I)
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PARTISAN REVIEW
cepted by society he might have cared less about morality; as it is he
always has to be right, good, well-meaning-and he becomes a moral
perfectionist of a variety distantly related to the more sensational
varieties of the case-histories.
In Stage II Auden feels the reluctant isolation of the liberal intel–
lectual of the late-capitalist state- the terrible Popular Front aloneness
of the Mediator who is neither fish nor fowl, but poor pink herring.
He sits among the ashes of his own doubts, waiting, waiting-but
nobody comes to persuade the Persuader; the only ties left to him are
the pale vicarious ties of voting, of petition-signing, of "the flat ephe–
meral pamphlet and the boring meeting." Staring enviously at the iron
orthodoxy of the Communists his allies, at the beefy certainty of the
Tories his opponents, at the folkish and bloody one-ness of the Fas–
cists
his
enemies, he insists, with wistful desperation, that his own
isolation is inescapable for everyone in the world; that the machine
has made everyone understand "the secret that was
always
[my italics]
true/ But known once only to the few," the secret that "Aloneness
is
man's real condition." He cries in a shaky voice,
"J.
welcome the
atomization of society"; and, in speaking of Kafka's heroes, states the
Law of all modem life: "An industrial civilization makes
everyone
an exceptional reflective
K." (
0 Churchill! 0 Stalin! You
very
ex–
ceptional K's!) What shall I say of this enchanting error, worthy
of Peter Rabbit the day he first heard from his mother of the World
of Mr. McGregor? This projection upon the universe of his own self
and situation, as the necessary law of that universe, is usual in Auden.
. . . In Stage II his heroes are entirely alone : the false hero, the Ex–
trinsically Successful One, wanders through the wilderness on the
lonely quest that ends
in
an arbitrary and external success, completely
misunderstood by the very public that applauds him; the real hero,
the Intrinsically Successful One, potters around his garden at home,
so completely alone that nobody in the world except the false hero
even suspects that he
is
a success.
In Stage I Auden has rebelled, though guiltily, against a guilty
Authority; he represents the new, potential Good rejecting the old
and hardened Evil of an Authority which had itself come into power
by revolting against, killing, and eating an earlier Authority (accord–
ing to the Greek myths and according to Freud's myth in
Totem and
Taboo).
In Stage II he tries to
reform
the Father, the State, Author–
ity: everybody concerned has become much less guilty, and Auden's
method of operation is now to persuade Authority into a recognition
of its essential goodheartedness, into a reconciliation with himself and
