W.h.auden’s Ideas of Poet’s Influence on The Audience

Textual integrity is how well the poet uses context, form, language and purpose to produce a piece that has meaning and value, in other words, it is something that can resonate, move or change the minds of the audience. In Auden’s poems “Spain” and “In Memory of W. B. Yeats”, he focuses on several themes, these being: how his and other’s poetry can reveal reality, the modern horrors present in his time (death and suffering because of war), he does this all while relating it back to the everyday man.

Spain begins off with Auden speaking of “yesterday” and all of the great feats that humans have achieved. These being expansion to “China along the trade-routes”, great conquests and exploration done by the “navigators”, the wooden and stone man-made marvels of “the chapel built in the forest” and “the carving of angels” and the growth of modernity and industrialisation creating “railways in the colonial desert”. But this ‘yesterday’ is now gone and now “To-day the struggle” is upon us. Auden talks about 3 main characters, them being; a poet, a scientist and the poor people. The poet wants to be able to see this terror of war and write about it. The scientist spends most of his time occupied with his various projects but it’s the lives of his friends that he wonders about. The poor people spend most of their time in their “fireless lodges” thinking about how “our day is our loss”. Spain then turns to tomorrow, a hopeful time full of romantic love, research, exploration and the simple things in life like “The walks by the lake”. This great imaginable thought is then quickly destroyed as the realities of the brutal present is brought back. ‘Today’ death and suffering are realities and not many things make life worth living. Spain’s future is uncertain, it has had a glorious past but might not have a glorious future.

In memory of W.B. Yeats is Auden’s thoughts on a poet’s art and the role of poetry during a time of misfortune as well as the normal struggles of life. The poem is organised into 3 sections, the first is a section where Auden is mourning the death of Yeats, the second section is where Auden is commenting on Yeats’ poetry, the third section is a calling to other people and poets. The first section uses the environment to reflect Yeats’ death, how the “brooks were frozen”, “the airports almost deserted” and how the “snow disfigured the public statues” reinforcing how because of Yeats’ death, everything has come to a stop. At the same time “the wolves ran on through the evergreen forests” suggesting that even though the poet is dead, his poetry isn’t. the downside to this situation is how Yeats cannot speak for himself anymore and how he has now become “his admirers”, his poems are now also “scattered” like ashes and are misinterpreted. But the everyday man doesn’t get effective, the brokers yell on the floor and the poor continue to suffer. Auden is tossing up his thoughts between 2 elements, one being that a poet’s death can go unnoticed and be almost completely insignificant, the other being that the death should be a national crisis. The second section is about how Yeats was moulded, “Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry / Now Ireland has her madness and weather still” reinforcing the point that Auden still believes that even though Yeats is dead, his poetry lives on. The third section is a calling. The “Irish vessel” has been “emptied of its poetry”, yet the “dogs of Europe bark”, suggesting that even though Yeats is dead, war still rages on. The last stanza is Auden telling us that we need a new poet to “teach the free man how to praise”, because of Yeats’ death we have lost a major influential voice and it needs to be replaced.

Auden likes to position the audience not as something abnormal or abstract but as themselves. This is done in “Spain” when he relates the characters to poor people, scientists, poets, just everyday day normal people living their lives. By doing this Auden can resonate with his audience and the poetry can stick in the mind of his readers. Close to the end of “Spain”, Auden is dreaming of a day where “poets exploding like bombs”, suggesting that he wants poets to have the same explosive nature of a bomb.

Auden’s poetry describes the terrible living conditions that he experienced, dictators suppressed freedoms and forced their country into a barbaric war. In “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” he explores the role of poetry in the face of these terrible situations. In “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” he talks about his belief that through all the hardships we face, poetry can lift our spirits and “teach the free man how to praise” and “persuade us to rejoice”. Auden celebrates life while we still have it because one day it may be cut short due to something totally out of our control and that it will happen eventually, you can’t stop death it is inevitable. He recognises that love is great but there is not world without suffering or death, these terrible things have to coexist with amazing things such as love.

Auden constantly comments on the use of the poet in define how everyone sees reality and how the poets work lives on through their death. He is suggesting that poetry can indeed make all the difference in changing the opinions of the people therefore entailing change in the government. At the end of “In Memory of W. B. Yeats”, Auden is calling other poets to step up and replace Yeats’ position as the string influencer that he was. But in “Spain” he ends on a bleak tone suggesting that he doesn’t believe poets can change anything, all is already lost. Overall I believe that “In memory of W. B. Yeats” is more effective at changing the minds of the audience.