{"id":224,"date":"2019-05-07T07:13:57","date_gmt":"2019-05-07T07:13:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/engp04.epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/?post_type=chapter&#038;p=224"},"modified":"2019-05-08T04:34:28","modified_gmt":"2019-05-08T04:34:28","slug":"w-h-auden-stephen-spender","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp04\/chapter\/w-h-auden-stephen-spender\/","title":{"rendered":"W. H. Auden &amp; Stephen Spender"},"content":{"raw":"<div><span style=\"float: right\"><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/Stg3YSPiRNY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img class=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/download.png\" alt=\"epgp books\" width=\"53\" height=\"53\" \/><\/a>\r\n<\/span><\/div>\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p class=\"no-indent\"><strong>Author and his major Contributions<\/strong><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Wystan Hugh Auden (image 1) was born on February 21,1907 at York in a professional middle class family. (image 2)He was the third son of George Augustins and Constance Rosallo.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Auden was sent to St.Edmund\u2019s school, where he acquired the friendship of Christopher Isherwood(image 4). He visited Berlin in 1928 and was influenced by German poetry. In 1929 Isherwood abandoned his medical profession and joined Auden in Berlin In 1935, he collaborated with Christopher Isherwood on a play with the title <strong><em>The Dog Beneath the Skin<\/em><\/strong>. Auden married Erika Mann, daughter of German novelist Thomas Mann, in 1935. In 1937 he visited Spain during the civil war and served as an ambulance driver on the Republican side. In 1938, he visited China with Isherwood. In 1938 Auden became a U.S. citizen and in 1948, he received the Pulitzer Prize for the work <strong><em>The Age of Anxiety<\/em><\/strong>. Auden was one of three candidates recommended by the Nobel Committee to the Swedish Academy for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1963.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">It was at Oxford that Auden became the pivotal member of a group of writers called the \u201cOxford Group\u201d or the \u201cAuden Generation.\u201d He along with Louise MacNeice, Stephen Spender and C. Day Lewis shared the name \u2018Pink Poets\u2019 and the \u2018Poets of 1930\u2019s. They are lumped\u00a0<span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">together as a complete figure and called <\/span><strong style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">MacSpaunday <\/strong><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">in the acronym used to designate these four poets.<\/span><\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<div>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Sir Stephen Harold Spender (1909-1995), first came to prominence as a poet of social protest in the 1930s.He is one among the \u201cfour musketeers of the Oxford Movement\u201d, a member of the generation of British poets who came to prominence in the 1930s.<\/p>\r\n<p class=\"no-indent\">They together share some characteristics:<\/p>\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Their thematic content contained marks of innovation and experimental modernness.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">They had more intellectual and less emotional appeal.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Their political involvement with communism was born out of a sense of guilt and involvement.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Sigmund Freud also influenced these poets.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Their common identity was reflected in their cynicism and satire.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Their poetic technique was greatly influenced by Imagism, French Symbolism and Hopkins-Eliot innovations.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The group adhered to various Marxist and anti-fascist doctrines and addressed social, political, and economic concerns in their writings. Auden\u2019s first book of poetry, <strong><em>Poems<\/em><\/strong>, was privately printed by Stephen Spender in 1928. Critics have noted that Auden\u2019s early verse suggests the influences of Thomas Hardy, Laura Riding, Wilfred Owen, and Edward Thomas. Stylistically, his poems are fragmentary and terse, relying on concrete images and colloquial language to convey Auden\u2019s political and psychological concerns. Marxism was the dominating influence on Auden\u2019s poetry. Auden\u2019s poems, published in the thirties of the twentieth century, a turbulent period in the history, show the shallowness of the disintegrating post war civilization.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<div>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Poems <\/strong>(1930), <strong>The Orators <\/strong>(1932) and <strong>The Dance of Death <\/strong>(1933) show the influence of both Freud and Marx and express contemporary political tensions, social and economic unrest.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Auden's themes in his shorter poems include the fragility and transience of personal love (\"Danse Macabre\", \"The Dream\", \"Lay your sleeping head). In 1938 he wrote a series of dark, ironic ballads about individual failure (\"Miss Gee\", \"James Honeyman\", \"Victor\"). All these together with other famous poems such as \"Dover\", \"As He Is\", and \"Mus\u00e9e des Beaux Arts\" ,\"In Memory of W. B. Yeats\", \"The Unknown Citizen\", \"Law Like Love\", \"September 1, 1939\", and \"In Memory of Sigmund Freud\u201d appeared in his collection, Another Time (1940). The volume also contains elegies to poets A. E. Housman, Matthew Arnold, and William Butler Yeats.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">From 1942 through 1947 he worked mostly on three long poems in dramatic form, each different from the others in form and content. Auden\u2019s next major\u00a0 work, <strong><em>Nones<\/em><\/strong>, includes another widely anthologized piece, \u201cIn Praise of Limestone,\u201d which asserts a powerful connection between the landscape depicted and the psychology of Auden\u2019s characters. His prose book <strong>The Dyer's Hand <\/strong>(1962) gathered many of the lectures he gave in Oxford as Professor of Poetry in 1956\u201361, together with revised versions of essays and notes written since the mid- 1940s.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">His later poetry consists of <strong>The Shield of Achilles <\/strong>(1955) <strong>City Without Walls <\/strong>(1969), <strong>Epistle to a Godson<\/strong>(1972) and the unfinished <strong>Thank You, Fog <\/strong>(1974) ) include reflective poems about language (\"Natural Linguistics\") and about his own ageing (\"A New Year Greeting\", \"Talking to Myself\", \"A Lullaby\" \"The din of work is subdued\"). His last completed poem, in haiku form, was \"Archeology\", about ritual and timelessness, two recurring themes in his later years.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<div>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">T he German-Soviet pact disillusioned him and shook his faith in Communism. As a result he abandoned Communism and took metaphysical and religious faith. Auden died in Vienna, Austria, on September 29, 1973.