AUDEN'S IDEOLOGY
457
that the S. S. men at Lublin and Birkenau had not been told the
tales by their parents?) ; the secular world Auden detests has been
producerl by the
M iirchen
he idealizes and misunderstands, along
with a thousand other causes- so it could not be changed "in a few
years" by one of the causes that have made it what it
is.
But the
moral absurdity of the advice-! should say its moral imbecility–
does matter. In the year 1944 these prudent, progressive, scientific,
cooperative "bores and scoundrels" were the enemies with whom
Auden found it necessary to struggle. Were
these
your enemies,
reader? They were not mine.
Such mistaken extravagance in Auden
is
the blindness of salva–
tion, a hysterical blindness to his actual enemies (by no means such
safe enemies as the Prudent Progressives) and to the actual world. But
it
is
hard for us to learn
anything.
When the people of the world
of the future-if there are people in that world-say to us-if some
of us are there: "What did you do in all those wars?" those of us
left can give the old, the only answer: "I lived through them." But
some of us will answer, "I was saved."
I
(This essay by Randall farrell is a section from a longer study
of Auden. Another section will appear in
PARTISAN REVIEW
in the
near future.)
