Т.С.Элиот. КОРИОЛАН - Eliot, T. S. Coriolan

Eliot, T. S. Coriolan

 I - Triumphal March

Stone, bronze, stone, steel, stone, oakleaves, horses' heels
Over the paving.
And the flags. And the trumpets. And so many eagles.
How many? Count them. And such a press of people.
We hardly knew ourselves that day, or knew the city.
That is the way to the temple, and we so many crowding the way.
So many waiting, how many waiting? what did it matter, on such a day?
Are they coming? No, not yet. You can see some eagles.
And hear the trumpets
Here they come. Is he coming?
The natural life of our Ego is a perceiving.
We can wait with our stools and our sausages.
What comes first? Can you see? Tell us. It is

5,800,000 rifles and carbines,
102,000 machine guns,
28,000 trench mortars,
53,000 field and heavy guns,
I can't tell how many projectiles, mines and fuses,
13,000 aeroplanes,
24,000 aeroplanes engines,
50,000 ammunition wagons,
now 55,000 army wagons,
11,000 field kitchens,
1,150 field bakeries.

What a time it took. Will it be he now? No,
Those are the golf club captains, these the Scouts,
And now the Société gymnastique de Poissy
And now comes the Mayor and the Liverymen. Look
There he is now, look:
There is no interrogation in his eyes
Or in the hands, quiet over the horses neck,
And the eyes watchful, waiting, perceiving, indifferent.
O hidden under the dove's wing, hidden in the turtle's breast,
Under the palmtree at noon, under the running water
At the still point of the turning world. O hidden.

Now they go up to the temple. Then the sacrifice.
Now come the virgins bearing urns, urns containing
Dust
Dust
Dust of dust, and now
Stone, bronze, stone, steel, stone, oakleaves, horses' heels over the paving.

This is all we could see. But how many eagles! And how many trumpets!
(And Easter Day, we didn't get to the country,
So we took young Cyril ti church. And they rang a bell
And he said right out loud, crumpets)
Don't throw away that sausage,
It'll come handy. He's artful. Please will you
Give us a light?
Light
Light
Et les soldats faisaient la haie? ILS LA FAISAIENT.

II Difficulties of a Statesman

CRY what shall I cry?
All flesh is grass: comprehending
The Companions of the Bath, the Knights of the British Empire, the Cavaliers,
O Cavaliers! of the Legion of Honour,
The Order of the Black Eagle (1st and 2nd class) ,
And the Order of the Rising Sun.
Cry cry what shall I cry?
The first thing to do is to form the committees:
The consultative councils, the standing committees committees and sub-committees
One secretary will do for several committees.
What shall I cry?

Arthur Edward Cyril Parker is appointed telephone operator
At a salary of one pound ten a week rising by annual increments of fiveshillings
 To two pounds ten a week; with a bonus of thirty shillings at Christmas
And one week’s leave a year.
A committee has been appointed to nominate a commission of engineers
To consider the Water Supply.
A commission is appointed
For Public Works, chiefly the question of rebuilding the fortifications.
A commission is appointed
To confer with a Volscian commission
About perpetual peace: the fletchers and javelin-makers and smiths
Have appointed a joint committee to protest against the reduction of orders.
Meanwhile the guards shake dice on the marches
And the frogs (O Mantuan) croak in the marshes.
Fireflies flare against the faint sheet lightning
What shall I cry?
Mother mother
Here is the row of family portraits, dingy busts, all looking remarkablyRoman,
Remarkably like each other, lit up successively by the flare
Of a sweaty torchbearer, yawning.

