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UNWRITING THE
GOOD FIGHT:
W. H. AUDEN’S
‘SPAIN 1937’
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If one considers the fact that war has been offering literature one of its most fertile
subjects, and that it has accompanied the history of poetry from the heyday of the
epic, it is remarkable that few literary texts, and few poems, seriously engage with
the difficulties of writing about war. Auden’s ‘Spain 1937’ is one of the exceptions.
It is exceptional not only in showing an awareness of the problems of its subject, but
also because it translates this awareness into its own structures—to the extent of
endangering its form and meaning. It is no coincidence that the poem was rewritten
and ultimately withdrawn from the Auden canon. The present essay will attempt
to show why these revisions represent more than mere biographical and ideological
turns in theœuvreof one of the most challenging poets writing in English in the
twentieth century. ‘Spain 1937’—this is the gist of what is to follow—represents
an attempt to write and unwrite war at the same time, and the price that has to be
paid for the endeavour.
War poems generally fall into two categories. They either try to depict the
perceived reality of war, the experience of boredom, fatigue, anxiety, fear, suffering,
but also discipline, comradeship, bravery, heroism, and relief. Or they assess war
retrospectively (or, more rarely, prospectively) as a historical event, inevitable or
avoidable development, tragedy, or triumph. The poets of the First World War,