Human Suffering in The Poems of W.h. Auden

Suffering is the state of aguish or pain of one who suffers. Although human suffering is not severe in the modern world many are living in today, it is still an eminent presence in most places. W.H Auden is meticulous for his didactic insight into the timeless aspect of human suffering by exploring the dichotomy between an individual’s pain, and the society’s indifference towards it in his poems. ‘Musee Des Beaux Arts’ and ‘Refugee Blues’ both written in 1939 satirize how poorly the contemporary society understands the human position of suffering. The concept of timeless human suffering was portrayed by Auden’s poignant criticism on the grim reality of the early 1900’s (and modern time’s) dehumanization in the two poems where the ignorance of human suffering leads to a world devoid of love and care.

During the course of ‘Musee Des Beaux Arts,’ the poem refers to Pieter Bruegel’s ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’, where the heterodiegetic narrator (Auden) looks at the painting and ruminate on the universal nature of human suffering and the general apathy of mankind towards it unless it affects them personally. W.H Auden encapsulate the timeless concept of human suffering through the first stanza, “How well they understood/its human position; how it takes place/while someone else is eating or opening a window or just/walking dully along” The pathetic fallacy applied in the stanza juxtaposes the truth of how the mundane, everyday actions takes place alongside human suffering, in which Auden indirectly articulate the sad truth of how easily and perpetually suffering can strike on the just and the unjust. To achieve a clearer understanding of the concept of the poem, Auden further extend his criticism in the second stanza, “In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away/Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may/Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, / But for him it was not an important failure.” The irony applied in “Quite leisurely from the disaster” mocks the apathy of mankind on human suffering, they do not view the importance of immense suffering, hence, Auden judges on how effortlessly humans can ignore the brutal cruelty of it unless it occurs on them. Auden’s powerful input of auditory and visual imagery in “Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, but for him it was not an important failure,” illustrates his dismay towards the egocentric and lack of compassion characteristics of the society. The ploughman’s callousness towards the drowning boy in the painting of Icarus parallelly allegorise the modern world, where when tragedy happens to others, one tends to be oblivious or prefers to ignore what is happening and focuses on what is beneficial for them. Overall, although the esoteric meaning of the poem is difficult to decode, however, it is easy to state that Auden explored the concept of human suffering in the poem to identify the callousness of those who have not suffered. Hence, due to his strong representation of the concept, it enabled ‘Musee Des Beaux Arts’ to transcend overtime and remain its relevancy.

Similar to ‘Musee Des Beaux Arts,’ Auden used ‘Refugee Blues’ to judge the modern society’s apathy towards refugees’ segregation and suffering - Auden did this by recounting the anti-Semitic plight of the two German Jewish refugees in his poem. Refugee is defined to be; a person who has been exiled from their homeland due to a catastrophe or war, hence losing their identity and goes through an immense suffer. Auden’s implementation on the modern society’s refusal and indifference towards the refugees was exemplified in the first stanza, “Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes/ Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us,” the devastation and despair of the refugees was shown through the repetition – “yet there’s no place for us,” which was contrasted by “Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes,” this portrays a major gap between the society and the Jewish refugees, where the society refuses to view the suffering of the refugees due to their own selfishness, ignorance and indifference. Furthermore, not only does Auden criticize the society’s callousness in ‘Refugee Blues, but he points out the society’s lack of sympathy and kindness and judges it for being toto materialistic. Through the use of cataphora in “If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread,” Auden portrays the voice of the citizens of the host country where they fear the refugees will use up all their resources and steal their jobs. From this, Auden shows the inevitable nature of materialism in which they prefer economy over altruism, in which he highlights the wilful ignorance towards the suffering for those who have not suffered. 

To summarise, ‘Refugee Blues’ is a universal, powerful poetry which represent the voices of many who suffers in silence. Due to its great representation of pain experienced by German Jewish, the poem is still able to remain relevant after decades of its first publication.