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In Memory of W.B. Yeats
Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1940
34 people want to read
About the author
W.H. Auden
616 books1,051 followersPoems, published in such collections as
Look, Stranger!
(1936) and
The Shield of Achilles
(1955), established importance of British-American writer and critic Wystan Hugh Auden in 20th-century literature.
In and near Birmingham, he developed in a professional middle-class family. He attended English independent schools and studied at Christ church, Oxford. From 1927, Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship despite briefer but more intense relations with other men. Auden passed a few months in Berlin in 1928 and 1929.
He then spent five years from 1930 to 1935, teaching in English schools and then traveled to Iceland and China for books about his journeys. People noted stylistic and technical achievement, engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and variety in tone, form and content. He came to wide attention at the age of 23 years in 1930 with his first book, Poems ; The Orators followed in 1932.
Three plays in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood in 1935 to 1938 built his reputation in a left-wing politics.
People best know this Anglo for love such as "Funeral Blues," for political and social themes, such as "September 1, 1939," for culture and psychology, such as The Age of Anxiety , and for religion, such as For the Time Being and "Horae Canonicae." In 1939, partly to escape a liberal reputation, Auden moved to the United States. Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship to 1939. In 1939, Auden fell in lust with Chester Kallman and regarded their relation as a marriage.
From 1941, Auden taught in universities. This relationship ended in 1941, when Chester Kallman refused to accept the faithful relation that Auden demanded, but the two maintained their friendship.
Auden taught in universities through 1945. His work, including the long For the Time Being and The Sea and the Mirror , in the 1940s focused on religious themes. He attained citizenship in 1946.
The title of his long The Age of Anxiety , a popular phrase, described the modern era; it won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. From 1947, he wintered in New York and summered in Ischia. From 1947, Auden and Chester Kallman lived in the same house or apartment in a non-sexual relation and often collaborated on opera libretti, such as The Rake's Progress for music of Igor Stravinsky until death of Auden.
Occasional visiting professorships followed in the 1950s. From 1956, he served as professor at Oxford. He wintered in New York and summered in Ischia through 1957. From 1958, he wintered usually in New York and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria.
He served as professor at Oxford to 1961; his popular lectures with students and faculty served as the basis of his prose The Dyer's Hand in 1962.
Auden, a prolific prose essayist, reviewed political, psychological and religious subjects, and worked at various times on documentary films, plays, and other forms of performance. Throughout his controversial and influential career, views on his work ranged from sharply dismissive, treating him as a lesser follower of William Butler Yeats and T.S. Eliot, to strongly affirmative, as claim of Joseph Brodsky of his "greatest mind of the twentieth century."
He wintered in Oxford in 1972/1973 and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria, until the end of his life.
After his death, films, broadcasts, and popular media enabled people to know and ton note much more widely "Funeral Blues," "Musée des Beaux Arts," "Refugee Blues," "The Unknown Citizen," and "September 1, 1939," t
In and near Birmingham, he developed in a professional middle-class family. He attended English independent schools and studied at Christ church, Oxford. From 1927, Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship despite briefer but more intense relations with other men. Auden passed a few months in Berlin in 1928 and 1929.
He then spent five years from 1930 to 1935, teaching in English schools and then traveled to Iceland and China for books about his journeys. People noted stylistic and technical achievement, engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and variety in tone, form and content. He came to wide attention at the age of 23 years in 1930 with his first book, Poems ; The Orators followed in 1932.
Three plays in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood in 1935 to 1938 built his reputation in a left-wing politics.
People best know this Anglo for love such as "Funeral Blues," for political and social themes, such as "September 1, 1939," for culture and psychology, such as The Age of Anxiety , and for religion, such as For the Time Being and "Horae Canonicae." In 1939, partly to escape a liberal reputation, Auden moved to the United States. Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship to 1939. In 1939, Auden fell in lust with Chester Kallman and regarded their relation as a marriage.
