Thoughts I had
- How relevant Auden's poems continue to be. Yet the sentimentality of his expression means that I find it hard to put any extracts into this blog, without finding them cloying. How foolish: that I should be so embarrassed by references to love and justice. But we are so used to language being framed with insincerity, that we shy from those words which have been most embedded in the insincere.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse :
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream ;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
Hey! I quoted it. I truly like this poem. But I feel embarrassed by it too, like a friend crying at a party. When everyone should be crying but only one person is uninhibited enough to do so.
- Ginsberg: No, I just don't like him. Beyond uninhibited. Get a bit more inhibited.
- TS Eliot. Many of the people I like most are introverted and intellectual types, keen on abstract thought. Yet when I read Eliot, I never feel as if I am with a friend. A person whose ideas you are happy to hear, but whom you would not wish to know.
"The enduring is not a substitute for the transient,
Neither one for the other."
It's a fair point, but how irritating to read it.
Conclusion - what a touchy and hard to please reader I am. Mr Auden - please refrain from your sentimental expressions of emotional sincerity. Mr Eliot - please inject your astute observations with an emotional extroversion which is alien to you.