The Unknown Citizen by W.H. Auden

[SVZ]

(To JS/07 M 378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)


He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be

One against whom there was no official complaint,

And all the reports on his conduct agree

That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,

For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.

Except for the War till the day he retired

He worked in a factory and never got fired,

But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.

Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,

For his Union reports that he paid his dues,

(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)

And our Social Psychology workers found

That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.

The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day

And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.

Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,

And his Health-card shows he was once in a hospital but left it cured.

Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare

He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan

And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,

A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.

Our researchers into Public Opinion are content

That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;

When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.

He was married and added five children to the population,

Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.

And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.

Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:

Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

[A*O]

If you want Auden, try this one (from the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral) which was read at The Funeral [sob]

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

[ourmaninBusan]

^^ I thought that was the saddest poem I'd ever heard.
(It was surely the highpoint of the movie for me.)

Time to purchase a collection of Auden's poems, I think.

[muchlove]

That second poem makes me cry my little eyes out every single time. I can't even read it right now.

[Barbara]

Ouch

[Robert Frost]

It's possible that Auden was being ironic and that his hyperbolic and sometimes silly ("juicy bone") phrases indicate that the poem's not meant to be taken completely seriously. I think the hyperbole and cliche are strategies Auden uses to capture the way it feels when we lose someone we love, and the inability of language to communicate that loss.

When I read this poem, I thought immediately of Elizabeth Bishop's poem "One Art." In the first two stanzas of "Stop the Clock," Auden expresses his loss initially by making commands within the realm of human possibility (stop the clocks, cut off the telephone, etc.), but these demands quickly become larger and less possible. This is exactly what happens in "One Art, where the initial losses Bishop catalogs are minor, but become larger and more important (along with the metaphors, like in Auden's poem) as it unfolds until the poem ends with the greatest loss of all, the only one that is a disaster--her husband/lover. I think these two poems make good companion pieces. Whaddya think?

[ourmaninBusan]

It's a good point, but it works for me because the "juicy bone" is
an image we are not expecting to read in a poem. You could go
the opposite route and try to make every line one of cosmic,
melodramatic importance, but then you run the risk of being maudlin.
This was a problem with certain romantic elegies like Adonais,
which is about the death of Percy Bysshe Shelley:

He will awake no more, oh, never more!—
Within the twilight chamber spreads apace, 65
The shadow of white Death, and at the door
Invisible Corruption waits to trace
His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place;
The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe
Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface 70
So fair a prey, till darkness, and the law
Of change shall o’er his sleep the mortal curtain draw.

...and so on until line 495. Auden, in using such unexpected imagery
and increasing hyperbole, could be writing this tongue-in-cheek,
or he could be writing with an attitude of resignation; we all
must mourn sometime, so give the dog a bone to keep him busy,
and let's get on with it.

It would be interesting to read the "backstory" regarding Auden's poem,
but that isn't necessary to read it and enjoy it.