poetry

Syllabus of first course of fourth year poetry:

1- Symbolism / the symbolist movement

W.B. Yeats " Sailing to Byzantium''

'' The Second Coming''

2- The Imagist movement

T.S. Eliot '' The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock''

3- The Georgian School

Walter de la Mare '' The Listeners''

4- The Socialist School

W.H. Auden ''The Unknown Citizen''

Symbolism

Symbolism means demonstrating things by symbols. It declares an

internal, psychological world having priority over the material and can be

uttered through symbols or linguistic analogies. Because the psychological

domain is difficult to enter into, symbolist artists visualize the inner visions

or views. As one symbolist critic wrote in 1897: the world in which we

live, which we affirm real, is purely a creation of our soul. The mind cannot

go outside itself, and the things it believes to be outside it are only its

thoughts.

symbolism as a literary movement has many important

characteristics such as:

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1-The symbolists criticized the expressive tendencies of the Realist theatre

and naturalistic novels because they believed in the individuality and free

will of human being.

2-The symbolists wished to release poetry from its expository functions

(explanation and description) and eloquence in order to refer to the passing

direct sensations of men's inner life and experience.

3-They tried to connect the unseen mystery of existence through a free and

personal use of metaphors and images that, though lacking exact

implication, would transfer the state of the poet's mind and hint at the dark

and confused unity of an unexpressed reality.

4-Their goal was to create an art that would convey the poet's own inner

dream. Poet like Baudelaire was a great symbolist. That is why, Verlaine

and Rimbaud were seriously influenced by his poetic thoughts as in his

own poems in his Les Fleurs du Mal (1857).

5-Baudelaire's concept of the correspondences can be adopted by Verlaine

and Rimbaud that mixed between the senses (synesthesia) and the that is

composed by Wagner to produce the musical qualities of poetry. Thus, the

subject within a poem could be developed by the management of

harmonies, tones and colours of carefully chosen words.

6-Their attempt to stress the necessary and distinctive qualities of poetry

was based on their belief in the authority of art over other means of

expression or knowledge. This was partly based on their idealistic

supposition that under the materiality of the bodily world was another

reality whose core could best be caught by the subjective passionate

responses contributing to the work of art and generated by it as well.

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7-In order to escape rigid material patterns and achieve freer poetic

rhythms, many symbolist poets composed prose poems used free verse

now becoming a chief form of contemporary poetry. Thus, when poetry

was liberated from traditional metrical forms, it could develop thematic

motifs freely.

8-The formal qualities and the suggestive power of language were stressed,

images were presented in startling ways, and the device of synesthesia (

the suggestion of several sensations at one time) was employed to evoke

the dark and confused unity (Baudelaire) of the unseen world. It was a

difficult task because their medium and words were shared with all those

who speak the language for ordinary purposes.

9-In order to achieve their aim, they tried to disinfect grammar and

vocabulary for poetry and art prose. They broke up cliché phrases, revived

unusual words, used common words in archaic or etymological senses,

bent syntax to allow for fresh juxtapositions from which new meanings

emerged until the literary work created the desire new world. It was a

difficult world to achieve but worth experience since all its parts were the

symbols of a radiant reality.

10-The symbolist poets believed that the task of poetry was to create

impressions in the mind of the reader, so they used sounds and images in

unique new combinations.

11-The symbolists considered meaning less important than the impression

produced. Like the Impressionist painters, they abandoned inherited

concepts of art to transmit the essential qualities of the individual's unique

emotional experience directly.

12-They sought symbols of the inner world of reality and beauty in the

objective external world. They opposed didacticism, eloquence, political

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reference, sentimentality, objective depiction, impersonality and

expressive realism.

13-Their poems present delicate personal moods or hallucinative play of

the senses, or they evoke sensuous reverie or ideas through complex and

magical imagery.