O hidden under the... Hidden under the... Where the dove’s foot rested andlocked for a moment,
A still moment, repose of noon, set under the upper branches of noon’s widest tree
Under the breast feather stirred by the small wind after noon
There the cyclamen spreads its wings, there the clematis droops over the lintel,
O mother (not among these busts, all correctly inscribed)
I a tired head among these heads
Necks strong to bear them
Noses strong to break the wind
Mother
May we not be some time, almost now, together,
If the mactations, immolations, oblations, impetrations,
Are now observed
May we not be
O hidden
Hidden in the stillness of noon, in the silent croaking night.
Come with the sweep of the little bat’s wing, with the small flare of thefirefly or lightning bug,
‘Rising and falling, crowned with dust’, the small creatures,
The small creatures chirp thinly through the dust, through the night.
O mother
What shall I cry?
We demand a committee, a representative committee, a committee of investigation
RESIGN RESIGN RESIGN

Томас Стернз Элиот. КОРИОЛАН

      1931-1932 

I. ТРИУМФАЛЬНЫЙ МАРШ

      Камень, бронза, камень, сталь, камень, лавры, 
      звон подков 
      По мостовой. 
      И знамена. И фанфары. И столько орлов. 
      Сколько? Сочти. И такая давка. 
      В этот день мы не узнавали себя, не узнавали 
      Города. 
      Столько народу на этой дороге, к храму приводит 
      эта дорога. 
      Столько ждущих. Сколько ждущих? Не все ли 
      равно, если столько много. 
      Идут? Пока нет еще. Только вдали орлы. Да еще 
      фанфары 
      Вот они. Наконец. А он? 
      Природное бодрствование нашего Я есть восприятие. 
      Мы можем ждать на стульях, держа сосиски. 
      Что прежде всего? Ты видишь? Это 
      5 800 000 винтовок и карабинов 
      102 000 пулеметов, 
      28 000 минометов, 
      53 000 полевых и тяжелых орудий, 
      Неизвестно, сколько снарядов, мин и взрывателей 
      13 000 аэропланов 
      24 000 авиационных моторов 
      50 000 артиллерийских упряжек, 
      потом 55 000 интендантских фур, 
      11 000 полевых кухонь, 
      1 150 полевых пекарен. 

      Сколько же все это длится. Не видно его? Нет, 
      Идут капитаны гольф-клуба, а это скауты, 
      А вот societe gymnastique de Poissy {*}, 
      {* Гимнастическое общество Пуасси (франц.).} 
      А вот и лорд-мэр с членами гильдии. Вон, 
      Смотри, это он, смотри: 
      Нет вопросительности в глазах 
      И в руках застывших над гривой коня, 
      Но в глазах ожидание, пристальность, 
      воспринимание, безразличие. 
      О скрытое под крылом голубя, скрытое в груди 
      черепахи, 
      Под пальмой в полдень, под бегущей водой 
      В недвижный миг текучего мира. О скрытое. 
      Вот они направляются к храму. Приносят жертву. 
      Вот девственницы выходят с урнами, в этих урнах 
      Прах 
      Прах 
      Прах праха, и снова 
      Камень, бронза, камень, сталь, камень, лавры, 
      звон подков 
      По мостовой. 

      Вот все, что мы видели. Но сколько орлов! 
      И сколько фанфар! 
      (На Пасху мы не поехали за город и потому отвели 
      Маленького Сирила в церковь. Он услыхал 
      колокольчик 
      И громко сказал: разносчик.) 
      Не бросай сосиску, 
      Она еще пригодится. Он ловкий. Простите, 
      Нет ли у вас огонька? 
      Огонь 
      Огонь 
      Et les soldats faisaent la haie? ILS LA FAISAENT {*}. 
      {* Солдаты образовали кордон? Да. (франц.).} 

