BOOKS
47
change may be, I much prefer the verve and comic gusto of his verse to
the careful, manicured and melancholy feebleness of Stephen Spender's
poetry. In Auden one can discern the possibilities of a master of political
satire; in Spender one cannot see the growth of a strong revolutionary
lyric talent. Spender shares with Auden the personal meanings, the
personal interpretation of class history, that make his work at times so
obscure. But in less degree than Auden does he give sharp, definite con–
tours to these beliefs. At base, one might say of Spender that the fun–
damental struggle in his ideology is his inability to reconcile the world
of art with the world of people. He still writes:
"The city builds its horror in my brain
This writing is my only •wings away."
And technically, an inability to find that simple, hard image which
would give form and depth to his writing. Everything is blurred, in–
definite in the work of Spender. The thought hesitates, the verse creeps,
the words poise on the edges of expression. Inadequate, is the best word
to describe both the form and the content. Doubts persistently assail
him: he cannot be sure that things will be, or that man will be better,
or a different world is being born.
"Can be deception of things only changing. Out there
perhaps growth of humanity above the plain
hangs; not the timed explosion, oh but Time
monstrous with stillness like the himalayan range."
He is continually haunted by "shapes of emptiness" by "shapes of
death"; poverty invokes from him pity; the thought of tomorrow and a
classless state invokes noble feelings; but the pity is inadequate
ior
the
poverty it describes, and the nobility is suspect by the platitude it arouses.
"Man will be Man."
In Auden one can trace a consistent and maturing growth m under–
standing from the early poems to
The Dance of Death.
The obscurity
seems to be giving way to greater simplicity. But Spender's later poems
seem to be working in reverse. The more political the content, the more
crabbed and obscure becomes the execution.
ALFRED HAYES