14-Baudelaire saw language and writing as magical operations and

evocative sorcery, stressed their hieroglyphic quality, and stated that even

ordinary sights could be symbols revealing the profundity of life. Rimband

referred to the alchemy of the verb and urged poets to make themselves

seers, and Mallarme insisted that the writer should merely suggest, not

name an object. Since symbolists wished to make poetry so much a private

concern of the poet that it became incommunicable to the reader.

15-The symbolist poets chose the symbols arbitrarily to stand for special

ideas of their own. Every feeling or sensation, every moment of

consciousness was different from every other, each moment had its special

tone, and it was the poet's task to find or invent a special language capable

of stating them. Such a language had to be symbolic. It had to be fleeting

and ambiguous, and not be transferred by direct statement or description,

but only by a succession of words and images which suggests.

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Life of Yeats and his features

Yeats is considered as one of the most important poets in twentiethcentury

poetry. As a modern poet, he can be full romantic. As an Irish man,

he had a great love for Ireland. Yeats 's poetry has some poetic qualities

and techniques which make him different from the other symbolists in

English poetry. Yeats is a dreamer, full of futuristic and prophetic dreams,

and a visionary at heart. He has a belief in magic, fairies and other types of

superstition. Yeats was interested in the Irish myth and folklore. Yeats has

been considered as one of the most famous and significant symbolist poets

in the symbolist movement in English literature.

Sailing to Byzantuim by W. B. Yeats 1865- 1939

Yeats wrote this poem when he was an old man. He is in his sixties. He

says that his native country '' Ireland '' is not suitable for old men. It is a

country of the young who have vitalities and activities. Those young,

lovers, are dancing, singing and enjoying in one another's arms. They are

active like the melodious birds in the trees. The birds sing their song which

is a sensual one. the young and the birds are dying generations. Even the

salmon and the mackerel are two kinds of fish can swim strongly against

the currents of the seas but they are mortal and dying. Fish, flesh and foul

are active and more active in summer time like the strength of the young

but they are impermanent and transient. Then the poet wants to show the

stages of human life such as birth, life and death. All those dying

generations are born, alive and died. In Ireland, Yeats illustrates the music

can come through the young and the song of the birds in the trees. He tries

to say that his country ''Ireland'' is filled just with pleasures and sensuality

and neglects one eternal generation that is represented by monuments of

unageing intellect. What kind of generation will remain eternal forever?

Monuments will remain everlasting and perpetual.

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Yeats compares an aged man to a paltry thing. He is useless and futile. He

is an old and torn coat upon a stick full of dust. Here, the poet wants to

compare between the body of the old man and his soul. The soul will clap

and sing aloud. The soul will study monuments of its own magnificence.

So Yeats decided to sail to another world, Byzantium. It is a holy city. It is

a symbol of art, spirituality and perfection. In Byzantium, there are artistic

and creative achievements.

Notes:

1- In Ireland, monuments as neglected remains. Lovers and creatures are

dying and temporary. Stanza one refers to sensuality that comes from

pleasures of the young, the birds and the creatures.

2- In Byzantium, monuments will be studied. They will ne eternal and

immortal. Stanza two refers to spirituality that comes from the soul that

travels to another world.

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Sailing to Byzantuim by W. B. Yeats 1865- 1939

Yeats apostrophizes the sages ( the wise men ) who are standing in

God's holy fire. The holy fire which purges the soul from the impurity of

the earthly and worldly life. (the gold mosaic) Yeats suggests permanence

and value, transforms the natural world into emblems of artistic creation in

this poem. Then, the poet wants to detach himself from the flux of his

human life. Yeats wants the sages to burn out his mortal heart. The heart

contains all the human and worldly passion. The poet wants to show that

he calls for the death of the body to announce the rebirth of the soul. He

wants his sages to the singing- masters or teachers of his spirituality. His

heart is consumed away and it is sick with desire. The poet's soul is now

free and eternal by the artifice of eternity which refers to the golden bird.

Yeats uses the bird as a symbol of the intellectual joy of eternity, as

contrasted with the instinctive joy of human life.

