by Alice George

Created on: August 12, 2009

W.H. Auden's poem 'In memory of W.B Yeats' was written at an important moment in Auden's career. It was the first poem he wrote after moving to America in the year that all of Europe would be plunged into the Second World War, 'all the dogs of Europe bark'. The bleakness of the landscape inside the poem reflects the bleak lookout for Europe. Auden's left wing views made him particularly opposed to the rise of fascism and he had worked against it during the Spanish civil war. The poem says something about the political situation but it is also about a man, a poet about whom Auden had very mixed feelings. Auden disagreed with Yeats on many points but ultimately his respect for his poetic gift wins through in the poem.

The reason I begin with politics is that Auden is using the poem to state his view on what the relationship between poetry and politics should be. Yeats inherited the romantic idea of a poet as a sort of prophet. A figure who should try and influence people, whose poetry should change them. In 'In memory of W.B. Yeats' Auden inverts this, 'the words of dead men are altered in the guts of the living', the people are changing the poetry. Auden is deliberately denying Yeats the bardic status he desired, his death will be remembered by, 'a few thousand[1]', as an 'unusual' day. Indeed the fifth stanza is largely given over to describing the way in which life goes on. The man disappears behind his work, 'scattered among a hundred cities,' 'he became his admirers'.

Auden doesn't seem to feel that Yeats changed anything, 'Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry', is immediately followed by, 'Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,' the repetition of 'mad' and 'madness' with 'Ireland' emphasises the sameness.

In the different sections of the poem Auden treats both Yeats' poems and the man behind them before laying him to rest and making a larger address to other poets.

It is a strange sort of memorial that seeks to give the dead a dressing down and comments, 'you were silly like us', taking Yeats and pulling him into the fold of common humanity. The 'silliness' may refer to Yeats's interest in the occult of which Auden disapproved, or maybe just suggests that even mythic bards cannot help being silly so long as they are human.

There is a preoccupation with weather within the poem, 'the day of his death was a dark cold day', 'the brooks were frozen', 'now Ireland has her madness and her weather still', the 'dark cold day,' seems to suggest the

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