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Stephen Harold Spender met the poets W.H. Auden and C. Day-Lewis, and during 1930\u201333. He spent many months in Germany with the writer Christopher Isherwood. His early volumes, <strong>Poems <\/strong>(1933), <strong>Vienna<\/strong>(1934), <strong>Trial\u00a0 of\u00a0 a\u00a0 Judge<\/strong>,\u00a0 a\u00a0 verse\u00a0 play\u00a0 (1938),\u00a0 and <strong>The\u00a0 Still\u00a0\u00a0 Centre <\/strong>(1939)\u2014were influenced by the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke and Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca. Above all, his poems expressed a self-critical, compassionate personality. In the following decades Spender, in some ways a more personal poet than his early associates, became increasingly more autobiographical, turning his gaze from the external topical situation to the subjective experience. His reputation for humanism and honesty is fully vindicated in subsequent volumes\u2014<strong>Ruins\u00a0\u00a0 and\u00a0\u00a0 Visions <\/strong>(1942), <strong>Poems\u00a0\u00a0 of\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Dedication <\/strong>(1947), <strong>The\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Edge\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 of Being <\/strong>(1949), <strong>Collected Poems <\/strong>(1955)<strong>, Selected Poems <\/strong>(1965), <strong>The Generous Days <\/strong>(1971), and <strong>Dolphins<\/strong>(1994).<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">At the end of the 1930s, when the nature of Stalinist rule had become more evident\u2014especially after the Stalin-Hitler pact of 1939\u2014Spender became disillusioned with Russian Communism. Especially eloquent testimony of this disenchantment with Communism can be found in Spender's essay in <em>The God That Failed <\/em>(1949).<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">From the 1940s Spender was better known for his perceptive criticism and his editorial association with the influential reviews Horizon (1940\u201341) and Encounter (1953\u201367) than he was as\u00a0 a\u00a0 poet.\u00a0 Spender\u2019s\u00a0 prose\u00a0 works\u00a0 include\u00a0 short\u00a0 stories\u00a0 (<strong>The\u00a0 Burning\u00a0 Cactus<\/strong>,\u00a0 1936), a novel (<strong>The Backward Son<\/strong>, 1940), literary criticism (<strong>The Destructive Element<\/strong>, 1935; <strong>The\u00a0<\/strong><strong style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">Creative Element<\/strong><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">, 1953; <\/span><strong style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">The Making of a Poem, <\/strong><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">1955; <\/span><strong style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">The Struggle of the Modern<\/strong><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">, 1963), <\/span>an autobiography <span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">(<\/span><strong style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">World Within World<\/strong><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">, 1951; reissued 1994), and uncollected essays with new commentary (<\/span><strong style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">The Thirties and After<\/strong><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">, 1978).\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">He died in London on July 17, 1995.<\/span><\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n<strong>Poetic Characteristics<\/strong>\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Though intellectual and unemotional, his poetry shows a deep empathy with the essential human condition. What distinguishes Spender\u2019s poetry is the combination of his commitment to the left wing political ideology with his own personal feelings and emotions. He also composed highly moving poems on war. He beautifully expressed his personal emotions in short lyrics. Spender was an accomplished poetic artist who used exact words. In his best poems every word has its value for sound as well as sense.<\/p>\r\n<p class=\"no-indent\"><strong>Themes in Auden<\/strong><\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">In an age as confusing and volatile as the interwar period, it was natural that the main themes in literature among young writers and poets would be the social, political and the economic malaise of the period. Auden was not an exception. His works are noted for its stylistic and technical achievements, its engagement with moral and political issues, and its variety of tone, form and content. He was known as the spiritual physician of his generation. The central themes of his poetry are love, politics and citizenship, religion and morals, and the relationship between unique human beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature. Auden\u2019s early works are noted for the themes like love, politics, peace, neurosis, death fear, and character.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Many of his poems, like \u201cAs I Walked Out One Evening,\u201d \u201cLullaby,\u201d and \u201cO Tell Me\u00a0 the Truth About Love,\u201d are the finest love poems, and \u201cFuneral Blues\u201d features a man deeply in love with another. But at the same time he is deeply concerned with the transience of love in modern world. Almost all of these poems have a sobering undercurrent of sorrow, or of the desire to remind readers that life, and love, are short and are affected by the vicissitudes of existence like sickness and time. Love is sweet, but it does not exist in a universe devoid of suffering, waning of affection or, of course, death.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Auden's poetry is sometimes cerebral, sometimes brutally honest and evocative of the historical context in which he is writing. He is renowned for addressing the issues of his day in a\u00a0moving and relevant manner. The horrors of the modern world do not escape his incisive pen; he\u00a0deals with the dictators and their mad quest for world domination, the fall of the masses under\u00a0their leaders' spell, the stultifying bureaucratic state, the Spanish Civil War, the bleakness and\u00a0perhaps impossibility of the future, the psychic side of warfare, the bleak landscape, the martyrdom of heroes and the death of poets, the unthinking use of modern tools, and the\u00a0bludgeoning of the human spirit through the great weight of history. Through all this, though,\u00a0Auden retains some hope for the future, pointing out the freedom that comes from recognizing\u00a0our\u00a0 true\u00a0 condition\u00a0 whatever\u00a0 our\u00a0 circumstances.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<div>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Auden\u2019s work is noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with moral and political issues, and its variety in tone, form and content. The central themes of his poetry are love, politics and citizenship, religion and morals, and the relationship between unique human beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature. His poetry is considered versatile\u00a0<span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">and inventive, ranging from the tersely epigrammatic to book-length verse, and incorporating a vast range of scientific knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<strong>Spender\u2019s Poetry<\/strong>\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Nine Experiments <\/strong>(1928) and <strong>Oxford Poetry <\/strong>(1930) struggle to achieve effective forms to explore issues of self and value. <strong>Twenty Poems <\/strong>(1930) and <strong>Poems (<\/strong>1933) that concentrate on the themes of love and friendship and the pressure on the poet of the contemporary political scene belong to the first phase of his poetic career. In this first phase or the Marxist phase, he was acutely sensitive to the social and political problems of his time.