The poet desires to transform his bodily form into a golden bird. This

golden bird is the poet's soul. It has three features: it is made of gold. It

makes the drowsy emperor awake. It sits upon a golden bough and sings a

song including three different themes: past, present and future.

This poem sets forth a conflict between the world of reality and the

world of imagination, represented by body and soul. Other sets of opposites

intensify the conflict; the young people and the '' old men'', passion and

wisdom, life and death, the sensual country of the young people and the

holy city of Byzantium.

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Notes:

1- Wollman ( the writer of your textbook) says that Byzantium was a Greek

city built on the eastern part of the site of Constantinople, in which it was

merged in A.D. 330. At the division of the eastern and Western Empires

between his two sons on the death of Theodosius in 395, Byzantium

became the capital of the Eastern Empire till 1453. Its situation was

remarkable for its beauty and security. The church of Santa Sophia

embodies the surviving monuments. Wollman views that Byzantium in this

poem is a holy city, because it is the capital of Eastern Christendom and

because it is Yeats's holy city and heaven of imagination. It has inherited

the perfection of craftsmanship.

2- the poet addresses the spirits of Byzantium ( the sages) he begs them to

come from the holy fire and spiral down to where he is sick with desire. He

wants them to consume away his heart, blinded with its fleshly, mortal

dreams, and teach him how to be immortal, teach him the secrets of the

soul and of art, of the artifice of eternity.

3- A golden bird sings different themes of songs when he hangs on a

golden bough. Those dissimilar songs included all the times: the past, the

present and the future . His song, when he becomes a golden bird, will be

that of spiritual delight. He will be surrounded, not by the young lovers and

other animal creatures of the sensual cycle, but by an audience that is

graceful and abstract. In Byzantium, he will have no age; past, present, and

future are all one there. This golden bird is the soul. This bird is the poet's

soul that sings to lords and ladies. This bird is an artifact. The final image

of a bird of hammered gold and gold enamelling, singing of what is past,

or passing, or come.

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Introduction to The Second coming

Wollman shows that Yeats has a vision, a moment of insight into

the future. It arises from a mood of doubt and despair, inspired by the

anarchy of the world, the increase of bloodshed, and the growth of

disbelief. He sees the present era as dying; the first two thousand years of

Christianity have brought discord and strife because man has forgotten

Christ. The new era that is about to be born is symbolized by the rough

beast, which is the antithesis of the gentle Bethlehem. It is not sought for

or created: it comes uninvited, unwanted almost, upon the consciousness.

This helps to give the poem the force of objectivity. It is Yeats' s theory

that a period of anarchy and violence follows a period of innocence and

beauty.

The Second Coming by W.B . Yeats

Yeats, as a great poet in modern age, elucidates that twentieth century is

full of troubles, misfortunes, wars, conflicts and slaughters. The world

turns and turns in its circle. The poet views that the gyres can be two types:

the primary gyre and antithetical gyre. According to Yeats, when the

primary gyre reaches its limit or maximum, it begins to diminish and its

thread is taken by antithetical gyre and unwound. The falcon is the society

or civilization that cannot hear the falconer which refers to Christianity and

Christ. The society became so far from the Christian principles. People lost

their religion. The world became destructed and deteriorated. Disorder and

devastation are the rulers of the world. That is why Yeats views that the

anarchy is loosed upon the world. Anarchy and blood are loosed upon the

earth and the innocence is killed and vanished. In modern era, the best

people lack strong faith while the worst people will be full of desires and

passion.

