20
PARTISAN REVIEW
flection, not only on Auden, but on the English Left itself. As Spender in
Vienna
had declared the revolutionary tradition his own, so Auden in
The
Dance of Death
had banished the psychiatrist for Marx.
It
is hardly neces–
sary to point out that the militant period of Auden and Spender corre–
sponded to the years of hope and struggle in the revolutionary movement
itself. But as the movement deteriorated, sowing reformist manoeuvers and
reaping disasters, so there emerged once more that vast vague Atlantis of
idealist illusion on which, so long as it is visible, the intelligentsia will set
their hopes. And the poets returned to the timeless world of Freud and
the "liberal mind." It is true that, even in the years 1932-34, Auden and
Spender had reservations when it came to Marxist politics. Nor can
Vienna
and
The Dance of Death
be described as formidable contributions to revolu–
tionary literature. They were the products of a mood-solemn in Spender's
case, breezy in Auden's-a mood of discovery; but the emotion was no less
real for being immature.
It
needed experience to qeepen and confirm it:
experience of the class struggle in their own land, among their own people,
their old associations. Yet hardly had Spender returned from Austria and
Auden
s~ain
the Healer, than the Comintern discovered that English capital–
ism was "progressive." The class struggle was promptly exported to Central
Europe and Spain, and the poets were invited to make their peace with labor
politicians, titled democrats, and lady novelists with a passion for humanity.
To· be sure, the Stalinist critics continued to lecture them, to recommend
them to "join the workers"; but what good were their sermons when the
workers had to all appearances joined the bourgeoisie?
In Spender's case the changed political situation merely meant that
his poetry was brought into line with his politics, and the militancy of
Vienna
dissolved into the People's Front perspective of
Trial of a Jutige.
But Auden is less responsive to the programs of political parties than he
is to his general environment; and after 1935 that environment could only
be conducive to
anxiety.
Auden became as a man afHicted with a dual
identity: Auden the Public Figure gave support to Stalinist causes, wrote
accomplished poems for the Medical Aid fund, visited the scenes of democ–
racy's holy wars and reported them for the liberal weeklies. The private
Auden envisioned socialism more and more as a dream of the future, gave
expression to his fears for the· present in long, melancholy, personal lyrics
(Look, Stranger),
which seem to be patterned on Matthew Arnold's
Dover
Beach,
and endeavored, with a rather ineffectual spirituality, to counteract
the obviously disastrous trend of the
Zeitgeist.
In the houses
The little pianos are closed, and the clock strikes.
And all sway forward on the dangerous flood
Of history, that never sleeps or dies,
And, held one moment, burns the hand.