II. МУКИ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОГО МУЖА

      Возвещай что мне возвещать! 
      Всякая плоть - трава, включая 
      Награжденных Орденом Бани, Рыцарей 
      Британской Империи, Кавалеров, 
      О! Кавалеров! Ордена Почетного Легиона, 
      Ордена Черного Орла (I и II класса) 
      И Ордена Восходящего Солнца. 
      Возвещай возвещай что мне возвещать! 
      Первым делом создать комитеты: 
      Консультативные, постоянные, тайные советы, 
      комиссии, комитеты и подкомитеты 
      Одного министра хватает на многие комитеты. 
      Что мне возвещать? 
      Артур Эдвард Сирил Паркер назначен телефонистом 
      С окладом фунт десять шиллингов в неделю, 
      за год службы надбавка пять шиллингов 
      До предела два фунта десять; к Рождеству 
      наградных тридцать шиллингов 
      Плюс недельный отпуск годично. 
      Образован комитет для назначения инженерной 
      комиссии 
      По вопросу о Водоснабжении 
      Создана комиссия 
      Общественных Работ, главным образом для 
      перестройки фортификаций. 
      Создана комиссия 
      Для переговоров с комиссией вольсков 
      О вечном мире: оружейники и кузнецы 
      Избрали Объединенный комитет протеста против 
      сокращения заказов. 
      Меж тем стража играет в кости при всех воротах, 
      А лягушки (О Мантуанец) квакают мирно в болотах 
      Вспыхивают на миг светляки при свете зарницы 
      А что возвещать? 
      О мать родная 
      Вот ряд семейных портретов, тусклых бюстов, все 
      поразительно римские 
      Поразительно схожие между собой, одного 
      за другим освещает 
      Потный зевающий факельщик. 
      О скрытое под... Скрытое под... 
      Где лапка голубя опустилась и сжала на миг, 
      На недвижный миг отдыха в полдень, ветку 
      под верхними ветками полуденного тенистого дерева 
      Под перышком на груди, что вздрогнуло 
      от послеполуденного дуновенья 
      Там цикламен расправляет крылья, там вьюнок 
      свисает над дверью 
      О родная (нет среди этих бюстов, на всех есть 
      точные надписи) 
      Я усталая голова среди этих голов 
      Крепких шей, способных носить их 
      Крепких носов, рассекающих воздух 
      Родная 
      Да не будет нас, чтобы скоро, чуть не сейчас же, 
      вместе, 
      Если закланья, посвященья, приношенья, моленья 
      Соблюдены 
      Да не будет нас 
      О скрытое 
      Скрытое в недвижном полудне, в тихой 
      квакающей ночи. 
      Приходят, ударив крылом, как летучая мышь, 
      мерцая, словно светляк, 
      "Возвышаясь и падая, увенчаны прахом", малые 
      существа, 
      Малые существа тонко стрекочут во прахе, в ночи 
      О родная 
      Что мне возвещать? 
      Мы требуем комиссии, представительной 
      комиссии, комиссии по расследованию 
      ОТСТАВКА ОТСТАВКА ОТСТАВКА 

      Перевод А. Сергеева 

http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw9.html

Lou Andreas-Salomé "À la douleur"

Qui peut te fuir une fois saisi par toi,
Quand tu le fixes de ton regard ténébreux ?
Je ne m’enfuirai pas quand tu m’auras saisie.
Je ne croirai jamais que tu ne fais que détruire.
Je le sais, toute vie est par toi traversée.
Rien n’existe ici-bas qu’un jour tu ne le touches.
La vie sans toi, certes, elle serait belle,
Mais toi aussi, douleur, mérites qu’on te vive.
Non, tu n’es pas un fantôme de la nuit,
Tu viens rappeler à l’âme qu’elle est forte,
C’est le combat qui a rendu grand les plus grands,
- Le combat vers un but, par de durs chemins.
Si donc, douleur, au lieu de bonheur et de plaisir
Tu peux me donner l’Unique, la vraie grandeur,
Alors, viens et laisse-nous lutter corps à corps,
Oui, viens, notre lutte fût-elle mortelle.
Pénètre au plus profond de mon cœur
Et creuse au plus profond de ma vie,
Ôte-moi le rêve de l’illusion et du bonheur,
Ôte-moi tout ce qui ne valait pas les aspirations infinies.
Tu ne remportes pas sur l’homme la dernière victoire,
Même s’il offre sa poitrine à tes coups,
Même s’il tombe mortellement blessé –
- Tu es le socle où repose la grandeur de l’esprit.

W.H.Auden. The Age of anxiety. Title page.