All these destructive things will be stopped, when? when the second

coming will appear upon the earth to liberate this earth from deception and

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persecution. But the poet envisions that this age needs someone or

something so strong and unflinching pitiless and merciless. That is why, he

mentions a huge image of Spiritus Mundi. It is a shape with lion body and

the head of a man, you can find that image in sands of the desert which

troubles the sight. The movement of that massive image is so slow in the

desert. Its thighs are slow and its look is blank and pitiless like the sun. the

shape is like a sphinx, and symbolizing both evil and wisdom. The

indignant desert birds (ventures) dance and reel terrifyingly with their

shadows in the desert. The darkness (ignorance and frustration) drops again

in this world. But the poet knows that the twenty centuries of stony sleep,

of Christian civilization during which this shape with lion body and the

head of a man maintained a rigid sleep. Bethlehem is the birth place of

Christ. Suddenly the rough beast ( is a symbol of destruction) slouches

towards Bethlehem to be born. Yeats uses the great beast as a symbol of

havoc and devastation. Modern age will be full of violence, brutality and

tragedy. The first world war was described by Yeats in his poetry as a

terrible death that came to the world. He wants to show that modern age is

an age of suffering and pain. That is why, he used the great beast in his

poem " Second Coming" as a symbol of destruction. Yeats presents the

poem as a philosophical and political one, full of the actions that destroy

and destruct the modern times and to kill and slaughter thousands of the

innocent people. The hope that the poet wishes to wait. It is reflected in the

shape of a tremendous monster. Even the birds will dance and hover in

circling movement.

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T. S. Eliot ( 1888-1965)

He is one of the most important poets of the 20th century. He was American

by birth but became the citizen of Britain in 1927. His contribution to

English poetry, drama and criticism is immense. He was a poet, an essayist,

a publisher, a dramatist, and a critic.

Eliot's poetry is characterized by some distinctive features:

1-Difficulty and Obscurity:

Eliot's poetry is difficult and obscure because he decided to write a new

kind of poetry which requires some effort and some brain work. It also

shows the complexity of his poetry that reflects the complexity of modern

life. Eliot's use of the mythical method, symbolic technique, implication,

allusions, references, and quotations.

2-The Mythical Method ( Objective Correlative) :

A series of emotions and impressions which originate in the poet's mind

to express human life in the past and the present.

3-Dramatic Monologue:

Eliot's poetry is dramatic. It has a dramatic quality which creates characters

as Prufrock that will be obscure. Eliot recognizes that the human self has a

struggle between good and evil, spiritual and sensuous.

4-Symbolism:

symbols make the language rich and expressive. A symbol can be used to

convey pure sensations. Eliot is a symbolist. Eliot's poetry has two kinds

of symbols:

(1)- Traditional symbols ( General Use)

Ex: Rose is a symbol of beauty.

(2)- Personal Symbols ( Private Use)

Ex : Rose is a symbol of his beloved.

5-Imagery:

Eliot decorates the language of his poetry with the use of imagery. Imagery

can convey abstract ideas or emotional states. Images can convey his

intellectual and emotional complex.

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THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK

This poem is not a love song in the traditional sense of the term. It is an

analysis of the mind of the lover that is unable to take a decision about

making a proposal to the lady he loves. It is an internal debate in the mind

of Prufrock between the two sides of his personality. It is an exposition of

the moods and conflicts of the mind of Prufrock. He speaks the song to

himself.

It is evening time. Prufrock is helpless like a patient etherized upon a table.

He has no strength left in him to act. Mentally he wanders through half

deserted streets till his mind reaches to the question before him.The

question refers to his proposal to the lady he loves. He reaches the cheap

restaurant where he finds some women talking and discussing Michael

Angelo. It is the fashion of the lady to talk about the paintings of great

masters. He was close to some of them but he had no courage to speak out

his mind. He is afraid of ladies. He is afraid of making proposal to ladies

and his problem is how to begin. He mentions some of his friends who will

marry to the ladies but he can't mention his name why he doesn't have

courage. He thinks if he tells any lady about his love, maybe she will refuse

him. He begins thinking of his shabby shape infront of women as he is a

sick inactive man. Prufrock makes an excuse for himself that there will be

time to act, but it is irony there is no ability to speak.

* Who is Prufrock ?

Prufrock can be characterized in four sides :

1-Mental Side: He doesn't have any good idea. He is trivial and useless.

2-Physical Side: He is alone in this modern/ harsh and difficult life. He

has no confidence in his personality.

