I ditched math, drank eggnog and cocoa, and listen to Christmas music. Problem, Thanksgiving?
The essay "The Necessity to Speak" (Which doesn't seem to exist online) has some quite vivid messages and causes. The essay mainly speaks out against abuse.
It's two morals are:
-Without speech, no one can be protected.
-People do not want to face the problems that surround them.
Twice, Hamill writes, "we can't bear very much reality." (465)
W.H. Auden, who I found out today was a homosexual, wrote a famous poem called "September 1, 1939." Although most people simply associate this day with sometime during WWII, it was actually the day Hitler invaded Poland and WWII began. Thus, this poem is probably about WWII and a protest to the war.
I sit in 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.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
First Stanza:
I personally find this the hardest stanza to interpret. A dive (from the first line) has been referenced by a teacher and a journalist as being a sort of bar or lounge. Since we know that Auden was in New York at this time, people assume that the speaker of the poem was someone watching the world fall apart (Hitler's takeover) from a bar in New York (52nd street). He goes on to discuss how hope fades away and people watch in, basically, horror as everything goes to complete shit. The ending of the stanza gets a little more poetic and the reader can understand that people are keeping to themselves, not offering much to one another (even through this) and keeping silent (*cough Hamill cough*).
Line 1: "I sit in one of the dives"
Line 9: "Obsessing our private lives"
Every rhyming line seems to meet up and connect to be its own story. Thus, the sum of the stanza is that. We all sit in a bar, thinking about ourselves.
Just found this. Kind of weird. (Also, not related).
Stanza II:
This stanza begins with a clear description of Hitler as he compares him to Luther (Martin Luther, a priest who wrote about how horrible Jewish people are). The culture driven mad is the German culture. Linz is an Austrian port (here) where Hitler was born and where he spent his childhood. Another line down and there is reference to a psychopathic god, which is what the speaker is calling Hitler. The end of the stanza is bit different. The speaker begins to reference a universal truth by saying that "I and the public know". The lines twenty-one and twenty-two suggest the concept of Karma, or the phrase "What goes around, comes around." Or, a cycle. Like Hamill writes on how the abused becomes the abuser: "The battered child will grow into the child batterer." (466) and "The child has learned that might makes right, that parents sometimes lie, and there are acceptable limits of violence." (468).
Line 20: "What all school children learn,"
Line 22: "Do evil in return"
False preaching will lead to evil. Don't brainwash. (Like Hitler did).
Stanza III:
Thucydides was a famous Greek historian who wrote about the Peloponnesian War. However, the speaker points out that things are all the same: dictators do the same things and politicians lie. The speaker also talks about how war causes happiness to leave, yet it is inescapable.
Line 31: "The habit-forming pain,"
Line 33: "We must suffer them all again"
War does not stop; people will keep fighting each other.
Stanza IV:
The beginning of this stanza refers to a Biblical tale about the Tower of Babel. Basically the story says that people tried to build a building to Heaven and God changed their languages so that they couldn't make plans. Note: Collective Man (a group) is formed into a proper noun.
Line 36: "Their full height to proclaim"
Line 38: "Each language pours its vain"
Every group/culture is trying to speak, pronounce, and be heard.
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