144 Poetry for Students
The Ascent of F6,written with Auden’s long-
time collaborator Christopher Isherwood, was a
critical success when it was first presented by the
Group Theatre in 1937, but the play’s reputation
has suffered over the years. The plot focuses on the
quest to climb a mountain by a group of characters
who all have personal reasons for the expedition.
Michael J. Sidnell, in his article on Auden for the
Dictionary of Literary Biography,argues that the
play’s main theme reveals “the authors’ disen-
chantment with group worlds.” Sidnell continues,
“On the one hand it presents, in flat caricature, a
group of English establishment cronies mixing
sport and politics in a strong solution of cant; on
the other, a group of high-minded mountaineers
who, under stress, are revealed as ordinarily weak
men.” “Stop all the clocks” appears in the play as
a song sung by two characters following the strange
death of James Ransom, one of the leaders of the
climb. The song is sung in an odd scene that Joseph
Warren Beach, in his book The Making of the Au-
den Canon,called “a strange mixture of allegory
and burlesque, at the same time that the dialogue
continues to pursue a serious and somewhat mys-
tifying psychological theme—musical comedy
style.” The last three stanzas reflect this odd mix-
ture as they refer to the other members of the climb-
ing party and the funeral of Ransom.
Beach argues that these stanzas are “inferior in
quality and too monotonously lugubrious in tone.”
Their tone, however, also becomes frivolous and
absurd, especially in the last stanza with its atten-
tion on racing the coffin to the gravesite. The hy-
perbole (an overstatement characterized by exag-
gerated language) in the fourth stanza turns the
funeral ceremony into a burlesque. The “weeping”crowds listen to “a few words sad and kind” while
another character employs “a powerful micro-
scope” as he “searches their faces for a sign of
hope.” The comic tone at the end of the poem turns
the first two stanzas into an exaggerated sentiment
on the death of a loved one. The entire poem, then,
becomes a parody of the traditional blues lyric.
After Auden revised the poem, it was set to
music by Benjamin Britten and sung by soprano
Hedli Anderson for the stage. John Fuller, in W.H.
Auden: A Commentarynoted, “The ironic effect of
the hyperbole is much changed when the song is
sung by a single singer lamenting the death of her
lover.” The new version becomes in Wright’s
words an “elegant polished expression of longing.”
Beach insists that the fragments of the old and re-
vised version “are pieced together without any
striking evidence of their separate origin. They
make together a lively composition in a vein ap-
pealing to world-weary modern readers as well as
sophisticated nightclub audiences.”
In the new version, the first two stanzas strike
a somber note as the speaker prepares for the fu-
neral of a loved one. The first few lines introduce
the poem’s main theme: when death ends a rela-
tionship that affords life a sense of meaning and
completeness, people often engage in a desperate
struggle to restore order in the midst of the ensu-
ing chaos. In an effort to reestablish the order pro-
vided by the relationship with the loved one, the
speaker gives commands as to what must be done
for the ceremony. John G. Blair, in The Poetic Art
of W. H. Audennoted, “Auden frequently chooses
the imperative to attract attention.” Blair states that
this technique brings the poem “closer to the dra-
matic immediacy of dialogue, for the speaking
voice is usually directed not to the reader but to an
audience or another character whose presence is
implied by the framing of the poem.” In these first
lines the speaker directs others to alter the land-
scape so it will become symbolic of his/her emo-
tional state. Clocks, telephones, dogs, and pianos
must not make a sound in honor of the one who
has died. Clocks must stop since time, in essence,
has stopped for the speaker after the loss of love.
Telephones must be cut off since no further com-
munication is desired. Dogs, who often bark dur-
ing play, must be quieted since the speaker does
not feel playful. Not even the music from a piano
can be appreciated. The only sound the speaker
wants to hear is the somber and appropriate beat of
a “muffled” drum as the funeral procession begins.
Only after these careful preparations have been
completed can the coffin be brought out and theFuneral BluesAuden’s revision of
“Funeral Blues” removes
the burlesque elements of
the early version in its clear
and honest presentation of
an individual’s desperate
attempt to cope with a
devastating loss.”