . is, only too patently,Auden himself." 37 An eminent Auden scholar, Joseph Warren Beach,says that Caliban's speech is ". . . a long-winded disquisition onliterary art-in-an-age-of-naturalistic-unbelief." 38 This is a rather dis-

37 F. W. Dupee, W. H. Auden," Nation, LIX (October, 1945), 537.38 Joseph Warren Beach, The Making of the Auden Canon, p. 296.

25

concerting dismissal of what the speech may actually represent. Itseems that Beach refuses to be amused by the Henry James parody,and this is understandable; however, perhaps the speech is somethingmore than a "long-winded disquisition." It may be that Beach hasmisread the play itself. At any rate, Beach dismisses the play as being"relatively uninspired" 39 and he devotes only a few sentences to it inhis text.

The truth is that Caliban's speech with the subsequent postscriptto the play caps an artistic presentation of an aesthetic theory. Thereis little doubt that the symbolic unification of Ariel and Caliban repre-sents what Auden wishes us to see as the proper role of art, the even-tual synthesis of entertainment and reality.

As was said, Caliban's first remarks are addressed to all practisingpoets, and, particularly, Shakespeare. Caliban begins by speaking forthe whole audience; he admits that the intrusion of the real hasdiscomfited many in the audience, and this is the reason for hisappearance:

... for, in default of the all-wise, all-explaining master . . . who elseindeed must respond to your bewildered cry, but its very echo, thebegged question you would speak to him about.

The question which the audience wants to put to the poet is this:Why the intrusion of the real? Why Caliban? Caliban speaks of theusual reception given the new devotee of the arts, of the theater. Thearts, incidentally, are represented by what Caliban calls "our nativeMuse." This representation accounts for the use of the personal pro-noun in the description of what the new theater-goer finds:

As he looks in on her, so marvellously at home with all her cozyswarm about her, what accents will not assault the new arrival's ear,the magnificent tropes of tragic defiance and despair, the repartee. . . the pun . . . yet all of them gratefully doing their huge ortiny best to make the party go?

Caliban's description is that of the world of entertainment, of pureplay—hence, the party metaphor. Of course, Caliban's speech is ironi-cal, since he—reality, the ugly—is always likely to break up the party.

Caliban goes on to echo the audience's accusation of Shakespeare.How could Shakespeare dare to introduce the real; how could any poetbring himself to commit the terrible act of introducing the prob-lematic, the ugly—Caliban?

39 Ibid.

26

How could you, you . . . possibly the closest of her trusted innercircle, how could you be guilty of the incredible unpardonabletreachery of bringing along the one creature . . . whom she cannotand will not under any circumstances stand . .. the unique case thather attendant spirits have absolute instructions never, neither at thefront door nor at the back, to admit?

At Him and at Him only does she draw the line, . . .

Caliban continues to echo the audience's hurt feelings; he says thathe knows he is always likely to insult someone, to break something:

. . . she foresaw what He could do to the arrangements, breaking,by a refusal to keep in step, the excellent order of the dancingring . . . knocking over the loaded appetising tray . . . upsettingher guests . . . spoiling their fun . . . before the gross climax ofHis making, horror unspeakable, a pass at her virgin self.

Caliban, the real, is always bound to spoil the party, bound to disturbthe excellent order of entertainment. The audience is offended, notonly at the loss of its entertainment, but also at the potential loss ofits magic:

We most emphatically do not ask that she should speak to us, ortry to understand us; on the contrary our one desire has always been. . . that in her house . . . the same neutral space accommodates theconspirator and his victim; the generals of both armies . . . cathedraland smugglers' cave . . . the moral law should continue to operateso exactly that the timid should not only deserve but actually winthe fair, and it is the socially and physically unemphatic David wholays low the gorilla-chested Goliath with one well-aimed custard

pie, . . .

So, Caliban says, the audience is justly angry. The audience cries thatno artist has the right to introduce a party-wrecker like Caliban; noartist should put the real in where he doesn't belong. The audiencewants to be enchanted; they want to believe that all Davids do scuttleall Goliaths.