 Время тревоги

Барочная эклога

"Полон слез тот день,
Когда восстанет из праха
Чтобы быть осужденным, человек."

 Фома Челанский

              (День гнева)

Джону Бетжману

Paysage moralise

W. H. Auden

PAYSAGE MORALISE

Hearing of harvests rotting in the valleys,
Seeing at end of street the barren mountains,
Round corners coming suddenly on water,
Knowing them shipwrecked who were launched for islands,
We honour founders of these starving cities
Whose honour is the image of our sorrow,

Which cannot see its likeness in their sorrow
That brought them desperate to the brink of valleys;
Dreaming of evening walks through learned cities
They reined their violent horses on the mountains,
Those fields like ships to castaways on islands,
Visions of green to them who craved for water.

They built by rivers and at night the water
Running past windows comforted their sorrow;
Each in his little bed conceived of islands
Where every day was dancing in the valleys
And all the green trees blossomed on the mountains,
Where love was innocent, being far from cities.

But dawn came back and they were still in cities;
No marvellous creature rose up from the water;
There was still gold and silver in the mountains
But hunger was a more immediate sorrow,
Although to moping villagers in valleys
Some waving pilgrims were describing islands …

‘The gods,’ they promised, ‘visit us from islands,
Are stalking, head-up, lovely, through our cities;
Now is the time to leave your wretched valleys
And sail with them across the lime-green water,
Sitting at their white sides, forget your sorrow,
The shadow cast across your lives by mountains.’

So many, doubtful, perished in the mountains,
Climbing up crags to get a view of islands,
So many, fearful, took with them their sorrow
Which stayed them when they reached unhappy cities,
So many, careless, dived and drowned in water,
So many, wretched, would not leave their valleys.

It is our sorrow. Shall it melt? Then water
Would gush, flush, green these mountains and these valleys,
And we rebuild our cities, not dream of islands.

From Paola Marchetti 'Auden landscapes'

W. H. Auden "There is No Change of Place"

W. H. Auden  "There is No Change of Place"

Who will endure
Heat of day and winter danger,
Journey from one place to another,
Nor be content to lie
Till evening upon headland over bay,
Between the land and sea
Or smoking wait till hour of food,
Leaning on chained-up gate
At edge of wood?

Metals run,
Burnished or rusty in the sun,
From town to town,
And signals all along are down;
Yet nothing passes
But envelopes between these places,
Snatched at the gate and panting read indoors,
And first spring flowers arriving smashed,
Disaster stammered over wires,
And pity flashed.
For should professional traveller come,
Asked at the fireside he is dumb,
Declining with a secret smile,
And all the while
Conjectures on our maps grow stranger
And threaten danger.

There is no change of place:
No one will ever know
For what conversion brilliant capital is waiting,
What ugly feast may village band be celebrating;
For no one goes
Further than railhead or the ends of piers,
Will neither go nor send his son
Further through foothills than the rotting stack
Where gaitered gamekeeper with dog and gun
Will shout ‘Turn back’.

J. Fuller
'No Change of Place'  is based on the paradox that the improved communications of modern industrial society have in fact brought about a state of affairs where no one can any longer communicate except at a distance. Emotional energy is expended on the anticipation of love letters not on human contact, spring flowers arrive smashed, and the impersonality of the telephone reduces human sympathy to a merely functional response (pity is 'flashed', not, I think, like a morse
signal, but like a pass or badge: it has become a shibboleth).
Auden intends the images in lines 4--9 to suggest, not ennui or anxiety, but a kind of vegetative calm. The greater perception and understanding of life that will result from 'journey from one place to another' is simply not being risked: nothing better is known. The mood of Eliot's Prufrock is strongly present in this stanza. In the third stanza, the 'professional traveller' is contrasted with those
suffering from accidie: by making the journey, he has discovered some truth about life which they have not. He has nothing to say to them which they would understand, and their maps seem to bear no relationship to any reality they know (thus perhaps the professional traveller represents the writer, and maps represent modern literature?).
The final stanza develops this theme by indicating that the knowledge which the 'professional traveller' may have acquired has something to do with a possible change of social forms. The capital is waiting for conversion (perhaps this is a financial pun, too), but since nobody travels, nobody finds out: 'no one goes/Further than railhead' (cf. 'had they pushed the rail/Some stations nearer' in 'The Secret Agent'). The hint of decadence in the capital ('brilliant') is matched by corruption in the shires. The village band celebrates the 'ugly feast' of an aristocracy whose hirelings protect their privileges by force ('gaitered gamekeeper with dog and gun'). The point of the poem is simple, but decisively and dramatically put: the retreat from life lived at first hand conspires to perpetuate the stagnation and corruption of political life.