3-Spiritual Side: He is dead now. He is aimless and lost.

4-Beautiful Side: He is bald, old, thin, slim, tall, and weak. He is a lost

soul because of his sin of hesitation and procrastination. So he is

spiritually dead.

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THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK T. S. Eliot

Images:

1-The evening looks like a patient etherized upon a table.

2-The streets suggest the tedious agreements.

3-The image of the fog as a cat suggests, an inertia, solitariness and the

inaction of Prufrock.

4-The sea reveals the inner self of Prufrock.

5-The mermaids suggest the romantic world.

Themes:

1-The poem deals with the theme of the dilemma of modern man. Prufrock

who represents the modern man is the victim of frustration and indecision.

2-Prufrock's hesitation shares directly to his inactivity and

meaninglessness. Prufrock's anxiety is rooted in such society, he is not only

afraid of contact the women but intimated by his state.

Allusions: An allusion has two kinds in this poem:

1- ''John The Baptist'' is a Jewish preacher and a prophet who rejected the

love of Salome. Salome was a dancer. She pleased Herod '' the king'' by

her dancing and as a reward Herod severed the head of the Baptist and

brought it to her on a plate. ( Biblical Allusion)

2-The poet compares the main character of his poem to that of

Shakespeare's Hamlet. He compares himself with Hamlet because of his

hesitation. Then the poet compares Prufrock with Polonius because he is

old and thin. He wants to appear young with the latest clothes. He is unable

to face the problems of life. ( literary Allusion)

3- Lazarus who comes back to life after his death by Christ. Eliot wants to

show that people are spiritually dead in modern age. ( Biblical Allusion)

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Symbols:

1-Prufrock is a symbol of weakness of modern man in a modern society.

2- Michelangelo is a symbol of art and painting.

3- The cat symbolizes the personality of Prufrock’s psychological

statement. ( Prufrock' s risk in doing romantic relationships ).

4-The yellow fog is a symbol of Prufrock's timidity and the dirty

environment of city life.

5-Mermaid: is a symbol of beauty and attractiveness.

Sources:

1-Dante's Inferno: Epigraph of this poem is taken from Dante's inferno.

Guido, the major character in Dante's Inferno, and Prufrock are hopeless

and melancholic.

2-Metaphysical School : The evening looks like a patient etherized upon

a table.

3-Shakespeare's Hamlet: when the poet compares Prufrock with Hamlet

and Polonius.

4-Greek Drama : Profrock is a neoteric and colourless personality.

5-Romantic School: the title of this poem is a love song which refers to the

idea of romance. Prufrock dreams about the mermaids and the sea-wavers.

He has seen mermaids singing to one another. He has seen them riding on

the waves.

Two questions as good gifts for my sweet students:

Q/1: How does the love song of J. Alfred Prufrock reveal Eliot's

consciousness of the modern city?

Q/2: What is the source of Prufrock's imagination when he was beside the

women in a hotel?

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THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK T. S. Eliot

Desires and Hopes

Prufrock spends his life in tea parties and chatter leading only to age

and death. He suffers the pointless round of social activities. He feels the

emptiness of social events '' the evenings, mornings, and afternoons''. His

succession of desires and fears, his longing for beauty and sympathy, are

tinged with irony and mingled with a mocking sense that they will never

be more than private pain. His hopes, aspirations and fears are divorced

from his public life. Though they take the form of desire for love and fear

of contempt, they are, to him, of a personal intensity he cannot expose to

the world.

Time

Time appears as the etherized evening, restless nights, October night,

works and days of hands, minutes, evenings, mornings, afternoons, days

and ways, dusk and sunset. These repeated times assume the 'masquerades'

of decisions and revisions, coffee spoons, tea and cakes and ices,

dooryards, sprinkled streets, novels, teacups and skirts that trail along the

floor. The poem is primarily concerned with the split between Prufrock's

inner and outer life, with his inability to take the chance of living according

to his own feelings and desires, and, hence, with his surrender to time in

the form of an empty round of events.