From 1941, Auden taught in universities. This relationship ended in 1941, when Chester Kallman refused to accept the faithful relation that Auden demanded, but the two maintained their friendship.
Auden taught in universities through 1945. His work, including the long For the Time Being and The Sea and the Mirror , in the 1940s focused on religious themes. He attained citizenship in 1946.
The title of his long The Age of Anxiety , a popular phrase, described the modern era; it won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. From 1947, he wintered in New York and summered in Ischia. From 1947, Auden and Chester Kallman lived in the same house or apartment in a non-sexual relation and often collaborated on opera libretti, such as The Rake's Progress for music of Igor Stravinsky until death of Auden.
Occasional visiting professorships followed in the 1950s. From 1956, he served as professor at Oxford. He wintered in New York and summered in Ischia through 1957. From 1958, he wintered usually in New York and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria.
He served as professor at Oxford to 1961; his popular lectures with students and faculty served as the basis of his prose The Dyer's Hand in 1962.
Auden, a prolific prose essayist, reviewed political, psychological and religious subjects, and worked at various times on documentary films, plays, and other forms of performance. Throughout his controversial and influential career, views on his work ranged from sharply dismissive, treating him as a lesser follower of William Butler Yeats and T.S. Eliot, to strongly affirmative, as claim of Joseph Brodsky of his "greatest mind of the twentieth century."
He wintered in Oxford in 1972/1973 and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria, until the end of his life.
After his death, films, broadcasts, and popular media enabled people to know and ton note much more widely "Funeral Blues," "Musée des Beaux Arts," "Refugee Blues," "The Unknown Citizen," and "September 1, 1939," t
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 30, 2018
The poem starts off as a beautiful elegy to W.B. Yeats, and if it had stopped at the first stanza, it would have been perfect; but stanzas two and three dragged it down to simply being decent.
March 18, 2024
The poem as its title indicates is an elegy written to grieve the death of W.B. Yeats, but it is different from the orthodox elegy. Traditionally, in an elegy all nature is represented as mourning the death, here nature is represented as going on its course indifferent and unaffected.
The great poet's death goes unnoticed both by man and nature; human life goes on as usual, and so does nature. Secondly, in the traditional elegy the dead is overestimated and his death is said to be a great loss for mankind at large.
But Auden does not glorify Yeats. He goes to the extent of calling him 'Silly', and further that his poetry could make nothing happen. "Ireland has her madness and her weather still."
Thus Auden reverses the traditional elegiac values and treats them ironically.
Auden initiates his poem by averring that Yeats met his demise on a day when it was bitter cold, brooks were frozen and airports were abandoned. Public statues were blemished by snow, and by evening the mercury in the weatherglass fell lower still, indicating a further fall in temperature.
He asserts it was a "dark cold day"; but we have no means of ascertaining if it was really so cold as claimed by Auden. All nature went on as usual unaffected by his death.
Wolves ran on in the forests as usual and the river flowed on through the countryside. The people mourned his death.
However, only the poet died. even his poetry was unaffected by his death. As the day advanced, Yeats' condition deteriorated and it was obvious that it was his last day of life on the earth. Nurses moved actively this way and that way, and people talked of his illness and imminent death.
It was, "an afternoon of nurses and rumours".
The expression is curt, vigorous and astounding. Then in a metaphysical conceit, Yeats is called an emperor, and the body, his empire. His mind and body revolted against his authority, with the result that dissolution and disintegration set in. First, the outlying parts of his empire, that is, his hands and feet become numb and unresponsive and then this impassiveness spread over the rest of the body. He became unconscious and so "the current of feeling" failed. He was dead.
What is the central idea of this poem then? Simply this:
Time does not care for what the poets said but for the way they said it. Time will pardon Kipling and his views: it will pardon Claudel for being on the wrong side in the Spanish Civil War.