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The long poem, \u201cVienna\u201d (1934), owes its origin to the infamous attack on the Viennese workers in their own quarters (May, 1934) by the Government of Austria under Dolfuss. Here Spender had avoided all conceits, fables and symbols. This evidently put a greater strain on his thought and language. This poem gave rise to a misinterpretation of Spender\u2019s political and social faith.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The sympathetic tone of Spender can be seen in the lines: \u201cThe voice of the poor, like birds\/that thud against a sullen pane, \/ Have worn my heart, in the poem \u201cAppeal\u201d<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The collection <strong>Twenty Poems <\/strong>of 1930 shows the typical Spendarian conflict between his basic romanticism and his strong understanding of the harsh realities of society. This distinct duality emerged from the centre of his self. He shows his resolution to overcome the romantic relapses by avoiding his fascination for the past and the future in the Poem \u201cAlways Between Hope and Fear \u201ccontained in <em>Twenty Poems:<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\">\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Cancel that heaven and abyss<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Whose blues and reds roar back to madness,<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Avoid these chasms and steep gaps in space<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Sense should grope on all fours\u2026<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong><em>The Still Centre <\/em><\/strong>(1939) is another collection of Spender\u2019s poems where the poet consciously resists all attempts, as he states in the Preface, \u201cto dwarf the experience of the individual\u2026.For this reason, in my most recent poems, I have deliberately turned back to a kind of writing which is more personal, and I have included within my subjects weakness and fantasy and illusion\u201d. Most of the poems here refer to the Spanish Civil War, and the outlook represented therein is thus explained by Spender himself: \u201cAs I have decidedly supported one side\u2013the Republican\u2013in that conflict (Spanish Civil War), perhaps I should explain why I do not strike a more\u00a0 heroic\u00a0 note.\u00a0 My\u00a0 reason\u00a0 is\u00a0 that\u00a0 a\u00a0 poet\u00a0 can\u00a0 only\u00a0 write\u00a0 about\u00a0 what\u00a0 is\u00a0 true\u00a0 to his\u00a0\u00a0 own experience\u2026.Poetry does not state truth, it states the conditions within which something felt is true.\u201d It is therefore evident that Spender could not avoid a defeatist outlook which hovers round his Spanish poems.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The lyrical effusion has expressed in many poems. One such poem is on \u201cAn Elementary School Class-Room in a Slum\u201d:<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div>\r\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\">\r\n<div>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">\u201cAll of their time and space are foggy slum<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">So blot their maps with slums as big as doom.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Unless, governor, teacher, inspector, visitor,<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">This map becomes their window and these windows<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">That open on their lives like crouching tombs<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Break, O break open, till they break the town<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">And show the children to the fields and all their world<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Azure on their sands, to let their tongues<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Run naked into books, the white and green leaves open<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">The history theirs whose language is the sun.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">In the Second phase he made a kind of retreating journey into a self sufficient poetic world of truth and peace. The poetic output of this time was devoid of propagandist vein, and filled with the themes of love, self, the horror of war, and pity and personal sorrow with imagery. Important volumes in this phase include <em>Ruins and Visions(1942),Poems of dedication(1947), the Edge of Being(1949), Collected poems(1955),Selected Poems(1964),the Generous Days(1969),recent Poems(1978) and Collected Poems(1986).<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">As a poet Spender emerges more as a socially committed and less as an innovator of modern technique. However he handles words, images and rhythms when engulfed with emotional fervor and social propaganda. It was through this powerful imagery that he had given utterance to the complex experiences of war and life.<\/p>\r\n<p class=\"no-indent\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">Analysis of Spender\u2019s poems\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">[Stephen Spender, \u201cThe Truly Great\u201d from Collected Poems 1928-1953. Copyright \u00a9 1955 by Stephen Spender. Reprinted by permission of Ed Victor Ltd. Source: <em>Collected Poems 1928-1953 <\/em>(Random House Inc., 1955)]<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<div>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">\u201cI think continually of those who were truly great\u201d is an untitled poem that first appeared in <em>New Signatures<\/em>, a collection of poetry selected by Michael Roberts to offer an imaginative and intellectual blend that would deal positively with the problems of the twentieth century.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The poet pays a posthumous tribute to great men like ancient historians, artists or poets. The poem is an attempt to depict what makes a person truly great.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">\u201cI think continually of those who were truly great\u201d is written in free verse with three stanzas containing eight, seven, and eight lines, respectively. The meter of the poem is highly varied, containing fine examples of most meters used in English poetry. While this poem settles into no regular meter, line length, or rhyme scheme, it is, nonetheless, highly musical with its syncopated rhythms and sharp images.