Internality and Externality

The poem establishes the split between Prufrock's inner states and the

sequence of external events and between prufrock's intense, elusive desires

and the formulated, conventionalised surface he presents to the world.

Although Prufrock displays his feelings through images of the external

world, they remain separate.

Prufrock's despair is largely for the submergence of his inner self, the

'passionate capacity' of which he is aware but which he cannot reveal.

Then the poem shifts between images evoking his external self-the coffee

spoons, the butt-ends, the insect pinned to a wall-and those evoking his

inner desires-the 'arms that are braceleted and white and bare', 'the perfume

from a dress', the 'arms that lie along a table'.

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Symbolism of the Pin

The case of Prufrock’s pin shows how this process works: “My morning

coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, / My necktie rich and modest,

but asserted by a simple pin”. Prufrock adorns himself with a little

ornament intended to mark him as a dandy, at home in the sophisticated

world of the drawing room. Yet soon the pin pierces him: “when I am

formulated, sprawling on a pin”. This line transforms the pin from an object

in the external world to a metaphor for his (interior) feelings. The pin, of

course, is a particularly apt symbol for internalization, because it is a

material object that enters the body with violence.

Three arguments

Prufrock knows the voices, arms, and eyes of the ladies, their organs of

communication. There has never been satisfactory communication

between them and him. They are superior and disdainful, critical and

supercilious.

Irony

The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock is an ironic poem. This poem has ironic

observations and it will never be sung, and that Prufrock will never dare to

express his feelings and emotions. His life is useless, trivial and

insignificant, as are all his actions. His tragedy lis in the fact that he knows

this and that he can see what would give his life meaning, but he lacks the

courage and the initiative to change his way of life and his mediocre

surroundings. He continues to postpone the decision. He is a man of

intellect and humility who frankly confesses the triviality of his existence,

and attempts, unsuccessfully, to decide the significance of his life and to

take up a life with more meaning and depth.

Note:

1-The magic lantern image puts his great fear, public revelation of his

sensitivity, into its most vivid form.

2-Prufrock is compared to a cat, an insect, and a crab. They are

animalistic images.

Walter De La Mare (1873-1956)

He is known as a writer of the imagination. He was fascinated by

children's view of the world, which he saw as more emotionally true,

intuitive, and visionary than adult life allows for. He published more

short stories, novels, poems, and works of non- fiction. He was one of the

poets of the Georgian school that refers to the reign of the king George V.

The poetry of this school came at a point between the classicism of

Victorian poetry and the modernist rejection of sentimentality. The

subjects of the Georgian poetry deal with emotions, aestheticism and

even self-indulgence.

The Listeners by Walter de la Mare

The poet begins with a rhetorical question " Is there anybody there?"

without an answer. The poet speaks of a mysterious character that is

represented by the traveler. The traveler is knocking on the moonlit door

of the lone house in a forest without a response. It means the atmosphere

of this poem is at night. The door is moonlit that is associated with the

supernatural. The moonlit door of the lone house is separated between the

internal world (what is inside the house) and the external world (the

traveler, the horse, the bird, nature and others).

The Traveler's horse champed the grasses of the forest’s ferny floor. The

forest floor is ferny means it is deserted. In the silence of the atmosphere.

A bird flew up out of the turret (small tower) of the house above the

traveler's head. Then he forcefully knocked the door again. Asking the

same rhetorical question but without an answer. The traveler's physical

efforts and attempts (knocking, talking, shouting, calling) are important to

make a contact with those spirits inside the house but no one came or

talked to the traveler when he stood perplexed and still. He has grey eyes

( which refer to his old age).

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A host of phantom listeners dwell in the lone house have three activities

or actions inside the house:

1- Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight to that voice which came

from the traveler that is represented by the world of man.

2- Stood thronging and collecting the faint moonbeams on the dark stair

that go down to the empty hall. They have mysterious nature. The

faint moonbeam is a phantasmagorical character that can enter inside

the house.