"Under Which Lyre" by W.H. Auden and poem's analysis

Under Which Lyre
A Reactionary Tract for the Times

(Phi Beta Kappa Poem, Harvard, 1946)
W. H. Auden

Ares at last has quit the field,
The bloodstains on the bushes yield
To seeping showers,
And in their convalescent state
The fractured towns associate
With summer flowers.

Encamped upon the college plain
Raw veterans already train
As freshman forces;
Instructors with sarcastic tongue
Shepherd the battle-weary young
Through basic courses.

Among bewildering appliances
For mastering the arts and sciences
They stroll or run,
And nerves that steeled themselves to slaughter
Are shot to pieces by the shorter
Poems of Donne.

Professors back from secret missions
Resume their proper eruditions,
Though some regret it;
They liked their dictaphones a lot,
T hey met some big wheels, and do not
Let you forget it.

But Zeus' inscrutable decree
Permits the will-to-disagree
To be pandemic,
Ordains that vaudeville shall preach
And every commencement speech
Be a polemic.

Let Ares doze, that other war
Is instantly declared once more
'Twixt those who follow
Precocious Hermes all the way
And those who without qualms obey
Pompous Apollo.

Brutal like all Olympic games,
Though fought with smiles and Christian names
And less dramatic,
This dialectic strife between
The civil gods is just as mean,
And more fanatic.

What high immortals do in mirth
Is life and death on Middle Earth;
Their a-historic
Antipathy forever gripes
All ages and somatic types,
The sophomoric

Who face the future's darkest hints
With giggles or with prairie squints
As stout as Cortez,
And those who like myself turn pale
As we approach with ragged sail
The fattening forties.

The sons of Hermes love to play
And only do their best when they
Are told they oughtn't;
Apollo's children never shrink
From boring jobs but have to think
Their work important.

Related by antithesis,
A compromise between us is
Impossible;
Respect perhaps but friendship never:
Falstaff the fool confronts forever
The prig Prince Hal.

If he would leave the self alone,
Apollo's welcome to the throne,
Fasces and falcons;
He loves to rule, has always done it;
The earth would soon, did Hermes run it,
Be like the Balkans.

But jealous of our god of dreams,
His common-sense in secret schemes
To rule the heart;
Unable to invent the lyre,
Creates with simulated fire
Official art.

And when he occupies a college,
Truth is replaced by Useful Knowledge;
He pays particular
Attention to Commercial Thought,
Public Relations, Hygiene, Sport,
In his curricula.

Athletic, extrovert and crude,
For him, to work in solitude
Is the offence,
The goal a populous Nirvana:
His shield bears this device: Mens sana
Qui mal y pense.

Today his arms, we must confess,
From Right to Left have met success,
His banners wave
From Yale to Princeton, and the news
From Broadway to the Book Reviews
Is very grave.

His radio Homers all day long
In over-Whitmanated song
That does not scan,
With adjectives laid end to end,
Extol the doughnut and commend
The Common Man.

His, too, each homely lyric thing
On sport or spousal love or spring
Or dogs or dusters,
Invented by some court-house bard
For recitation by the yard
In filibusters.

To him ascend the prize orations
And sets of fugal variations
On some folk-ballad,
While dietitians sacrifice
A glass of prune-juice or a nice
Marsh-mallow salad.

