rainer emig
partly at a propagandistic statement on a topical conflict, yet it contrasts markedly
withthe common generalizations in titles of Auden’s early poems (‘A Bride in
the 30s’ would already be a quite specific one). It also stands in opposition to the
poem’s introduction, which is neither about Spain nor about the 1930s, but rather
irritatingly covers nothing less than the history of civilization. The initial statement
is as brusque as it is tautological and hyperbolical at the same time: ‘Yesterday all
the past’ is as plausible as it is a double exaggeration.^5 The comprehensiveness of the
claim declares nothing less than the end of history—or at least its relegation to the
storehouse of cultural memory. This would divorce the present from its influence
and make it in fact ahistorical.
That this is by no means the case is already indicated by its accompanying
statement, which, rather obscurely, alludes to the language of size. Constructions of
thetype‘thexofy’ are common in Auden’s early poems, and are often used for sheer
preciousness and with vague connotations (‘the varied action of the blood’ from
the 1929 poem ‘Watch any day his nonchalant pauses’ is such an example^6 ). Yet
here this language of size is identified as ‘Spreading’, and therefore not containable,
as the preceding statement makes the past appear. Further emphasis is placed on
‘Spreading’ by making it one of only two verbs in the initial six stanzas, which are
identified as related by their opening words ‘Yesterday’ (it opens the first line of
five of them, forms the closing line of three, and appears twice in all six). The only
other verb in these six four-line stanzas (which are, like all twenty-three stanzas
of the poem, organized as two five-stress lines interspersed with a three-stress line
followed by another five-stress one) is ‘eyeing’. It too is a participle, thus stressing
duration and continuation rather than momentary action. Its significance will be
discussed below.
Language spreads, while it simultaneously demarcates—size as much as territory.
TheChinatowhichthelanguageofsizespreadsis,ofcourse,ananachronismanddid
not exist at the time of counting-frame and cromlech (cromlechs being prehistoric
standing stones). Although the Chinese detour also has topical significance (the
Sino–Japanese war was another prelude to the Second World War and one that
Auden, together with Isherwood, would soon inspect at close range for their joint
projectJourney to a Waronly one year later, in 1938), the gap between specific
moment and general history remains. That history is indeed in the sights of the poem
from the start, however, is alreadyimplied in its specific title, which—through its
tellingly unpoetic form—can also be read as an entry in a history book, another
structure through which continuity is turned into an inventory.
History in Auden is never an easy subject, and it does not take until the later
poems ‘Homage to Clio’, ‘Makers of History’, and ‘The History of Truth’ for the
(^5) W. H. Auden, ‘Spain1937’, inThe English Auden: Poems, Essays, and Dramatic Writings 1927–1939,
ed. Edward Mendelson (London: Faber, 1977), 210–12.
(^6) Auden, ‘Watch any day his nonchalant pauses’, ibid. 31.