3- Hearkening (listening with attention ) in an air stirred and shaken by

the lonely traveler's call. The traveler's call does not provoke

movement in the inhabitants of the house themselves.

Notes:

The Traveler: is a man who comes to see what is inside the lone house in

the forest at night. He is gentle, old, and promise keeper. He is the

horseman who comes out of duty and promises to deliver a message to

the rude dwellers of the deserted house.

The listeners: are a host of phantom listeners, phantom presences, a group

of ghostly beings, a group of sleeping spirits, a large collection of spirits,

the inhabitants of the lone house, the occupants , and the prisoners. They

are mysterious, strange , ambiguous and questionable. Inside the house,

they can stand in the moonlight. They can listen to the human voice

coming from outside. They crowd around the staircase. So they can stand,

listen, throng, and hear.

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The listeners by Walter De la Mare

The listeners are disturbed by the Traveler's lonely voice. The Traveler

recognizes the presence of the listeners and understands that they are not

human beings like him, but something stranger and mysterious. This

recognition happens in his heart. He felt in his heart their strangeness, their

stillness answering his cry. This shows their presence to him. It is a paradox

because stillness can't properly respond to anything.

Then the Traveler smote on the door for a third time, lifted his head, saying

'' Tell them I came, and no one answered, that I kept my word''. No one

answered him when he came to the house, but he kept his promise.

Meanwhile, the horse continues to move here and there, crops the dark turf.

The sky is full of stars but it is leafy by trees. The listeners are stable and

motionless. Through the call or the cry, the Traveler talked, though the dark

deserted house. The call comes from the Traveler. The listeners heard his

foot upon the stirrup of the horse, and the sound of the horseshoes on the

stone as the Traveler goes away. The silence of the forest returns to this

poem when the plunging hoofs were gone.

The Traveler has three aspects in his personality: -

1-He calls out but gets silence in return. It is a call without an answer.

2-He remained still and perplexed when the listeners didn't answer him.

3-He tells them '' I came as I promised''.

The Listeners: -

They are terrified and unanswering hosts. They are cruel, closing their eyes

to moonlight and ears to the call and the cry that are represented by the

Traveler. They are conscious of the Traveler and they are either unable or

unwilling to answer his questions.

Note: -

The Traveler fails to meet the people that are inside the dark deserted

house. It is said that failure and success are two faces of the same coin.

Hard work is not always the way to achieve success and passiveness is not

always the cause of failure, sometimes fate also intervenes.

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W. H. Auden (1907-1973)

Auden was born in 1907. His parents were a doctor and a nurse. He was

educated at oxford university. He was so famous in modernist poetry. He

became one of the central members of the central members of the social

school in modern age. He travelled to some countries such as Germany,

Spain, China, and America. He died in 1973.

Features: -

1-The Political Realm

Some critics state that Auden's involvement in the political realm

encouraged him to explain the relationship between personal or private

experiences and public or social development.

2- Different Sources in Writing Poetry

Auden's poetry is based on some different sources in writing his literary

texts such as philosophy that shows the environment of the individual in

the society and how the environment will influence on the personality of

the individual in the society. It is based on psychology that deals with

Freudian theory of psychanalysis that shows that the individual in life has

three stages : id, ego, and superego.

3. The Idea of the Love

Auden's poetry is also based on the idea of the love in its types that can be

as the answer to modern anxiety and injustice. Auden described the modern

age as '' the age of anxiety'' because the individual has a lot of sicknesses,

sufferings, and pains. So he usually approached this subject through the

examination of inner motives and conflicts.

4-Intellectuality in Auden's Poetry

Auden's poetry often seems intellectual. The center of his poetry is the

inner man who is thinking, feeling, comparing, mocking and believing.

2

The Unknown Citizen

The speaker of The Unknown Citizen begins to construct a satiric portrait

of the average citizen. Auden, first of all, shows that the citizen is referred

to a number ( To JS/ 07 M 378). The state has erected a marble monument

to the unknown citizen, making him a lasting example to all other citizens.