Caliban continues to echo the audience's objections; he says thatthe audience knows all about reality; they come to the theater to beentertained and perhaps enchanted, if only for a few hours. Play-goerscome to forget their true condition, to get away from the reality oflife, rather than to be shown their own selves, to be actually reflectedin the mirror:

So, too, with Time who, in our auditorium, is not her dear oldbuffer so anxious to please everybody, but a prim magistrate whose

27

court never adjourns, and from whose decisions, as he laconicallysentences one to loss of hair and talent, another to seven days'chastity, and a third to boredom for life, there is no appeal.

Caliban, echoing the query of the audience, observes that because inthe real world the privileges and freedoms of the magical entertainingworld do not exist, the audience has appeared to view the spectacle.For, the audience complains, the intrusion of reality in a place whereit is most unwanted leads to the audience's questioning of the artist's

basis for reputation:

. . . shouldn't you too, dear master, reflect . . . that we might verywell not have been attending a production of yours this evening,had not some other . . . brighter talent married a barmaid orturned religious and shy or gone down in a liner with all his manu-scripts, the loss recorded only in the corner of some country news-paper below A Poultry Lover's Jottings?

The intrusion of the real sets the audience to thinking. After re-calling Shakespeare's definition of his art form as a "mirror held upto nature," Caliban speculates on what the audience of the art mayconsider the meaning of the definition:

• . . for isn't the essential artistic strangeness to which your citationof the sinisterly biassed image would point just this: that on the farside of the mirror [artist's side] the general will to compose, to form

at all costs a felicitous pattern becomes the necessary cause of any

particular effort to live or act or love or triumph or vary, instead ofbeing as, in so far as it emerges at all, it is on this side, [the audi-

ence's side] their accidental effect?

The question is that of whether the artist really intended to advisehis audience on how to live when the artist himself was merely tryingto arrive at some sort of understanding of life. In other words, theartist himself brings on the audience's wish for advice, for magic, forenchantment; the artistic will to collect and compose is the causefor the public wish for composition, rather than an accidental wishfor composition that the artist did not intend. Although Caliban'sspeculation may be rather difficult, the reader would do well to remem-ber that Caliban is still echoing the audience's objection at this time,and it becomes more and more obvious that Caliban is happily lam-pooning those objections. What Caliban is saying is this: it is theartist's fault that people want to see art as magic, that they take thecomposition at face value, his will to compose as advice on how to

28

live. What, then, is the idea in allowing an ugly reminder of the realworld to invade the hopefully real magic world? What, still, is Calibandoing here?

The audience's objection is reduced to this: the audience hasbeen sold short by the artist. Not content with fouling the magicwith reality, the artist has even warped the audience's pat idea ofreality by turning entertainment loose in Caliban's world. Caliban'sspeech indicates that the audience is thoroughly confused and dis-mayed. They had come to be enchanted, to gain a new magic, andthey have come face to face with reality—with Caliban. The audiencehad hoped for some sort of order, any sort of order, and they are givennothing but disorder. The truth is that the audience has not metentertainment, not magic, but art—and they do not want it; they donot want to be disenchanted. The audience can deal with Ariel;they can understand that he gives them a world of play. The audiencecan even live with Caliban; he is what they left outside the theater.But the combination of Caliban and Ariel—of entertainment and re-ality—has utterly flabbergasted the audience. They are dismayed tosee their own true condition—art.

As we shall see, Caliban attempts to answer the questions of theaudience, questions which he has so faithfully and puckishly beenechoing. Before giving the answers, however, he addresses himself tothe young artists who may be in the audience. This second address ismade to neophyte poets:

So, strange young man, . . . Somewhere, in the middle of a saltmarsh or at the bottom of a kitchen garden or on the top of a bus,you heard imprisoned Arid l call for help, . . .

Now Caliban begins spoofing the would-be poet. Caliban tells usearlier that he speaks to the "gay apprentice of the magical art" be-cause Shakespeare has instructed him to do so. The use of the term"magical art" may refer to Prospero's magic in The Tempest, or it mayhave to do with Auden's concept of what may constitute magic orthe magic posture in literature. Since the whole of The Sea and theMirror has been building towards the idea of Prospero's magic-artbecoming the magic posture in literature, the term "magical art"probably has to do with the magician's efforts in Auden's play.

Caliban's speech concerns itself with magic. Caliban notes thatthe young man will soon become familiar with the "relationshipbetween magician [artist] and familiar [Ariel], whose duty it is to sus-tain your infinite conceptual appetite with vivid concrete experiences."

29

But the young artist may eventually grow bored with his relationshipwith Ariel, with what he had always seen as his art form. The relation-ship may even pejorate to the degree that the young man will tellAriel to go away somewhere; the young artist may decide that he cando very well without an affair in which "sour silences appear." Thereis little doubt at this point that Caliban is Auden speaking of theartist's relation to his artistic effort. Ariel will not leave; he evenrefuses to obey the young artist's orders:

Striding up to Him in fury, you glare into His unblinking eyes andstop dead, transfixed with horror at seeing reflected there in themirror not what you had always expected to see . . . but a gibber-ing fist-clenched creature with which you are all too unfamiliar, . . .at last you have come face to face with me, . . .

The reader should notice that the capitalized "H" of "Him" hasbeen shifted from the reference to Caliban to the reference to Ariel.Again, this follows, for Ariel and Caliban are unified in art, and thatis what the young artist has encountered. He has come face to facewith reality.

The next several pages of Caliban's speech are given over to ametaphorical accusation of the young man who has always entertainedor attempted to learn magic (magic?) and who has shoved Calibaninto a corner by himself. This echoes Prospero, in Auden's play,who has lamented his "impervious disgrace." Caliban concludes hisremarks to the young artist by reminding him that from now onthey shall both have to put up with one another; both are consignedto reality:

Can you wonder then, when, as was bound to happen sooner orlater, your charms, because they no longer amuse you, have crackedand your spirits . . . have ceased to obey . . . and you are left alonewith me . . . if I resent hearing you speak of your neglect of meas your 'exile,' . . .

Caliban's speech is directed to the young artist, but the symbolicrepresentation of Caliban as the real—the disenchantment of true art—and the representation of the magician as one who is given to a magicposture is further enhanced herein.

Following his address to the young artist, Caliban speaks directlyto the audience; that is, he is no longer echoing the complaints ofthe audience; he is answering them. Caliban begins by informingthe audience straightway that he knows what it is howling for. It

30

demands the magical world of childhood; the audience wants a newmagic. The reason is that the audience is not composed of children;the people in the audience know Caliban and they know Aria. Theywant someone to give them a way out of their true condition, somekind of magic. Caliban informs them:

All your clamour signifies is this: that your first big crisis, the break-ing of the childish spell in which, so long as it enclosed you, therewas, for you, no mirror, no magic, for everything that happened wasa miracle [specifically, the world of childhood] . . .

Caliban says that the people are now adults; they have been disen-chanted for the first time—they have suffered a loss of innocence:

. . . you have now all come together in the larger colder emptierroom on this side of the mirror which does force your eyes to recog-nise and reckon with the two of us [Ariel and Caliban], your earsto detect the irreconcilable difference between my reiterated affirma-don of what your furnished circumstances categorically are [thedisenchantment of life itself, the true condition], and His successivepropositions as to everything else which they conditionally mightbe [the happy world of pure play and entertainment in which thescene is always changing]. You have, as I say, taken your first step.

