Submitted: 13th April 2010
Course: Poetry of the 20th Century (ENGL 361)
Written during a period of war and unrest, both H.D’s “The Walls Do Not Fall” and W.H. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” suggest that the artist figure – more specifically the poet – should embody both a passive attitude and defiant one in times of crisis and war. It is only when these two attitudes successfully coalesce that the value of art can be justified and preserved in an ever-changing world. This essay will discuss the recurring motif of ‘framing’ that H.D. and Auden use to represent the passivity and defiance of the poet. Through the motif of framing, H.D. and Auden argue that the task of the poet is to work both within and beyond this frame – to ensure the metamorphosis of poetry while at the same time, to protect it from censorship.
The detached observer in both poems is both poems is symbolic of the passive attitude that the poet embodies in order to protect the realm of poetry form censorship.
In “The Walls Do Not Fall”, this passive-active complex is first and foremost played out in its poetic form. The poem is deceptively easy to read at first since the stanzas are constricted to two or three lines each. Visually, Sarah H.S. Graham suggests that this produces a “determination of purpose, of ideas contained within a grid (162). Yet, she also argues that the lack of end-stops convey H.D.’s “reluctance to compartmentalize her response into groups of lines or ideas” (Graham, 164). Thus, like the superficial poetic structure, passivity only provides a frame within which lies H.D.’s reluctance to conform to dominant traditions. While observing the material rubble in the museum before her, the speaker comments offhandedly that “Pompeii has nothing to teach us” (31). This perhaps counters the general perception that one can ‘learn’ from history – instead, H.D. argues that the destruction of the past doesn’t prevent the events in history. “Samuel” (24) was a figure from the Christian tradition; “Pompeii (31) was a Roman city; the “Pythian” (27) was a Greek site. These figures or places seem to have very little in common aside for the fact that they are being displayed in a museum, thus suggesting that the museum is a site where there is an absence of boundaries and where all traditions can co-exist without judgment. The “Apocryphal fire” (37) offers an even more ambiguous example. The ‘apocrypha’ refers to printed texts in the bible that are perceived to be outside of the cyclical canon (OED). In sharing a space with main-stream Christian literature without being main-stream itself, the apocrypha thus disturbs the selective boundary of the Bible. Another way by which boundaries are disturbed is the anti-heroic stance of the poem. Being merely mentioned, legendary figures such as Thoth, Hermes and Caduceus are secondary in their importance to the “shellfish” (94) and the “worm” (152) in the poem, the latter two occupying their own sections in the poem. The speaker’s ability to challenge these boundaries lies in her assumption of the detached persona. Because the detached observer can supposedly view and write about everything without judgment, she is inherently devoid of boundaries. It is this that enables her – the poet – to enter and exit the many boundaries in human cultural history with such fluidity. This fluidity is implied I the imagery of the ‘worm’. In the same way that the worm meanders through the woods to find “nourishment” (177), the poet’s inspiration comes from her ability to meander through the course of human cultural history to dig up materials that have been undermined by the dominant culture.
In a similar vein to “The Walls Do Not Fall”, passivity in “Musée des Beaux Arts” is employed to protect poetry from censorship. However, Auden also argues that there is a difference between ignorance and detachment, as implied in the contrast between the old masters and the children in the poem. While the latter are oblivious to suffering, the aged are waiting for that miraculous birth despite knowing that this birth only feeds in the continuity of history. Detachment in the poem is thus part of a conscious intellectual endeavor. It is because of this insight that the old masters are able to avoid the inflation of human suffering in their art. Thus, the old masters “reveren[ce]” and “passion” (6) should not be understood in religious terms, but in aesthetic terms. Like the old masters, the speaker’s claim that poetry is free of religious suggestion enables him to mingle Christian with Greek imageries. By doing so, the speaker implies that the aesthetics of suffering, as opposed to the moral of suffering, is the one thing that connects history, religion and mythologies.
In conjunction with the idea of the detached observer is that of metamorphosis. In “The Walls Do Not Fall”, the metamorphosis of the shellfish is a metaphor for the ‘modernization’ of the poet and poetry. The shellfish works both within and against the idea of framing. The shellfish, in its abode, is protected from the aggression of the outside world. The “sea-shell” (89) renders our conventional understanding of power obsolete. Both the “limitless/ocean-weight” (122-123) and the brawny “whale” (133) are obvious choices for the representation of power, yet they can neither “crack” (124) nor “digest” (134) the sea-shell. This production enables the shellfish to engage in an amorphous process whereby the “pearl-of-great price” (143) is begotten. Through the shellfish imagery,, H.D. exemplifies the metamorphosis that the poet needs to go through in times of war and crisis In recognizing the limited self, the poet undergoes metamorphosis whereby the self is sacrificed for artistry. In order to conceive the “pearl” (i.e. poetry), the poet needs to “beget, self-out-of-self” (141), essentially to make the focus of art its aesthetics instead of the poet herself. Thus, the tension between the subjective “I” (145) in section five and the selfless self is resolved: the “I” doesn’t necessarily refer to “I” the poet, but “I” the poetic voice which provides a medium by which a modern aesthetics of poetry can be realized.