It will pardon Yeats, similarly, for any nonsense he talked. Time 'worships language', and for good language time can forgive the faults of the man, such as cowardice, pride, vanity, conceit, etc. All Europe is in the grip of the terror of war and the blood-thirsty leaders of Europe are threatening each other.
Nations live in isolation in constant dread of each other, and their hearts are entirely dry of fellow-feeling and sympathy.
It is great poetry, or great art alone, that can light up and transmute the human soul, and make the "fountain of love and sympathy gushout of it. The poet's own acceptance of life, and appetite for it, alone can inseminate the human soul, and teach it to accept life and celebrate in this great gift of God.
Thus art can have a transforming and ennobling influence on the human soul.
So, to conclude, Auden does not elevate Yeats as a hero or an uncommon genius, but he stresses the real value and implication of his poetry even in times of disasters.
The great poet's death goes unnoticed both by man and nature; human life goes on as usual, and so does nature. Secondly, in the traditional elegy the dead is overestimated and his death is said to be a great loss for mankind at large.
But Auden does not glorify Yeats. He goes to the extent of calling him 'Silly', and further that his poetry could make nothing happen. "Ireland has her madness and her weather still."
Thus Auden reverses the traditional elegiac values and treats them ironically.
Auden initiates his poem by averring that Yeats met his demise on a day when it was bitter cold, brooks were frozen and airports were abandoned. Public statues were blemished by snow, and by evening the mercury in the weatherglass fell lower still, indicating a further fall in temperature.
He asserts it was a "dark cold day"; but we have no means of ascertaining if it was really so cold as claimed by Auden. All nature went on as usual unaffected by his death.
Wolves ran on in the forests as usual and the river flowed on through the countryside. The people mourned his death.
However, only the poet died. even his poetry was unaffected by his death. As the day advanced, Yeats' condition deteriorated and it was obvious that it was his last day of life on the earth. Nurses moved actively this way and that way, and people talked of his illness and imminent death.
It was, "an afternoon of nurses and rumours".
The expression is curt, vigorous and astounding. Then in a metaphysical conceit, Yeats is called an emperor, and the body, his empire. His mind and body revolted against his authority, with the result that dissolution and disintegration set in. First, the outlying parts of his empire, that is, his hands and feet become numb and unresponsive and then this impassiveness spread over the rest of the body. He became unconscious and so "the current of feeling" failed. He was dead.
What is the central idea of this poem then? Simply this:
Time does not care for what the poets said but for the way they said it. Time will pardon Kipling and his views: it will pardon Claudel for being on the wrong side in the Spanish Civil War.
It will pardon Yeats, similarly, for any nonsense he talked. Time 'worships language', and for good language time can forgive the faults of the man, such as cowardice, pride, vanity, conceit, etc. All Europe is in the grip of the terror of war and the blood-thirsty leaders of Europe are threatening each other.
Nations live in isolation in constant dread of each other, and their hearts are entirely dry of fellow-feeling and sympathy.
It is great poetry, or great art alone, that can light up and transmute the human soul, and make the "fountain of love and sympathy gushout of it. The poet's own acceptance of life, and appetite for it, alone can inseminate the human soul, and teach it to accept life and celebrate in this great gift of God.
Thus art can have a transforming and ennobling influence on the human soul.
So, to conclude, Auden does not elevate Yeats as a hero or an uncommon genius, but he stresses the real value and implication of his poetry even in times of disasters.
July 26, 2024
W.H. Auden’s 'In Memory of W.B. Yeats' is more than a mere elegy, in fact it deviates significantly from a conventional elegy that essentially is all about lamenting. Auden's piece is a scathing examination of the poet’s role in a world teetering on the brink of collapse. Auden, with his incisive intellect and razor-sharp wit, transforms this tribute into a profound commentary on the impotence of art in the face of political and social turmoil.