Charged with his compound of sensational
Sex plus some undenominational
Religious matter,
Enormous novels by co-eds
Rain down on our defenceless heads
Till our teeth chatter.

In fake Hermetic uniforms
Behind our battle-line, in swarms
That keep alighting,
His existentialists declare
That they are in complete despair,
Yet go on writing.

No matter; He shall be defied;
White Aphrodite is on our side:
What though his threat
To organize us grow more critical?
Zeus willing, we, the unpolitical,
Shall beat him yet.

Lone scholars, sniping from the walls
Of learned periodicals,
Our facts defend,
Our intellectual marines,
Landing in little magazines
Capture a trend. By night our student Underground
At cocktail parties whisper round
From ear to ear;
Fat figures in the public eye
Collapse next morning, ambushed by
Some witty sneer.

In our morale must lie our strength:
So, that we may behold at length
Routed Apollo's
Battalions melt away like fog,
Keep well the Hermetic Decalogue,
Which runs as follows:
Thou shalt not do as the dean pleases,
Thou shalt not write thy doctor's thesis
On education,
Thou shalt not worship projects nor
Shalt thou or thine bow down before
Administration.

Thou shalt not answer questionnaires
Or quizzes upon World-Affairs,
Nor with compliance
Take any test. Thou shalt not sit
With statisticians nor commit
A social science.

Thou shalt not be on friendly terms
With guys in advertising firms,
Nor speak with such
As read the Bible for its prose,
Nor, above all, make love to those
Who wash too much.

Thou shalt not live within thy means
Nor on plain water and raw greens.
If thou must choose
Between the chances, choose the odd;
Read The New Yorker, trust in God;
And take short views.

“Under Which Lyre” Or the Angry Poet Turned Prophet, Almost

This poem of W. H. Auden was selected because the writer has gone through several phases of life comparable to its author. Auden has here given us four types of men, those belonging to Ares, Zeus, Apollo and Hermes. Ares represents war and the war-like man—military, pugilistic and anti- Gandhian. Zeus represents the universal outlook; Hermes the adventurers the doers, the radicals in every field; and Apollo the forces of law and order without which perhaps any society might be impossible.

The observance here is not only may Auden be “right” but he is in accord, if not under the influence of the great psychologist, Karl Jung and this is very definitely a “Jungian” poem. Auden essays to champion Hermes here but he remains an Apollonian all the while in that it is he who must do the telling, the advising, even the commanding. This is the “Angry Young Man.” Auden himself had been a believer in astrology and the occult, but in his later years followed, without wearing, the high-church clerical collar; proving that he was never entirely free from Apollonian influences which he derides here. This is not a poem of which he is proud today.

In this he seems to be traveling in the way of Wordsworth. But a comparative with Tennyson at this point is, perhaps, in order. Tennyson essayed prophecy in his “Lockley Hall” poems. They took on a Apollonian form, but they prophesied the “future.” This is Hermetic-prophecy. On the other hand, Auden sees universally in “Under Which Lyre” and instead of looking to the future (Hermetic prophecy) he summarizes the social universe as it probably was, is and will be, and in this sense the poem is Jovetic and not Hermetic. 

The structure is a six-line stanza, a-a-c-b-b-c. The a- and b- lines are Iambic tetrameter, and the c- lines double spondees. This reminds one of the Tango and it is mentioned because Tennyson poetry arose in the age of the Waltz and our North Beach poetry is associated with Jazz. The Tango, while utilized in the ball-room is one of restricted space and free movements whereas the Waltz is one of free space and restricted movements. One can read this work seated at a table, without trying a dance or musical interpretation. Indeed it would sound well on a soap-box or any kind of oratory.

Although this work appears in Untermeyer, it was not selected until “The Selected Poetry of Auden” was read. Here one finds “In Memory of Sigmund Freud” which is not Apollonian at all and which reveals that Auden was either a student of modern psychology or an admirer of psychologists.