<\/p>\r\n<p class=\"no-indent\"><strong>An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">\u201cAn Elementary School Classroom in a Slum\u201d was first published in 1964 in Stephen Spender's <em>Selected Poems<\/em>. The poem has since appeared in several collections, including <em>Collected Poems 1928-1985<\/em>, published in 1985. \u201cAn Elementary School Classroom in a Slum\u201d is perhaps the best example of Spender's political voice resonating throughout a poem. In this poem, Spender expresses his ideological positions on government, economics, and education. The students in this classroom are underprivileged and malnourished. The capitalistic government is supposed to supply equal opportunity for education, but the classroom in the slum offers little hope for change or progress for its lower-class students. This poem, written during the time of the Civil Rights movement in the United States, is fitting both in its commentary about race issues in American education and as a Socialist proclamation against capitalism and\u00a0<span style=\"font-size: 1em;text-align: initial\">social injustice in general. Although Spender was British, his extreme left-leaning political ideologies were in response to the global question concerning social injustice.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The theme <strong>of poverty <\/strong>is principal to the poem \"An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum.\" Spender creates a crisp image of children in poverty through his descriptions of dire situations and mal-nourished students, revealing a sad, hidden segment of society that was prevalent throughout the world. He is not commenting directly on any particular nation in his poem; instead, he exposes the widespread neglect of children of all nationalities, races, and ethnicities. It is poverty that has caused the students in \"An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum\" to be \"weighed-down,\" \"paper-seeming,\" diseased, and \"twisted.\" Spender believes this poverty is created through the oppressive power of capitalism.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">This poem was written during the American Civil Rights movement, and although Spender was British, the injustice that occurred in the United States was a global issue that affected the entire world, especially close English-speaking allies like Britain. Spender was affected by the struggles for equality in the United States because of his staunch dedication to social and political reforms. Although this poem was written during this time of oppressive racial injustice in America, Spender does not directly focus on a select group of underprivileged children, based on race, religion, or creed. Instead, he hones the content of his poem and remarks about the social injustice imposed upon all children, making it much more difficult to ignore. When the spotlight is cast upon a select group of individuals, certain members of particular groups are able to shrug their shoulders or cast a doubtful eye at the authenticity of the group's plight. However, when the spotlight is cast upon children writ large, no one can turn a blind eye. Regardless of their upbringing, history, race, or ethnicity, children are innocent beings dependent\u00a0<span style=\"text-align: justify;font-size: 1em\">on the helping hands of humanity. Without aid, children are effectively left to die, and adults who do not help are left with an undeniable sense of guilt and worthlessness. Spender cultivates these emotions in his poem and uses them to his advantage, delivering a powerful message about poverty, its effect on children, and the oppressive power of money.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<div>\r\n<p class=\"no-indent\"><strong>The Pylons<\/strong><\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The installation s of the modern technological world and their consequences on the sleepy countryside form the theme of The Pylons. When it first appeared, it was hailed as a typical of spender and his associates and the term \u2018Pylon School\u2019 or \u2018Pylon poets\u2019 has often been used to describe them.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The literal meaning of pylon points to tall metallic post that hold electric wires. In the poem Spender feels that they are an intrusion to the peaceful country life.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">In the first stanza gives a detailed picture of the beautiful village with a rural background. the hills are full of stories,and the cottages in the hills are made of stones. the roads which were broken reached villages which the poet refers as \u2018hidden villages\u2019<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The poet laments that on these hills that \u2018pylons\u2019 that has electric wires have been built. He compares these pillars to giant naked girls. Then he contrasted the past county side, full of green chestnut with the present \u2018dry brook\u2019.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The pylons which carry the energy for building the cities of the future destroy the calm, serenity and beauty of Briton\u2019s unspoilt countryside\u2019s. What is striking about the poem is the poet\u2019s love for the virgin village and the relentless admiration for the inventions of the modern\u00a0<span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">science and technology. It expresses with equal delicacy the poet\u2019s ambivalent attitude. The pylons stand out against the sky like \u2018whips of anger while the villages harbor the hidden sources of power and strength.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Throughout his poetic career the element of social consciousness remains palpable either in the early poetry of social concern or in the later poetry of introspection. Though he was profoundly influenced by the age of science and technology, he didn\u2019t over rule his concern for the social reality around him. In this way he strongly survives as a major poetic voice in the history of 20th century British literature.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<table>\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><strong>you can view video on W. H. Auden &amp; Stephen Spender<\/strong><\/td>\r\n<td><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/Stg3YSPiRNY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img class=\"alignnone wp-image-120\" src=\"http:\/\/epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/download.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"36\" height=\"36\" \/><\/a><\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/tbody>\r\n<\/table>\r\n<strong>Reference<\/strong>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Boly, John R. <em>Reading Auden: The Returns of Caliban<\/em>. London: Cornell University Press, 1991.Print.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">\u2026Ed.<em>W.H. Auden Collected Poems<\/em>. London :Faber and Faber,1994.Print. Mendelson, Edward. <em>Early Auden<\/em>. London: Faber and Faber, 1981.Print.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Quinn, Patrick J., ed. <em>Recharting the Thirties<\/em>. London: Associated University Presses, 1996. Print.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Replogle, Justin. <em>Auden\u2019s Poetry<\/em>. London:Methuen, 1969. Print.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Ricks, Christopher. <em>The Oxford Book of English Verse<\/em>. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Print <strong>.<\/strong><\/li>\r\n<\/ul>","rendered":"<div><span style=\"float: right\"><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/Stg3YSPiRNY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/download.png\" alt=\"epgp books\" width=\"53\" height=\"53\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<\/span><\/div>\n<div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"no-indent\"><strong>Author and his major Contributions<\/strong><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Wystan Hugh Auden (image 1) was born on February 21,1907 at York in a professional middle class family. (image 2)He was the third son of George Augustins and Constance Rosallo.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Auden was sent to St.Edmund\u2019s school, where he acquired the friendship of Christopher Isherwood(image 4). He visited Berlin in 1928 and was influenced by German poetry. In 1929 Isherwood abandoned his medical profession and joined Auden in Berlin In 1935, he collaborated with Christopher Isherwood on a play with the title <strong><em>The Dog Beneath the Skin<\/em><\/strong>. Auden married Erika Mann, daughter of German novelist Thomas Mann, in 1935. In 1937 he visited Spain during the civil war and served as an ambulance driver on the Republican side. In 1938, he visited China with Isherwood. In 1938 Auden became a U.S. citizen and in 1948, he received the Pulitzer Prize for the work <strong><em>The Age of Anxiety<\/em><\/strong>. Auden was one of three candidates recommended by the Nobel Committee to the Swedish Academy for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1963.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">It was at Oxford that Auden became the pivotal member of a group of writers called the \u201cOxford Group\u201d or the \u201cAuden Generation.\u201d He along with Louise MacNeice, Stephen Spender and C. Day Lewis shared the name \u2018Pink Poets\u2019 and the \u2018Poets of 1930\u2019s. They are lumped\u00a0<span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">together as a complete figure and called <\/span><strong style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">MacSpaunday <\/strong><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">in the acronym used to designate these four poets.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Sir Stephen Harold Spender (1909-1995), first came to prominence as a poet of social protest in the 1930s.He is one among the \u201cfour musketeers of the Oxford Movement\u201d, a member of the generation of British poets who came to prominence in the 1930s.<\/p>\n<p class=\"no-indent\">They together share some characteristics:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Their thematic content contained marks of innovation and experimental modernness.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">They had more intellectual and less emotional appeal.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Their political involvement with communism was born out of a sense of guilt and involvement.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Sigmund Freud also influenced these poets.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Their common identity was reflected in their cynicism and satire.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Their poetic technique was greatly influenced by Imagism, French Symbolism and Hopkins-Eliot innovations.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The group adhered to various Marxist and anti-fascist doctrines and addressed social, political, and economic concerns in their writings. Auden\u2019s first book of poetry, <strong><em>Poems<\/em><\/strong>, was privately printed by Stephen Spender in 1928. Critics have noted that Auden\u2019s early verse suggests the influences of Thomas Hardy, Laura Riding, Wilfred Owen, and Edward Thomas. Stylistically, his poems are fragmentary and terse, relying on concrete images and colloquial language to convey Auden\u2019s political and psychological concerns. Marxism was the dominating influence on Auden\u2019s poetry. Auden\u2019s poems, published in the thirties of the twentieth century, a turbulent period in the history, show the shallowness of the disintegrating post war civilization.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Poems <\/strong>(1930), <strong>The Orators <\/strong>(1932) and <strong>The Dance of Death <\/strong>(1933) show the influence of both Freud and Marx and express contemporary political tensions, social and economic unrest.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Auden&#8217;s themes in his shorter poems include the fragility and transience of personal love (&#8220;Danse Macabre&#8221;, &#8220;The Dream&#8221;, &#8220;Lay your sleeping head). In 1938 he wrote a series of dark, ironic ballads about individual failure (&#8220;Miss Gee&#8221;, &#8220;James Honeyman&#8221;, &#8220;Victor&#8221;). All these together with other famous poems such as &#8220;Dover&#8221;, &#8220;As He Is&#8221;, and &#8220;Mus\u00e9e des Beaux Arts&#8221; ,&#8221;In Memory of W. B. Yeats&#8221;, &#8220;The Unknown Citizen&#8221;, &#8220;Law Like Love&#8221;, &#8220;September 1, 1939&#8221;, and &#8220;In Memory of Sigmund Freud\u201d appeared in his collection, Another Time (1940). The volume also contains elegies to poets A. E. Housman, Matthew Arnold, and William Butler Yeats.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">From 1942 through 1947 he worked mostly on three long poems in dramatic form, each different from the others in form and content. Auden\u2019s next major\u00a0 work, <strong><em>Nones<\/em><\/strong>, includes another widely anthologized piece, \u201cIn Praise of Limestone,\u201d which asserts a powerful connection between the landscape depicted and the psychology of Auden\u2019s characters. His prose book <strong>The Dyer&#8217;s Hand <\/strong>(1962) gathered many of the lectures he gave in Oxford as Professor of Poetry in 1956\u201361, together with revised versions of essays and notes written since the mid- 1940s.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">His later poetry consists of <strong>The Shield of Achilles <\/strong>(1955) <strong>City Without Walls <\/strong>(1969), <strong>Epistle to a Godson<\/strong>(1972) and the unfinished <strong>Thank You, Fog <\/strong>(1974) ) include reflective poems about language (&#8220;Natural Linguistics&#8221;) and about his own ageing (&#8220;A New Year Greeting&#8221;, &#8220;Talking to Myself&#8221;, &#8220;A Lullaby&#8221; &#8220;The din of work is subdued&#8221;). His last completed poem, in haiku form, was &#8220;Archeology&#8221;, about ritual and timelessness, two recurring themes in his later years.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">T he German-Soviet pact disillusioned him and shook his faith in Communism. As a result he abandoned Communism and took metaphysical and religious faith. Auden died in Vienna, Austria, on September 29, 1973.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Stephen Harold Spender met the poets W.H. Auden and C. Day-Lewis, and during 1930\u201333. He spent many months in Germany with the writer Christopher Isherwood. His early volumes, <strong>Poems <\/strong>(1933), <strong>Vienna<\/strong>(1934), <strong>Trial\u00a0 of\u00a0 a\u00a0 Judge<\/strong>,\u00a0 a\u00a0 verse\u00a0 play\u00a0 (1938),\u00a0 and <strong>The\u00a0 Still\u00a0\u00a0 Centre <\/strong>(1939)\u2014were influenced by the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke and Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca. Above all, his poems expressed a self-critical, compassionate personality. In the following decades Spender, in some ways a more personal poet than his early associates, became increasingly more autobiographical, turning his gaze from the external topical situation to the subjective experience. His reputation for humanism and honesty is fully vindicated in subsequent volumes\u2014<strong>Ruins\u00a0\u00a0 and\u00a0\u00a0 Visions <\/strong>(1942), <strong>Poems\u00a0\u00a0 of\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Dedication <\/strong>(1947), <strong>The\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Edge\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 of Being <\/strong>(1949), <strong>Collected Poems <\/strong>(1955)<strong>, Selected Poems <\/strong>(1965), <strong>The Generous Days <\/strong>(1971), and <strong>Dolphins<\/strong>(1994).