Auden initiates the poem with the stark assertion of Yeats’s death, an event that seems almost trivial against the backdrop of a Europe descending into chaos and malice. The dispassionate tone of the opening lines—“He disappeared in the dead of winter”—serves as a brutal reminder of the relentless march of history, indifferent to individual genius. Auden’s cold and detached language is provocative, forcing readers to confront the uncomfortable reality that art, no matter how exalted, cannot halt the tide of human suffering.
Eventually, the poem shifts to a tone of personal reflection, where Auden grapples with Yeats’s legacy. Here, he acknowledges the Irish poet’s influence while simultaneously questioning the efficacy of his art. The line “Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry” suggests that Yeats’s greatness was born of pain and conflict, yet Auden cynically implies that this very art was powerless to effect real change. This duality—reverence tinged with skepticism—imbues the poem with a tension that is both unsettling and intellectually invigorating.
Finally, Auden delivers his most provocative thesis: “Poetry makes nothing happen.” This stark declaration challenges the romantic ideal of the poet as a visionary capable of altering the course of history. Instead, Auden relegates poetry to the realm of the personal, where it serves as a solace for the individual rather than a tool for societal transformation. This bleak assessment of poetry’s role is a daring repudiation of Yeats’s own belief in the power of the artistic imagination.
'In Memory of W.B. Yeats' is replete with a sense of ambivalence, a work that honors its subject while simultaneously dismantling the myths that surround him. Auden’s unflinching honesty and critical insight make this poem a powerful meditation on the limitations of art in perpetually indifferent world. It is a eulogy stripped of sentimentality, offering instead a raw, unvarnished truth that lingers long after the final line.
Give it a try, Auden sure does not fail his readers in this piece too!
Auden initiates the poem with the stark assertion of Yeats’s death, an event that seems almost trivial against the backdrop of a Europe descending into chaos and malice. The dispassionate tone of the opening lines—“He disappeared in the dead of winter”—serves as a brutal reminder of the relentless march of history, indifferent to individual genius. Auden’s cold and detached language is provocative, forcing readers to confront the uncomfortable reality that art, no matter how exalted, cannot halt the tide of human suffering.
Eventually, the poem shifts to a tone of personal reflection, where Auden grapples with Yeats’s legacy. Here, he acknowledges the Irish poet’s influence while simultaneously questioning the efficacy of his art. The line “Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry” suggests that Yeats’s greatness was born of pain and conflict, yet Auden cynically implies that this very art was powerless to effect real change. This duality—reverence tinged with skepticism—imbues the poem with a tension that is both unsettling and intellectually invigorating.
Finally, Auden delivers his most provocative thesis: “Poetry makes nothing happen.” This stark declaration challenges the romantic ideal of the poet as a visionary capable of altering the course of history. Instead, Auden relegates poetry to the realm of the personal, where it serves as a solace for the individual rather than a tool for societal transformation. This bleak assessment of poetry’s role is a daring repudiation of Yeats’s own belief in the power of the artistic imagination.
'In Memory of W.B. Yeats' is replete with a sense of ambivalence, a work that honors its subject while simultaneously dismantling the myths that surround him. Auden’s unflinching honesty and critical insight make this poem a powerful meditation on the limitations of art in perpetually indifferent world. It is a eulogy stripped of sentimentality, offering instead a raw, unvarnished truth that lingers long after the final line.
Give it a try, Auden sure does not fail his readers in this piece too!
January 10, 2018
"Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections:
To find his happiness in another kind of wood"
3 Stars!
I especially liked the first part, I loved the imagery and what was said through the simply lines. The last part was also enjoyable because of its rhyme.
May 18, 2017
I feel this is one of Auden's better poems. He is describing how the world will mourn the loss of the poet William Butler Yeats. Yeats's poems are like his children in that they will be mourning the loss of their master but Yeats is able to live on through his poems.
June 26, 2017
A warm homage to someones whose deathday was agreed to be a dark cold day by the instruments of nature.
February 18, 2025
“The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.” Loved this so so much. Read for class
Read
February 18, 2017Read for school
September 30, 2019
Rather interesting poem to read as a poet myself.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews