Auden

From Stephen C Winter's blog post about meeting Saruman on the road (via Tom):

Now all that is left for [Saruman] is degradation and yet he refuses to repent. As W.H Auden once wrote, “We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the present and let our illusions die”. 

Auden's words would seem to ring true in many spheres, not merely those involving Saruman-style degradation.  One broader application is the saying "Ships in harbor are safe, but that's not what ships are built for" (John Shedd, qtd by Susan Jeffers) – a lesson I have to repeatedly re-learn and always fail to master.  A perhaps more narrowly theological application might be seen in CSL's The Last Battle, with the dwarves who are damned by their refusal to be "taken in." It's a wonderful duality: they don't want to be "taken in" – meaning deceived – and therefore are literally not "taken in" to paradise.  In effect, they accept eternal ruin rather than changing their minds.  Or then again, perhaps further afield, consider CSL's idea from Mere Christianity, where the Christian's hoped-for minor fixes turn out to be a radical reconstruction and redesign that leave nothing unchanged and un-transformed.  Which of course is also seen in The Great Divorce, especially in the episode involving the "little red lizard" of lust which is – with the Ghost's very reluctant and agonized permission – killed, and resurrected into "the greatest stallion I have ever seen, silvery white but with mane and tail of gold." (MacDonald, as teacher and guide, characterizes it as the "richness and energy of desire").

My introduction to Auden must have been in 10th grade, shortly before we moved back to the States, when my English teacher Mrs Stephan challenged the class to fill in the blank: "Lay your sleeping head, my love,  / Human on my ________ arm".   As she had doubtless intended, none of us guessed how the poet had filled out the line.*

From annotations in my Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, I read at least six poems or excerpts in college ("O where are you going?" from Five Songs; "The Wanderer"; "Lullaby"; "Musée des Beaux Arts"; "In Memory of W. B. Yeats"; and "In Praise of Limestone").  Of these, "Musée des Beaux Arts" remains by far the most familiar.

And of course, "Funeral Blues" became familiar to me and perhaps one or two other people through its prominent placement in Four Weddings and a Funeral.  (Although for me, that movie is memorable mostly because of the conversation I didn't have after it.)

Which I suppose is all just a long and roundabout way of saying that it now appears I need to read Auden's The Age of Anxiety.


FN* Last time I blogged about this, I remembered two blanks.  At least I'm consistent about the year and the teacher's name!