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">At the end of the 1930s, when the nature of Stalinist rule had become more evident\u2014especially after the Stalin-Hitler pact of 1939\u2014Spender became disillusioned with Russian Communism. Especially eloquent testimony of this disenchantment with Communism can be found in Spender&#8217;s essay in <em>The God That Failed <\/em>(1949).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">From the 1940s Spender was better known for his perceptive criticism and his editorial association with the influential reviews Horizon (1940\u201341) and Encounter (1953\u201367) than he was as\u00a0 a\u00a0 poet.\u00a0 Spender\u2019s\u00a0 prose\u00a0 works\u00a0 include\u00a0 short\u00a0 stories\u00a0 (<strong>The\u00a0 Burning\u00a0 Cactus<\/strong>,\u00a0 1936), a novel (<strong>The Backward Son<\/strong>, 1940), literary criticism (<strong>The Destructive Element<\/strong>, 1935; <strong>The\u00a0<\/strong><strong style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">Creative Element<\/strong><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">, 1953; <\/span><strong style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">The Making of a Poem, <\/strong><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">1955; <\/span><strong style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">The Struggle of the Modern<\/strong><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">, 1963), <\/span>an autobiography <span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">(<\/span><strong style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">World Within World<\/strong><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">, 1951; reissued 1994), and uncollected essays with new commentary (<\/span><strong style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">The Thirties and After<\/strong><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">, 1978).\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">He died in London on July 17, 1995.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><strong>Poetic Characteristics<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Though intellectual and unemotional, his poetry shows a deep empathy with the essential human condition. What distinguishes Spender\u2019s poetry is the combination of his commitment to the left wing political ideology with his own personal feelings and emotions. He also composed highly moving poems on war. He beautifully expressed his personal emotions in short lyrics. Spender was an accomplished poetic artist who used exact words. In his best poems every word has its value for sound as well as sense.<\/p>\n<p class=\"no-indent\"><strong>Themes in Auden<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">In an age as confusing and volatile as the interwar period, it was natural that the main themes in literature among young writers and poets would be the social, political and the economic malaise of the period. Auden was not an exception. His works are noted for its stylistic and technical achievements, its engagement with moral and political issues, and its variety of tone, form and content. He was known as the spiritual physician of his generation. The central themes of his poetry are love, politics and citizenship, religion and morals, and the relationship between unique human beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature. Auden\u2019s early works are noted for the themes like love, politics, peace, neurosis, death fear, and character.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Many of his poems, like \u201cAs I Walked Out One Evening,\u201d \u201cLullaby,\u201d and \u201cO Tell Me\u00a0 the Truth About Love,\u201d are the finest love poems, and \u201cFuneral Blues\u201d features a man deeply in love with another. But at the same time he is deeply concerned with the transience of love in modern world. Almost all of these poems have a sobering undercurrent of sorrow, or of the desire to remind readers that life, and love, are short and are affected by the vicissitudes of existence like sickness and time. Love is sweet, but it does not exist in a universe devoid of suffering, waning of affection or, of course, death.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Auden&#8217;s poetry is sometimes cerebral, sometimes brutally honest and evocative of the historical context in which he is writing. He is renowned for addressing the issues of his day in a\u00a0moving and relevant manner. The horrors of the modern world do not escape his incisive pen; he\u00a0deals with the dictators and their mad quest for world domination, the fall of the masses under\u00a0their leaders&#8217; spell, the stultifying bureaucratic state, the Spanish Civil War, the bleakness and\u00a0perhaps impossibility of the future, the psychic side of warfare, the bleak landscape, the martyrdom of heroes and the death of poets, the unthinking use of modern tools, and the\u00a0bludgeoning of the human spirit through the great weight of history. Through all this, though,\u00a0Auden retains some hope for the future, pointing out the freedom that comes from recognizing\u00a0our\u00a0 true\u00a0 condition\u00a0 whatever\u00a0 our\u00a0 circumstances.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Auden\u2019s work is noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with moral and political issues, and its variety in tone, form and content. The central themes of his poetry are love, politics and citizenship, religion and morals, and the relationship between unique human beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature. His poetry is considered versatile\u00a0<span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">and inventive, ranging from the tersely epigrammatic to book-length verse, and incorporating a vast range of scientific knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>Spender\u2019s Poetry<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Nine Experiments <\/strong>(1928) and <strong>Oxford Poetry <\/strong>(1930) struggle to achieve effective forms to explore issues of self and value. <strong>Twenty Poems <\/strong>(1930) and <strong>Poems (<\/strong>1933) that concentrate on the themes of love and friendship and the pressure on the poet of the contemporary political scene belong to the first phase of his poetic career. In this first phase or the Marxist phase, he was acutely sensitive to the social and political problems of his time.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The long poem, \u201cVienna\u201d (1934), owes its origin to the infamous attack on the Viennese workers in their own quarters (May, 1934) by the Government of Austria under Dolfuss. Here Spender had avoided all conceits, fables and symbols. This evidently put a greater strain on his thought and language. This poem gave rise to a misinterpretation of Spender\u2019s political and social faith.