The selflessness of the poet also leads to the timelessness of her art because it enables her to write not only of the present, but also of the past. The “palimpsest” (78) is symbolic of this navigation across different time periods. It is not only the surface of the palimpsest that the poet should be concerned with, but also the “past misadventure” (79) that has been erased by the writing on top. The task of the poet would be to revive these past misadventures and bring them to the forefront of human cultural history. In this way, the poet is also going beyond the parameters of the museum. Unlike the “tomb, the temple” (11) and the “shrine” (13) which seem to lie bare like “rare objects in a museum: (21) for detached observation, interpreting the palimpsest requires much labour on the part of the poet since she needs to deconstruct superficial perceptions of the world. H.D. argues that the role of the artist and poet is to undercover hidden identities. Her attempt to rethink human cultural history is tired to her doubts about what was deemed a linear political history (86). Thus, the walls, on which historical symbols are etched and are waiting to be deciphered, have never ‘fallen’ in the sense that they have never disappeared. What H.D actively calls upon in “The Walls Do Not Fall” is the protection of these walls. The “spell” (88) is “continuous” (90) because the task of crafting and perfecting poetry never ends. Since this task is delegated to all the poets that have existed in time, the individual poet only serves as the medium through which the continuing process of poetic crafting is ensured.
In “Musée des Beaux Arts”, metamorphosis of art is first conceived by Brueghel, and then by the speaker. Visually, the frame of the painting provides a medium for Brueghel to work within. It is within this frame that Brueghel’s artistry interprets the Ovidian legend from the perspective of his time. The poetic frame is then constructed by Auden himself. Within this frame is his interpretation of Brueghel’s painting. While this seems to work against the idea of the detached observer since both Brueghel and Auden are actively involved in the framing of the story of Icarus, it is the former which provides the context for the latter. Like H.D.’s “Trilogy”, “Musée des Beaux Arts” takes an anti-heroic stance. Icarus, representing the only extraordinary figure in the painting, is blatantly ignored by the other ordinary characters. Thus, the first three lines of the poem: “About suffering they were never wrong/The Old Masters: how well they understand/its human position; how it takes place” (1-3) seems ironically true. On the one hand, the old masters don’t seem to be portraying our conventional understanding of ‘suffering’ because of the absence of it in the paintings. Yet, the absence of suffering in the painting becomes the old masters’, and subsequently our understanding of the ‘human position’ of suffering. A specific ‘human position’ cannot be displayed because suffering is most relevant to the inward conscience of the individual. This is perhaps implied in the figure of “the ploughman” (15), who is alert to the “white legs disappearing into the green/Water” (18), but understands that it doesn’t warrant the termination of his own work at hand. Thus, the ploughman is symbolic of the poet with regard to the role the latter needs to play in the face of war and human suffering: in recognizing his own helplessness, the poet comes to realize that the truest form of human suffering lies in the inward conscience rather than an outward display of grief. Auden thus suggest that poetry should be framed by aesthetics and aesthetics alone. It is only within such a frame that poetry can undergo the metamorphosis necessary for its survival in times of war. By encapsulating the conflicting sentiments of helplessness and grief within the figure of the ploughman, Auden brings a new kind of relevance to both the Ovidian legend and Brueghel’s painting. By specifically referring to the ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’ in his title, Auden evokes the experience of walking into a museum and associates it with the experience of seeing the destruction of the war before one’s eyes. By taking us on a walk in the museum, Auden is also taking us on a journey back in time, whereby all forms of human suffering are contracted within a certain space at a given moment. By doing so, the timelessness of art is conveyed. Like H.D., Auden argues that a poet’s task is to preserve this timelessness by serving as the medium through art ‘modernizes’ itself.
Framing as a poetic device allows both H.D. and Auden to work against dominant traditions, while also enabling them to be free of censorship from such traditions. In both poems, the tension between the detached observer and active process of metamorphosis reflect the poets’ fear of and desire for free expression. In responding to current events, H.D. and Auden cannot afford to be overtly political in order to preserve the aesthetic purpose of art. Under these circumstances, “creative isolation” (Nemerov 800) is perhaps the best poetic strategy to acknowledge the human tragedies that inspired these poetic endeavours.
Works Cited:
“Apocrypha” Oxford English Dictionary.2nd ed. 1989. Web. 9th April 2010.
Auden, W.H. “Musée des Beaux Arts” The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. Ed. Ramazani, Ellmann and O’Clair. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003. 797. Print.
Dolittle, Hilda. “The Walls Do Not Fall” H.D.: Collected Poems 1912-1944. Ed. Louis L. Martz. New York: New Directions, 1983. 509-519. Print.
Graham, Sarah H.S. “We have a secret. We are alive”: H.D.’s Trilogy as a Response to War.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 44.4 (Summer 2002): 161-202. Web. 7th April 2010.
Nemerov, Alexander “The Flight of Form: Auden, Brueghel, and the Turn to Abstraction in the 1940s” Critical Inquiry 31 (Summer 2005) 780-810. Web. 9th April 2010.