If the writer were not a follower of Hermes he might have selected this instead. The work has a sub-title “A Reactionary Tract for the Times.” The “Times” is an elegant newspaper, which prints news, factual news, and although strictly Apollonian and basically Tory, it is not guilty of many of the sins described in the verses to follow. It is exceedingly proper and perhaps would publish articles decrying the new commercial dictums which seem to control our world.

The opening lines are “Ares at last has quit the field.” Intentionally or not it describes what has been happening socially after our wars—in this case it would apply equally to the periods after World Wars I, and II; but if one looks at history on a broader basis, substantially the same has happened elsewhere and at other times.

The world is a university in which people are to be trained “For mastering the arts and sciences” which clearly implies not only academic education but a complete apprenticeship for the operation of a gadgeted industry “Among bewildering appliances”—opening of third stanza. Though they did not invent them, the Apollonians clearly want to control them—to compensate for their not having invented—and to reinforce this control by a moral matrix which the others (the Hermetics) certainly did not invent. So we have:

“… And nerves that steeled themselves at slaughter
Are shot to pieces by the shorter
Poems of Donne.”

Thus we have a world now divided between the cooperationists or followers of Hermes, and the well-ordered people, followers of Apollo who obtain the reins largely because they have been so trained. And if one studies poetry today, there is a great demarcation between the “proper” people who look upon the Elizabethan Shakespeare as their grandest, and those teeming with some sort of protest, who look to Donne. Donne is actually the poet of inventors, whether in science, art, literature or any field of endeavor. He is the daring man.

The fourth stanza brings:

“Professors back from secret missions
Resume their proper eruditions,…”

During the war one might have been expected either to quote or to fulfill high ideals—to “Win the war to end war;” “To save the World for Democracy;” to end all tyranny. Or one might have taken part in some revolutionary or underground movement against the enemy. This is to become “unthinkable” now. That sort of thing does not belong in a well-ordered Tory, Apollonian world.

The professor, during the War, did not always have command over bodies of men; but they did exert power and they cannot forget it. 

“… They liked their dictaphones a lot,
They met some big wheels and do not
Let you forget it.”

So the scions of Apollo must avail themselves of the inventions of the followers of Hermes. But
they also recognize that there is a power beyond them:

“But Zeus’ inscrutable decree
Permits the will to disagree …”

In previous ages Zeus, a “real”-Jungian archetype, and not necessarily either the same or different from an imagined Father-God, has introduced an inexorable democracy, especially in politics, so we have a strange world with a revealed or ordered democracy, not one which arose by its own
revolution or reform.

Stanza 6 re-presents the original theme and more clearly:

“Let Ares doze, that other war
Is instantly declared once more

‘Twixt those who follow
Precocious Hermes all the way
And those who without qualms obey
Pompous Apollo.”

This is much more than the strife between Conservative and Liberal; or between Tory politicians and Laborites. It is a conflict between two ways of life. One can see it in the title “Science and Sanity”, a book presumably written by Count Korzybski claiming to be a champion of the Hermes people. The book was attacked by the scientists who are followers of Hermes and today, actual, general Semantics, theoretically pioneered by Korzybski, is actually in the hands of the followers of Apollo. One reads in their literature articles by Mortimer Adler, certainly the leader of the intellectual Apollonians in this region; and none by Physicists, Chemists or “Natural Philosophers.”
This same point is brought out much more clearly in this month’s “Scientific American” with its long review on what are called “the two cultures.” In the first group are the creative spirits: artists, technologians, scientists, craftsmen, inventors; in the second group the social scientists, metaphysicians, newspaper men, advertisers, salesmen, etc. The two groups fit in exactly with Auden’s prototypes.

So in Stanza 7 we have:

“… This dialectic strife between
The civil gods is just as mean,
And more fanatic.”

Stanzas 8 and 9 bring out what Auden calls the sophomoric type. The suggestion is that when we approach the forties in our lives, there is a danger of becoming fat, prosperous and superficial— though it is then we hold the reins of power perhaps more than at any other age. In contrast (Stanza 10):

“The sons of Hermes love to play,
And only do their best when they
Are told they oughtn’t;
Apollo’s children never shrink
From boring jobs but have to think
Their work important.