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The sympathetic tone of Spender can be seen in the lines: \u201cThe voice of the poor, like birds\/that thud against a sullen pane, \/ Have worn my heart, in the poem \u201cAppeal\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The collection <strong>Twenty Poems <\/strong>of 1930 shows the typical Spendarian conflict between his basic romanticism and his strong understanding of the harsh realities of society. This distinct duality emerged from the centre of his self. He shows his resolution to overcome the romantic relapses by avoiding his fascination for the past and the future in the Poem \u201cAlways Between Hope and Fear \u201ccontained in <em>Twenty Poems:<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\">\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Cancel that heaven and abyss<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Whose blues and reds roar back to madness,<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Avoid these chasms and steep gaps in space<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Sense should grope on all fours\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong><em>The Still Centre <\/em><\/strong>(1939) is another collection of Spender\u2019s poems where the poet consciously resists all attempts, as he states in the Preface, \u201cto dwarf the experience of the individual\u2026.For this reason, in my most recent poems, I have deliberately turned back to a kind of writing which is more personal, and I have included within my subjects weakness and fantasy and illusion\u201d. Most of the poems here refer to the Spanish Civil War, and the outlook represented therein is thus explained by Spender himself: \u201cAs I have decidedly supported one side\u2013the Republican\u2013in that conflict (Spanish Civil War), perhaps I should explain why I do not strike a more\u00a0 heroic\u00a0 note.\u00a0 My\u00a0 reason\u00a0 is\u00a0 that\u00a0 a\u00a0 poet\u00a0 can\u00a0 only\u00a0 write\u00a0 about\u00a0 what\u00a0 is\u00a0 true\u00a0 to his\u00a0\u00a0 own experience\u2026.Poetry does not state truth, it states the conditions within which something felt is true.\u201d It is therefore evident that Spender could not avoid a defeatist outlook which hovers round his Spanish poems.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The lyrical effusion has expressed in many poems. One such poem is on \u201cAn Elementary School Class-Room in a Slum\u201d:<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\">\n<div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">\u201cAll of their time and space are foggy slum<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">So blot their maps with slums as big as doom.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Unless, governor, teacher, inspector, visitor,<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">This map becomes their window and these windows<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">That open on their lives like crouching tombs<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Break, O break open, till they break the town<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">And show the children to the fields and all their world<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Azure on their sands, to let their tongues<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Run naked into books, the white and green leaves open<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">The history theirs whose language is the sun.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">In the Second phase he made a kind of retreating journey into a self sufficient poetic world of truth and peace. The poetic output of this time was devoid of propagandist vein, and filled with the themes of love, self, the horror of war, and pity and personal sorrow with imagery. Important volumes in this phase include <em>Ruins and Visions(1942),Poems of dedication(1947), the Edge of Being(1949), Collected poems(1955),Selected Poems(1964),the Generous Days(1969),recent Poems(1978) and Collected Poems(1986).<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">As a poet Spender emerges more as a socially committed and less as an innovator of modern technique. However he handles words, images and rhythms when engulfed with emotional fervor and social propaganda. It was through this powerful imagery that he had given utterance to the complex experiences of war and life.<\/p>\n<p class=\"no-indent\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">Analysis of Spender\u2019s poems\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">[Stephen Spender, \u201cThe Truly Great\u201d from Collected Poems 1928-1953. Copyright \u00a9 1955 by Stephen Spender. Reprinted by permission of Ed Victor Ltd. Source: <em>Collected Poems 1928-1953 <\/em>(Random House Inc., 1955)]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">\u201cI think continually of those who were truly great\u201d is an untitled poem that first appeared in <em>New Signatures<\/em>, a collection of poetry selected by Michael Roberts to offer an imaginative and intellectual blend that would deal positively with the problems of the twentieth century.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The poet pays a posthumous tribute to great men like ancient historians, artists or poets. The poem is an attempt to depict what makes a person truly great.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">\u201cI think continually of those who were truly great\u201d is written in free verse with three stanzas containing eight, seven, and eight lines, respectively. The meter of the poem is highly varied, containing fine examples of most meters used in English poetry. While this poem settles into no regular meter, line length, or rhyme scheme, it is, nonetheless, highly musical with its syncopated rhythms and sharp images.<\/p>\n<p class=\"no-indent\"><strong>An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">\u201cAn Elementary School Classroom in a Slum\u201d was first published in 1964 in Stephen Spender&#8217;s <em>Selected Poems<\/em>. The poem has since appeared in several collections, including <em>Collected Poems 1928-1985<\/em>, published in 1985. \u201cAn Elementary School Classroom in a Slum\u201d is perhaps the best example of Spender&#8217;s political voice resonating throughout a poem. In this poem, Spender expresses his ideological positions on government, economics, and education. The students in this classroom are underprivileged and malnourished. The capitalistic government is supposed to supply equal opportunity for education, but the classroom in the slum offers little hope for change or progress for its lower-class students. This poem, written during the time of the Civil Rights movement in the United States, is fitting both in its commentary about race issues in American education and as a Socialist proclamation against capitalism and\u00a0<span style=\"font-size: 1em;text-align: initial\">social injustice in general. Although Spender was British, his extreme left-leaning political ideologies were in response to the global question concerning social injustice.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The theme <strong>of poverty <\/strong>is principal to the poem &#8220;An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum.&#8221; Spender creates a crisp image of children in poverty through his descriptions of dire situations and mal-nourished students, revealing a sad, hidden segment of society that was prevalent throughout the world. He is not commenting directly on any particular nation in his poem; instead, he exposes the widespread neglect of children of all nationalities, races, and ethnicities. It is poverty that has caused the students in &#8220;An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum&#8221; to be &#8220;weighed-down,&#8221; &#8220;paper-seeming,&#8221; diseased, and &#8220;twisted.&#8221; Spender believes this poverty is created through the oppressive power of capitalism.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">This poem was written during the American Civil Rights movement, and although Spender was British, the injustice that occurred in the United States was a global issue that affected the entire world, especially close English-speaking allies like Britain. Spender was affected by the struggles for equality in the United States because of his staunch dedication to social and political reforms. Although this poem was written during this time of oppressive racial injustice in America, Spender does not directly focus on a select group of underprivileged children, based on race, religion, or creed. Instead, he hones the content of his poem and remarks about the social injustice imposed upon all children, making it much more difficult to ignore. When the spotlight is cast upon a select group of individuals, certain members of particular groups are able to shrug their shoulders or cast a doubtful eye at the authenticity of the group&#8217;s plight. However, when the spotlight is cast upon children writ large, no one can turn a blind eye. Regardless of their upbringing, history, race, or ethnicity, children are innocent beings dependent\u00a0<span style=\"text-align: justify;font-size: 1em\">on the helping hands of humanity. Without aid, children are effectively left to die, and adults who do not help are left with an undeniable sense of guilt and worthlessness. Spender cultivates these emotions in his poem and uses them to his advantage, delivering a powerful message about poverty, its effect on children, and the oppressive power of money.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"no-indent\"><strong>The Pylons<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The installation s of the modern technological world and their consequences on the sleepy countryside form the theme of The Pylons. When it first appeared, it was hailed as a typical of spender and his associates and the term \u2018Pylon School\u2019 or \u2018Pylon poets\u2019 has often been used to describe them.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The literal meaning of pylon points to tall metallic post that hold electric wires. In the poem Spender feels that they are an intrusion to the peaceful country life.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">In the first stanza gives a detailed picture of the beautiful village with a rural background. the hills are full of stories,and the cottages in the hills are made of stones. the roads which were broken reached villages which the poet refers as \u2018hidden villages\u2019<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The poet laments that on these hills that \u2018pylons\u2019 that has electric wires have been built. He compares these pillars to giant naked girls. Then he contrasted the past county side, full of green chestnut with the present \u2018dry brook\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The pylons which carry the energy for building the cities of the future destroy the calm, serenity and beauty of Briton\u2019s unspoilt countryside\u2019s. What is striking about the poem is the poet\u2019s love for the virgin village and the relentless admiration for the inventions of the modern\u00a0<span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">science and technology. It expresses with equal delicacy the poet\u2019s ambivalent attitude. The pylons stand out against the sky like \u2018whips of anger while the villages harbor the hidden sources of power and strength.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Throughout his poetic career the element of social consciousness remains palpable either in the early poetry of social concern or in the later poetry of introspection. Though he was profoundly influenced by the age of science and technology, he didn\u2019t over rule his concern for the social reality around him. In this way he strongly survives as a major poetic voice in the history of 20th century British literature.<\/p>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>you can view video on W. H. Auden &amp; Stephen Spender<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/Stg3YSPiRNY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-120\" src=\"http:\/\/epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/download.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"36\" height=\"36\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p><strong>Reference<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Boly, John R. <em>Reading Auden: The Returns of Caliban<\/em>. London: Cornell University Press, 1991.Print.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">\u2026Ed.<em>W.H. Auden Collected Poems<\/em>. London :Faber and Faber,1994.Print. Mendelson, Edward. <em>Early Auden<\/em>. London: Faber and Faber, 1981.Print.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Quinn, Patrick J., ed. <em>Recharting the Thirties<\/em>. London: Associated University Presses, 1996. Print.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Replogle, Justin. <em>Auden\u2019s Poetry<\/em>. London:Methuen, 1969. Print.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Ricks, Christopher. <em>The Oxford Book of English Verse<\/em>. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Print <strong>.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"menu_order":24,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":["dr-sushil-kumar"],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[66],"license":[],"class_list":["post-224","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","contributor-dr-sushil-kumar"],"part":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp04\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp04\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp04\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp04\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp04\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":226,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp04\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/224\/revisions\/226"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp04\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/3"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp04\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/224\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp04\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp04\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=224"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp04\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=224"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp04\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}