The letters and the numbers undoubtedly mean something to the

bureaucrats in the government.

The citizen was found by the office of statistics as a man without an official

complaint. He is a good man. All the reports that are as a source of

information regarding the '' unknown'' citizen. It is ironic because the

bureau doesn't identify the citizen by name. The individual remains truly

unknown. All the reports showcase that the citizen's conduct and behavior

are agreeable and fine. So he was a saint. It means that he is a good man.

In the old- fashioned sense of the word, a saint is someone who overcomes

great challenges, maintains their personal convictions in the face of intense

adversity, usually stands alone and often perishes while maintaining and

defending their beliefs.

The poem suggests that the citizen's convictions and beliefs are formed not

through individual reflection and personal conviction, but rather by the

greater political, social, moral, and economic institutions that seek and

dictate conformity to a standard of thoughts and way of life. That is why,

he served the Greater Community. The citizen or any citizen can be retired

and died in war.

Then the poet shows that the citizen worked in a factory and never got

fired. It means he was a good worker at that time. H also satisfied his

fellows ( employers) inside the factory '' Fudge Motors Inc.''. It is a large

and powerful company. It contributes the shaping of society and the

extension of the individual's life.

The citizen wasn't a scab ( blackleg) or strange in his opinions and he paid

all his taxes for his union according to the reports of the union. So the report

was sound and safe.

The speaker continues to document the '' normalcy'' of the citizen and

compile a list of the organizations that influence his life, often in very

subtle ways. The social psychology worker's role is to immediately identify

any deviation from the accepted standard and, by implication, correct such

behaviours.

3

Auden's poem attacks such organizations and the society that encourages

individuals to become mere products of such forces rather than individuals

in the true sense.

In line 15, the poet touches on the persuasive and insidious manners in

which many modern organizations work. The advertising industry is built

upon the subtle persuasion that as a citizen one needs whatever product

they are selling. However, it is often the case that one doesn't require that

product in any real sense at all. Then the poet refers to the features of the

''Modern Man''. He should possess a radio, a car, and devices such as

installment plans, allow the reader to easily engage in and identify with the

poetic statement.

The poem explicitly notes how average the citizen is , meeting all the

standards of norms expected of a person of his generation. Such complete

conformity is suggestive of the power that mass organizations possess in

the modern industrial world. The poem addresses the desirability of the

citizen's acceptance of this normalcy. Auden mentions '' eugenics'' that is a

branch of science concerned with improving the human race through the

control of hereditary factors. This single reference touches upon two

aspects central to the poem's theme: the cold and detached '' scientific''

approach organizations employ to collect '' information'' on individuals,

and he controlled conformity such groups desire.

The questions '' freedom and happiness'' are absurd and ridiculous because

the modern society is not concerned with individual notions of freedom

and happiness. The poem suggests and encourages citizens to identify

happiness and freedom by its own terms. In other words, if one possesses

the car, the radio. The Frigidaire, and reflects the desires of the all-powerful

institutions, accepting peace when peace comes. Supporting war when war

comes, then one would naturally be happy and free.

The poem ends on an ironic observation, for if anything had been wrong,

the system and society the poem describes would certainly have not heard.

4

Notes :

1-The citizen would feel unconnected to his surroundings or feel alienated.

The bureaucracy is a hostile environment for modern man to live in, even

though a bureaucrat such as the speaker of this poem would not see it that

way. In Auden's view, the modern man becomes emotionally alienated

from the world that they see and touch every day.

2-Auden's '' The Unknown Citizen'' is a satire on the nature of a society and

ethos that pursues progress in the name of the common good while missing

the point that all good should lead to human happiness.

3-Auden's '' The Unknown Citizen'' is an elegy because it often a

lamentation for the loss of individuality and personal distinction. In

Auden's view, modern man pays the highest sacrifice, even higher than that

paid by those who perished in world war I because he is more than an icon,

he is a statistic.