IN THE DESERT
423
succumbed to the voice which says, at two extremes: Express yourself,
be dotty; or Shall I write better because I am a rebel against society as
it is constituted, because I make less money? In MacNeice the struggle
is less marked than in the others, the "attitude" most powerfully con–
veyed
in
his work is that of the petty bourgeois making a dignified stand
in the face of a doom almost equally accepted and feared ("We cannot
ask for pardon"). The collapse is therefore less obvious. In Spender,
more comically or tragically honest than the other three, the struggle
still goes on: frequently with "results" which are transparently theatrical,
sometimes more happily.
*
*
*
*
*
The matter of
technique.
There is a great deal of work t<> be done
in the association of technical literary innovations with material social
facts.
If
we consider, for instance, Joyce's literary progress, as I think
we must, primarily as an indication of the path taken by one writer of
"genius" picking his way along the slippery roads of capitalism, solving
social problems in his art by avoiding them, hiding from himself the
true face of
society
behind the deceitful mask of
life,
what value shall
we place on Joyce's technical innovations? Similarly, what is the rela–
tion between the technical innovations of Auden and the "new world"
hinted at more or less hopefully in his early p<>ems? Or between the
increasing impersonality of Isherwood's writing and his increasing wari–
ness in expressing any intelligible opinion about a:rt or society?
To these questions there is no easy or didactic answer. Until
criticism is more nearly an exact craft, one can work only by analysis
and comparison. It is obvious, in the case of Auden, that there is some
reason more than simple choice for the clipped, elliptic utterance of the
early
Poems;
if
we do not believe
in
some variety of "art for art's sake"
we shall also agree that as art is a social phenomenon, every change
in
art and language has a social basis. I wish to indicate here only briefly
the
conclusions
reached in Auden's case by a close analysis of technique
and subject. Such conclusions are bound to seem didactic; I will try to
make them as little so as possible.
The reaction from Eliot expressed in
Poems
is chiefly one of
language: as I have said, the attempt of the petty-bourgeois to free him–
self from environment, move to the Left: an attempt expressed charac–
teristically enough, not in action but in terms of choice of subject, man–
ner of expression, etc. The tone is as martial as possible, the speech that
of the parade ground or public school: violent, satiric, warnings for the
future. But the speech is noticeably indirect, because Auden
is
himself
involved in the satire: it is
himself
he is attacking as much as
ll
decaying
social order; he is seen dimly among those who are "Sleeping with
people and playing fives", he is at once the "healer" and the pathic
who is to be healed. This is one reason for the ambiguity of the early
poems and the form that ambiguity takes.
The progress towards a simplicity of style which is shown through
the oddity and confusion of
The Orators
and the crudeness of
The Dance
of Death,
reaches a peak point in
Look, Stranger,
published in 1937
(though some of the poems were written much earlier) . The writing
