From September 1, 1939 by W. H. Auden
Wystan
Hugh Auden
I sit on
one of the dives
On
Fifty-second Street
Uncertain
and afraid
As the
clever hopes expire.
Of a low
dishonest decade:
Waves of
anger and fear
Circulate
over the bright
And
darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing
our private lives;
The
unmentionable odour of death
Offends
the September night.
Summary: "September
1, 1939" is a poem by W. H. Auden written on the occasion of the outbreak
of World War II. The day that Adolf Hitler invaded
Poland. W. H. Auden uses the occasion to write a farewell to the 1930’s and to
meditate on the social and psychological causes of war.
The poem is written in the first person, with the poet addressing
the reader directly. Auden claims to be writing the poem in a bar in midtown
Manhattan. While the setting may seem, at first, inappropriate for a serious
subject, it is typical of Auden, as well as of many other modern poets, to take
a detached point of view—even when their subjects are profoundly important to
them. The mood or tone of the entire poem is established in the first stanza.
The poet reports directly his feelings of uncertainty and fear for the future,
as well as his distrust of the socialist schemes of the 1930’s that failed to
prevent the recurrence of war.
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