What is the function of the poet that can be inferred from Auden's poetry and poetics?
Apart from renowned for his literary genius, Auden has been credited for his ability to locate his poetry within the realities of the times, confronting them with a sense of responsibility as an artist, as well as with a sense of hope as an individual. He was able to impact the reader's mind in persuasive and compelling ways, such that the poems exudes a sense of modernity in its technique and outlook. His poetic landscape is often the backdrop 'against which some human situation is considered or a symbol of the psyche.' Auden often assumes the role of the detached and 'clinical' poet where he reveals few of his personal fears or emotions but at the same time, concerned with the addressing the states of socio-political and humanity.His poetry situates itself in the present, and when he did not look back on history, he did so with a clear sense of the present as the realm that was pertinent. In Spain, for example, Auden revisits the history of modern civilisation with less of an air of nostalgia than with the drive of the rhetoric towards a serious contemplation of what is to be done 'to-day'. Because of the repetition of 'yesterday', the sudden insertion of the phrase 'but today the struggle' becomes a cognitively and emotio
Referring to the Western democracies' unfair treatment of Germany at Versailles, this suggests a lack of common justice among statesmen involved. Auden therefore does not shy away from the concerns of the times, from politics or world events, but confronts them and responds to them with a contemporary perspective. 1. Hoggart, Richard, Auden : An Introductory Essay, London : Chatto & Windus, 1951. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Furnishing a sense of bleakness and gloom experienced by the man-in-the street. Auden also addresses the illusionary nature of modern society's sense of invulnerability and accomplishment, using 'blind skyscrapers' as a metonomy for urban, industralised society. 'Blind skyscrapers' as a transferred epithet implies 20th Century society's flawed vision of its own progress. The phrase also personifies the skyscrapers and points at the folly of the belief that they signify the prowess of modern man. As a social critic, Auden also offers his own explanation for Germany's retaliation, saying, In The Unknown Citizen, Auden makes another sardonic take on life in a modern, state-ordered world where the individual lose his identity and uniqueness to the demands of the mechanical social institutions. The 'unknown citizen' is never given any nominal identity. It is as if the 'Modern Man' lived to serve the institutions in society-by being 'fully insured' and having 'left the hospital cured'-instead of benefiting from them. Done in a humourous tongue-in-cheek fashion, Auden addresses the real state of that modernity has brought individuals to and hints at the social dysfunction that lies beneath the facade of modernity: when it comes to the
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1153
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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