Feb 21st: My brother’s Tom’s birthday, who shares it with WH Auden.
Today is the 100th anniversary of Auden’s birth, and I watch an unusually old-fashioned South Bank Show from the weekend about the dead poet in question. Various solemn talking heads all queue up to sing his praises, which is fair enough, including Andrew Motion, the Laureate who seems happy to come across as more of a poetry groupie than a poet in his own right. Just like he did at the Betjeman plaque ceremony, he can’t resist mentioning that he met Auden in person. “It was like meeting God.” I can’t help thinking that Mr Motion sees himself as a carrier of the classic British poet torch if only because his surname ends in an ‘n’ sound.
Lark-in. Aud-en. Betjem-en. Mo-tion.
More endearing, as ever, is Alan Bennett. He appears on this TV celebration to confess that he actually prefers other poets and doesn’t always get what Auden is on about: (paraphrasing a little)
Alan Bennett: The fact you don’t quite know what the poems always mean adds to the fascination.
Melvyn Bragg: Why is that, do you think?
AB: Well… (he flinches with slight irritation, as if his answer was enough)… it’s the same principle as why the Book Of Common Prayer is a magical book, because you don’t always understand what the prayers mean.
MB: So where is Auden on this… pecking list of favourites?
AB: Well… I’m lazy, and you can’t be lazy and just pick it up as you can with Larkin. Larkin has you by the hand throughout the poem. With Auden you have to concentrate on it to find out what it means, at least with the longer poems. So I don’t get as much pleasure out of Auden as I do out of Betjeman or Larkin. But I think he’s probably got more clout and not merely because you don’t always understand him.
(satisfied pause)
MB: Why, then?
AB: Oh Melvyn! (laughs, shrinks visibly into chair) Oh…. Um… Oh… I don’t know! Poems and discussions like The Sea And The Mirror… I’ve no idea what they’re about. Commentators have said there’s wonderful things in them, but… they need far more work than I’m prepared to put in…!
MB: I’m very relieved to hear you say that.
(both laugh)
That said, Mr Bennett goes on to impressively recite an Auden poem from memory: his memorial to Yeats.
The programme also features some fascinating interview footage of Auden himself, constantly interrupting the presenters’ questions mid-sentence, like a big rude old prune. He’s happily puffing away on a fag, a vintage TV detail that’s instantly shocking these days. It’s an old clip, we can tell, not because we know the interviewee is dead, but because we can see he is smoking. I think that famous 90s Dennis Potter interview where he’s terminally ill – swigging from a flask of morphine AND smoking – must be one of the last instances.
Auden’s disowning of one of his biggest hit poems, ‘1st September 1939’, makes him seem like the George Lucas of poetry. It’s the one about war with that incredibly simple yet powerful line, much quoted in times of mass grief or fear, such as 9/11:
we must love one another
or die.
Yet Auden himself later found the poem too simple, and jejune, and actually requested it to be omitted from the Collected Works published in his lifetime. “It doesn’t even make sense!” he splutters during one interview. “We must love one another and die ANYWAY, for a start.”
Ridiculous behaviour. If you’re lucky enough to create something that becomes loved by the public, it no longer belongs to you. You can collect the royalties, sure, but you no longer have the right to mess with it, like Mr Lucas messed with the Star Wars films. You may create a world, but fans live in it. It belongs to them now, not you. Box sets of rock CDs must be curated and overseen by fans, never by the original artists. ‘Director’s Cuts’ of perfectly successful movies must be viewed with suspicion. People liked it: so you mustn’t mess with the bits they liked.
we must love one another
or die.
Another favourite line (from Auden’s memorial for Freud) which I find equally inspiring:
able to approach the future as a friend
without a wardrobe of excuses
