BOOKS
529
girl among them, and continue to drink until one of the men starts
to make love to Rosetta just before he passes out. The poem concludes
with a long passage of vague affirmation, an affirmation of Christianity
which is no more convincing than Auden's rejection of Christianity
twelve years back when, for example, he spoke of cathedrals as "luxury
liners for the self-absorbed." Within this framework, which might be
very dramatic, Auden inserts juke-box lyrics, parodies of the radio, and
exercises in the seven or eight poetic styles of his career.
What this work comes to, at least for me (and perhaps I should
say that no one else has spoken of it with anything but admiration), is
the most self-indulgent book Auden has written.
It
is far more self–
indulgent than
The Orators.
Here the seeming order is merely con–
trived and allows for all kinds of gratuitous excursions. In
The Orators
the seeming disorder was produced by the subliminal character of the
subject matter, by the fact that very important unconscious material
broke through to consciousness. It can be said that the most unique
quality of modern literature is the eruption of the unconscious within
areas of the conscious mind, which is not quite able to understand and
control all that has forced its way up. It is stgnificant that Auden now
regards.
The Orators
as a failure while in writing
The Age of Anxiety
he strives to renew communication with the subject matter which made
The Orators
one of his most exciting books.
In this new work, Auden's technical skill, which is as various as
any poet's, and his easy virtuosity, which is at times too easy, show in
full strength. The use of alliteration here is a beautiful addition to his
enormous bag of tricks. But the result is a plethora of effects which for
the most part get in each other's way. The possibility of a narrative line
is muffed throughout. And the eloquent dialectic inherent in the use
of dialogue comes to almost nothing because each character often speaks
as
if
he had not heard what the previous character just said. The Third
Avenue bar does not really exist in the poem, despite the juke box.
There is no real anxiety in the poem, but merely the discussion of anxiety.
And the characterization of the four persons is blurred or blotted out
again and again when each one makes speeches which cannot be said
to be out of character because they have nothing to do with character
at all. Just before the end of the poem, for example, Rosetta suddenly
turns out to be Jewish for the sake of a speech about the nature and the
destiny of Jews; nothing whatever in Rosetta's previous remarks has
prepared the reader for this revelation about Rosetta's origins and her
views of them.
The poem as a whole simulates narrative, drama, and philosophical
dialogue. In actuality it is hardly more than a suite of expositions, al–
ternately discursive, allegorical, and lyrical, of Auden's thoughts and
opinions. Perhaps the cause is Auden's mixed and contradictory inten-