So we have the stuffed shirt, the civil servant, the professional classes. Incidentally this stanza is very English in the sense that its language is that of the “average man.” Stanza 11 boldly asserts this division among us:

“… A compromise between us is
Impossible;
Respect perhaps but friendship never:…”

In Stanza 12 Shaw is mentioned as a Hermes man and here Auden includes the Phi-Beta-Kappas, the cream of the intellectuals, which would suggest the type winning Noble prizes, etc. It reminds one of Shaw’s statement that he felt he might be able to convert a banker to socialism, but a banker’s clerk, never.
Yet Auden is quite aware of the fallacies and weaknesses of the scions of Hermes, for

“… The earth would soon, did Hermes run it,
Be like the Balkans.” (Stanza 13)

One is reminded here of the quasi-political life of some of our physicists. Adventurous people
do not adhere to law, order, stability.

On the other hand the followers of Apollo are always expressing their “we’s” in taking credit and
“… Unable to invent the lyre,
Creates with simulated fire

Official art. (Stanza 14)

This theme is then further developed where we see the Extrovert in power, offering us all the orthodoxies. This is what may be called “the adjective-charm” type, responsible for the extinction of morals in our TV and radio contests, in the false reports about Laos and in the loss of foreign markets, manufacturing “problems,” but keeping the world in excitement, who has

“His radio Homers all day long
In over-Whitmanated song
That does not scan,
With adjectives laid end to end,
Extol the doughnut and commend
The Common Man.” (Stanza 16)

Here one can substitute bread, cosmetics, soap, cigarette and the false avoidance of the “ordinary.”
Or the over-abuse of words like “best,” “mild,” “flavor,” and other terms. This theme is developed in detail in the following stanzas, where Apollonians, with his “thinking man’s tastes” comes

“In fake Hermetic uniforms
Behind our battle-line, in swamps
That keep alighting.
His existentialists declare
That they are in complete despair
Yet go on writing.”

This naturally leads to revolts among students, among beatniks, among the dissatisfied generally,so

“By night our student Underground
At cocktail parties whisper round
From ear to ear;

Fat figures in the public eye
Collapse next morning, ambushed by
Some witty sneer.” (Stanza 23)

Or today by headlines in the newspaper or radio, mostly by the very confreres of the guilty parties, the Apollonian claiming credit for exposing other Apollonian. So Auden challenges this whole regime by stating:

“In our morale must lie our strength
So, that we may behold at length
Routed Apollo’s
Battalions melt away like fog,…"

This, of course, usually does not happen. But he proposes in that stanza “the Hermetic Decalogue” which ends the poem. 

The last four stanzas embody the negative commandments for the Hermetic “brotherhood.” They definitely set forth the two classes of persons proposed above, but separate them now by specific details. Here only the end of Stanza 26 and the beginning of Stanza 27 are repeated, because they are, in the universals or Jovetic sense, true of the present moment:

“… Thou shalt not sit
With statisticians nor commit
A social science.
“Thou shalt not be on friendly terms
With guys in advertising firms,…”

 

The present valor of Red China is one based on a system of pseudo-statistics already established by Apollonians in the West and so the liars are protected because the matrix of their methods has already been established by their worst foes, or, what has been put in forensic language Teucer duce (???). The social scientists do not have a fixed but have movable matrices and dialectic bases, herenow and this gives our very “enemies” opportunities which they would never have if the Hermetic people were in the saddle.
 

This comes to the low-high point in the advertising profession of the day as stated before. The rest of the poem is specific but not basic.

In speaking to two people who have known Auden they consider that he was almost our greatest esthete and greatest prophet—both in the Hermetic and Jovetic sense, and this poem is an example of it. In view of all the pseudo-news and exposures of the moment, it may be that “Under Which Lyre” will go down in history as a tremendous contribution of the day.

More:

 

http://harvardmagazine.com/2007/11/a-poets-warning.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZE_bhSUgG8