rainer emig
poem, and all the later controversial statements of the poem are attributed to it. It
isat first cleverly introduced as a quasi-Romantic entity, when its answer comes
‘from the heart’, before the enjambment pluralizes it into eyes and lungs, and then
depersonalizes it into ‘the shops and squares of the city’. It is a collective speaker,
not an impersonal one. It is a speaker that is already enmeshed in civilization,civis
representing the citizen, not the individual, the family, the tribe, and not the nation
either (this supranational view will strongly colour Auden’s post-Second World
War poetry). It is therefore also not an organic life force, and is cultural, rather than
‘natural’.
It is not merely its identity and speaking position that are surprising, but also its
reply. It denies any request to act as an alleviating or redemptive force. Indeed, it says
‘no’ to the demands of individuals and the collective—for the sheer reason that it
cannot act as a distant saviour and authority for them, because itisthem. Relegation
of responsibility to an elevated and potentially transcendental force is denied by the
eloquent ‘life’ of the poem, since all it can do is accept whatever decision individuals
forming a collective as citizens make. It states that it is not the Prime Mover of the
so-called Cosmological Argument, Thomas Aquinas’s interpretation of Aristotle,
which has recently been resurrected by American campaigners against evolution
and for a supposed ‘intelligent design’. Instead of false transcendental grandeur,
this ‘life’ presents itself in decidedly low-key manifestations, as ‘Yes-man, the bar
companion, the easily duped’. Ultimately it represents whatever individual and
collectivedo,notwhattheyare, nor what they believe in.
Auden opens a radical debate here. He outlines a concept of ethics that defines
itself strictly through acts and decisions, and beyond any thinking in identities, be
they personal, collective (such as political party, class, or nation), or transcendental.
All these identities inform and influence actions and decisions, as can be seen by
the range of examples that encompass naive moral vow, the telling of funny stories,
business attitudes, and even marriage, but then move on to more radical ideas,
such as the Augustinian idea of a Just City and full circle back to the poet figure of
the seventh stanza, suicide pact and Romantic death-wish. All of these are equally
acceptable to life, since it does not judge, but merely performs what individuals
and collective decide. Auden—and this is typical of all his poetry—does not offer
a metaphysical way out of the quandary of decision-making. Neither does he show
a political escape route.
When the voice of ‘life’ therefore neatly brackets off its sermon—which it started
with a sequence of ‘no’ and ‘not’—with a surprising ‘yes’, and adds the poem’s
most pathos-laden statement, ‘I am Spain’, the reader cannot help but shudder in
confusion. A poem that, lest we forget, bears ‘Spain 1937’ as its title, and is an
ostensible response to the Spanish Civil War, mentions Spain for the first time
in its fourteenth stanza out of twenty-three. And when it mentions it, its most
pronounced speaker (a rhetorically much stronger one than poet, investigator, or
nations) now claims to represent Spain.