An Historical Reflection on W.H. Auden's SEPTEMBER 1, 1939

Literature is the reflection of human ideas, feelings and memories. Reading literature is learning from the author’s point of view the reality that surrounds him and how, this reality, makes echoes in his personal life. Therefore in order to understand in a better way his feelings and ideas we must know about the historical context in which the author of a literary piece is or was writing. In the present essay I will present the importance of knowing history in order to understand in a better way literature and how all kind of literature, even poetry, can be use as a pretext in order to teach history. In this essay I will use the W. H. Auden’s ‘September 1, 1939’ as a main example.

First of all, the poem ‘September 1, 1939’ written by W. H. Auden, he is witness of the invasion of Poland and with this, the beginning of the World War II. In his poem, he presents since the very beginning his feelings of fear, hopelessness and death.

“Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.”

In the following stanzas we can see how some historical characters are named, as Martin Luther in the second stanza; His historical importance is because he initiated the Protestant Reformation in which the people of Germany separates of the Roman Catholic church giving as a reason the corruption that was taking place with the indulgences and how the Roman Catholic Church was making money using the salvation of the soul as an explanation. Even doe this was not the only reason, because Germany had a bad relationship with the people of the rest of Europe, especially with the other kingdoms, therefore following the same model of the Anglicans in England, Germany established its own national church. This separation in presented by Auden because Germany was who started the war invading Poland.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

In the classroom we need to be aware of all kind of background that the students may have, because we can say or teach something that can be misunderstood, for example: present all Germans and Protestants as the responsible of the Second World War; prejudice and bullying are, unfortunately, very present in the school. For instance we can have a German or a protestant student and the rest of the class can make fun of him because their ancestors were the “responsible” of millions of dead. Therefore we need to teach this kind of topic in a holistic way, which means that the historical fact should be presented as a piece of history that must be understood as a whole in narration of the human existence; A dark, but not less human, chapter in history.

Secondly it is mentioned the Greek philosopher Thucydides how strict standards of evidence-gathering and analysis in terms of cause and effect without reference to intervention by the gods, manly inspired in ancient philosophical conception of causality. Furthermore he is well know for his contribution in the analysis of political affairs and international relations as in his masterpiece “the History of the Peloponnesian War”, specially in “the Melian dialogue” (Book V) which is the keystone in the study of international relations theory which explains how the relations between countries, in peace or war, are build.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Thucydides and Auden have something in common: their work is timeless; ‘September 1, 1939’ is still contemporaneous because of the wars that are taking place in different parts of the world and “the Melian dialogue” is still used to analyze modern political relations. As the philosopher mentions once: “I (Thucydides) have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time”

As far I just had analyze two of three of the nine stanzas that the poem has and so far I had to read texts in order to comprehend the poem, as Historical texts, philosophical pieces of work, other poems in order to compare. This exercise can be emulated in the classroom with very fruitful results.

We need to be conscious about the importance of all kinds of literature because as Tzvetan Todorov wrote once: “Like philosophy and like the humanities, literature is made of thought and knowledge about the psychic and social world in which we live. The reality that literature aims to understand is, simply—yet, at the same time, nothing is more complex—human experience” . This human experience must be contextualized with historical facts, in order to create a solid bound between the reader and the writer.

In an educational perspective, teaching literature in general is imperative not just because the language that the students can acquire but also, as Todorov mentions “all this literary works, helped me to discover unknown dimensions of the world, they moved me profoundly, and they made me think”. In my personal experience I can say that W. H. Auden’s ‘September 1, 1939’ is very helpful to understand in a better way the facts that happened at the beginning of the World War II and also how the author felt about it; His feeling will live forever thanks to this poem and the example of an average citizen of England will be maintained as an example of how terrible the war is.

Bibliography:

-Todorov, Tzvetan: “What Is Literature?” New Literary History 5, no. 1 (1973). New Literary History, 2007

-Ganss, Henry. "Martin Luther." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 9. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. 4 Dec. 2009 .

-Hooker, Richard. “Thucydides” www.wsu.edu/~dee/GREECE/THUCY.HTM 1996- dic 2009.

-Thucydides “Thucydides ‘s quotations” http://thinkexist.com/quotes/thucydides/