After Caliban has devoted some time to assuring the audience oftheir true disenchantment, and after he has given several metaphoricalexamples of the real human condition, he says that the audience willask for a new enchantment, for a magic of some kind. This requestmay take one of two courses, and the audience may be split. One partof the audience, the unsuccessful adults, may turn to Caliban andpetition him to carry them to their world as they remember it. Thisportion of the audience cries for ". . . the ultimate liberal condition"where there are no rules, no authority, no danger. This portion ofthe audience calls for a prelapsarian Eden, which they see as the lostland of their childhood. Caliban will be forced to obey their "fatalcommands" and to transport them to the real ultimate liberal condi-tion. That condition in a land of no rules is a land of deserts andfiery volcanoes, of explosions and erupting geysers—all of which alwaysgo off without warning because there is no method, no pattern tothe inferno. The other portion of the audience is composed of suc-cessful adults who are bored with their success. They cry for Aridlto release them from their boredom, to carry them away to a worldof play. And, Caliban continues, Ariel will obey and transport the

31

audience away to a place where an adventure story is always takingplace, where "little girls get their arms twisted," and all sorts ofwould-be real things occur, but no one ever really gets hurt or lost.The fascination of this land of make-believe eventually palls, for thepeople are still themselves and no amount of entertainment will actu-ally convince them that they are not. All they will have left amountsto what they had before, the "grey horizon of the bleaker vision," thebleaker reality of the real they left behind them.

To recapitulate, the first portion of the audience sues for deliver-ance, and their suit is addressed to Caliban:

. Carry me back, Master, to the cathedral town where thecanons run through the water meadows with butterfly nets and theold women keep sweet-shops . . . . Pick me up, Uncle, let littleJohnny ride away on your massive shoulders . . . where the steamrollers are as friendly as the farm dogs . . . . 0 take us home withyou, strong and swelling One, home to your promiscuous pastureswhere the minotaur of authority is just a roly-poly ruminant andnothing is at stake, . .

Caliban will obey; he will deliver them to the real ultimate liberalcondition, which is not at all as they imagined it. The liberal condi-tion is not the dear place they imagined,

• . . or other specific Eden which your memory necessarily butfalsely conceives of as the ultimately liberal condition.. . . Here youare. This is it. Directly overhead a full moon casts a circle ofdazzling light . . . exactly circumscribing its desolation in whichevery object is extraordinarily still and sharp. Cones of extinct vol-canoes rise up abruptly from the lava plateau . . . . Here and therea geyser erupts without warning, . . . all events are tautologicalrepetitions and no decision will ever alter the secular stagnation. . . . Your tears splash down upon clinkers . . . mythology is bosh. . . your existence is indeed free at last to choose its own meaning,that is, to plunge headlong into despair . . . all fact . . . yourpure alas.

So this is the condition in which the audience finds itself when it begsto rely only on itself. This is the ultimate liberal condition, a vastwasteland in which there are no rules, ". . . where Liberty standswith her hands behind her back not caring, . . ." where the ultimateworth of the individual is his "pure alas."

On the other hand, there are those who wish to transcend ". . . anycondition, for direct unentailed power without any . . . obligation

32

to inherit or transmit. . . ." This portion of the audience has hadsuccess, Caliban says:

`. • . we have had what once we would have called success. . . . Iintroduced statistical methods into the Liberal Arts. I revived thecountry dances and installed electric stoves in the mountain cot-tages. . . . I gave the caesura its freedom. . .

The irony is obvious. This portion of the audience wants a make-believe world away from this "ship of fools." So, Ariel is obliged todeliver; the entertainment appears on schedule:

All the phenomena of an empirically ordinary world are given.. . . old men catch dreadful coughs, little girls get their arms twisted,flames run whooping through woods, . . .

All the voluntary movements are possible—crawling throughsewers, sauntering past shopfronts, tiptoeing through quicksandsand mined areas . . .

This is the exciting, scintillating world of forever entertainment—butthere is always the sneaking suspicion that it really doesn't count;something is always lacking. The world of entertainment, even if itmay become a magic—and it may—is not enough. The real world stillwaits. The entertainment or magic must fail. What, says Caliban,can the audience do when it meets

. . . the black stone on which the bones are cracked, for only therein its cry of agony can your existence find at last an unequivocalmeaning and your refusal to be yourself become a serious despair,the love nothing, the fear all?

