So here a Griceian analysis. The idea of 'stanza' is not Homeric. Homer,
who was blind, would like to recite "The Iliad" 'at one fell swoop', as he
said it in Greek.
*Come on, we don't even know for certain that Homer existed, let alone what
he 'liked' etc. Is it really necessary to make such unsubstantiated claims ?
Also, 'logicians' don't 'mean' anything by 'or'. 'Logicians' disagree among
themselves on many issues, including the interpretation of 'or'. One should
be honest about such things, I think. (I am using 'honest' because I do
believe that 'one' actually knows it.)
O.K.
On Sun, Jun 7, 2015 at 10:55 PM, Redacted sender Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx for
DMARC <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In a message dated 6/7/2015 3:19:13 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx writes:
"today, were I the editor of an important poetry book, I think I would
delete all but the first and the eighth stanzas."
Well, that would leave us with
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.
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.
So here a Griceian analysis. The idea of 'stanza' is not Homeric. Homer,
who was blind, would like to recite "The Iliad" 'at one fell swoop', as he
said it in Greek. The idea that poetry is divided in stanza is an Italian
thing, and even people surnamed by surnames that do rhyme with -anza may
not
like stanza division.
Note that the final line still have the problematic inclusive disjunctor.
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.
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.
Geary:
"If Auden had only downed another few whiskeys at that dive on 52nd Street,
maybe then he would never have written the poem and all this "and"
business would never have come up."
"another few" is an intersting construction. I think we can distinguish
between the 'or'-Auden, the Auden of the 'less than another few whiskeys',
and
the 'and'-Auden, the Auden who allowed Oscar Williams, "provided, dear
Oscar, that you would be kind enough to change the 'or' into 'and': I feel
more assertive today" (The Auden Papers).
"I sit in one of the dives
on Fifty-second Street"
This is a long street. Surely Auden had to seat in one of them. He cannot
sit in TWO of them, can he (at the same time).
Grice has "Be as informative as is required", and I'm sure members of the
Auden Society have localised the dive. The question is whether it's West
Side or East Side.
It wouldn't be "upper East Side", though -- but "Middle East Side". Eric
Yost knows about this.
"uncertain and afraid
as the clever hopes expire
of a low dishonest decade."
This is metonymy? In general, it is people who are dishonest. A decade can
be roaring (like the twenties), or naughty like the 1890s, or swinging like
the 1930s. Note that the 1930s, rather than the decade that swang to the
swing of Ambrose and his orchestra, it is a 'low dishonest' one for
Wystan,
the privileged one with a public school (English style) and Oxonian
background.
"waves of anger and fear
circulate over the bright
& darkened lands of the earth,
obsessing our private lives"
-- an obvious reference to the success Sir Noel Coward (as he then wasn't)
was having with Gertrude Lawrence back in Auden's native land ("This
blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England") -- at the Her
Majesty's.
"the unmentionable odour of death
offends the September night."
There is a Wittgensteinian echo to this: "Try to describe the aroma of
coffee". While Alfred Douglas spoke of the unmentionable love that dares
not
mention its name, Auden, in a poem reprinted in a collection of AMERICAN
poetry, keeps using the VERY Anti-Websterian spelling of 'odor'!
"all I have is a voice
to undo the folded lie,
the romantic lie in the brain
of the sensual man-in-the-street"
The lie lies in the brain or in the soul? For some, the brain is composed
of CELLS (neurons and stuff). But a lie, and a romantic one at that, is NOT
cells. So it rather lies in the SOUL (if he has one) of the rather sexist
exprssion 'man-in-the-street'. Back in England, they have lanes and roads,
and drives, and ways, and, avenues, and circuses, and, last but not least,
'streets'. But it's always man-in-the-street, not lane. This must be the
AMERICAN Auden, because the English are obsessed with lanes:
"There'll always be an England
While there's a country lane,
Wherever there's a cottage small
Beside a field of grain."
Auden goes on in his tirade:
"And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;"
This has a Thatcherite echo to it. The Baroness used to say:
"There's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and
there are families."
In Nozickian parlance, Auden's line -- there is no such thing as the State
-- or there SHOULD not be such a thing as the State -- is the emblem of
anarchism -- but in some LIBERAL (British interpretation of 'liberal')
accounts, Auden's hyperbole could be understood as a defense for a
_minimal_
state? Is this poetry or politics?
"And no one exists alone".
Auden's version of "No man is an island", which, incidentally, while a
metaphor, and against Grice, is LITERALLY TRUE!
"Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die."
As Geary notes, the "or" Auden "tries to end it with an affirmative
advocation that we "Love one
another or die." But I believe the consensus is that we all would rather
die than share our world."
Well, we may need to ask the consensus again. The consensus keeps changing.
And note that
"The consensus must love the consensus or the consensus must die"
sounds slightly rude.
While Auden was then an "and"-Auden, he did allow the "or" version to be
reprinted only once, in The Penguin Books anthology Poetry of the Thirties,
with a note written by the editor in the third person saying about this:
"Mr. W. H. Auden considers [this poem] to be trash which he is ashamed to
have written."
Geary: "were I the editor of an important poetry book, I think I would
delete all but the first and the eighth stanzas."
Were I the editor for the occasion, I would have at least, out of
politeness, used scare quotes for 'trash', and drop the "Mr." and the "W.
H."
"NOTE TO THE READER: mind that Auden considers this poem you are about to
read to be 'trash' which he is of which he is 'ashamed'.
For 'trash' is never literally _written_. Recall "Don Quixote":
"There is no poem so bad that it does not have something good in it."
So, if Auden meant 'or' he should have said it! (And he must have meant it,
because he said that the 'or'-version was trash, while the 'and'-version
was "brilliant, if I might myself say so." (The Auden Papers).
Cheers,
Speranza
Cheers,
Speranza
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