So, Caliban continues, the artist can only show the human condi-tion, can only show people what they are and by that exposition,perhaps they can decide that they should become something else.But the danger of art becoming magic is omnipresent. The peoplemay consider their true condition not a gap between what theyshould be and what they are but a bridge over the gap. The audience,in other words, may still use art as magic, and this is the problem ofthe artist:

. . • for the more truthfully he paints the condition, the less clearlycan he indicate the truth from which it is estranged . . . and,ultimately, what other aim and justification has he, what else exactlyis the artistic gift which he is forbidden to hide, if not to make youunforgettably conscious of the ungarnished offended gap betweenwhat you so questionably are and what you are commanded without

33

any question to become, of the unqualified No that opposes yourevery step in any direction? . . . [But because of the faithful paintingof the true condition] the more he must strengthen your delusionthat an awareness of the gap is in itself a bridge, your interest inyour imprisonment a release, so that, far from your being led byhim to contrition and surrender, the regarding of your defects inhis mirror, your dialogue, using his words, with yourself about your-self, becomes the one activity which never, like devouring or col-lecting or spending, lets you down, . . .

So it is that the audience may want to view artistic effort as some-thing, anything, to release them from their true condition; yet, theartistic effort is meant to portray that very condition. And, Calibancontinues, the identification of the audience with the art as a modeof living, a magic, is wrong, for the artist is not to be seen as amagician, or one who through his aesthetic performance advises uson how to live. The true artist is one who mirrors all things. Allwe have left, says Caliban, is the knowledge that we are separatedfrom the good place, from the Eden for which we still long, fromthe Just City not yet built. Art will not, in spite of any attempt touse it as a vehicle, carry us to that Eden, to that Just City. It is whenwe understand this that

. . . we are blessed by that Wholly Other Life from which we areseparated by an essential emphatic gulf of which our contrived fis-sures of mirror and proscenium arch—we understand them at last—are feebly figurative signs, so that all our meanings are reversed andit is precisely in its negative image of Judgment that we can posi-tively envisage Mercy; it is just here, among the ruins and the bones,that we may rejoice in the perfected Work which is not ours. Itsgreat coherences stand out through our secular blur in all theiroverwhelmingly righteous obligation; its voice speaks through ourmuffling banks of artificial flowers and unflinchingly delivers itsauthentic molar pardon; its spaces greet us with all their grand oldprospect of wonder and width; the working charm is the full bloomof the unbothered state; the sounded note is the restored relation.

In other words, art can never be the reality which it occasionallymagically may attempt to be, nor can it be a gateway to the Eden forwhich we always long. The mirror of art itself can only be a feebly"figurative sign" of that creation and life around us; the purpose ofart is only to mirror things as they are, the human condition as it is.Art is not meant to deliver us to the better life, but to show us lifeper se so that, aware of the "emphatic gulf," we may always seek the

34

better life, the Eden, the state of grace. Art is not magic, nor is thetrue artist a magician.

As was earlier observed, the speech of Ariel to Caliban at the closeof the play represents the artistic unification of entertainment andreality which results in art. The echo by the prompter, the humanbeing outside the play, signifies the mirror's reflection of the humancondition. The reflection of the human condition, the praising ofall things for being, constitutes the aesthetic theory advanced byAuden throughout the entirety of The Sea and the Mirror. Thereflection of the real human condition is the function of art. Sym-bolically, then, the unification of entertainment and reality appearsin Ariel's closing speech to Caliban, echo by the prompter:

Weep no more but pity me,Fleet persistent shadow castBy your lameness, caught at last,Helplessly in love with you,Elegance, art, fascinationFascinated byDrab mortality;Spare me a humiliation,To your faults be true:I can sing as you reply

35

.1

Designed and prepared by the Publications Office, Ball State University