BOOKS OF THE DAY
Topical Commentaries
For the Time Being. By W. H. Auden. (Faber and Faber. 8s. 6d.)
THIS latest •book of Mr. Auden's contains two works—a commen- tary on The Tempest and a quasi-political interpretation of the Christian Nativity legend. The first part, called " The Sea and the Mirror," is a remarkable essay in criticism. Shakespeare's Tempest ends on a not altogether convincing note of forgiveness and recon- ciliation: Ariel is released, Caliban is left behind on the island, magic is over and the brave new world awaits its trial. Plays end and characters are left to an uncertain future—except in tragedies like The Duchess of Malfi, where death ends all. Auden having imaginatively identified himself with the play, takes the scene as Shakespeare leaves it, and in a series of monologues gives an imaginative extension to their thought and being. The first moment of bewilderinent and dismay is over and the characters, on board ship and bound for Milan and mortality, have time to reflect on their adventuies and on their present relation to Prospero. Prospero, if we take Mr. Auden's political meaning aright, is the symbol of pre- war democracy. Neither desiring nor exercising the responsibility and power which he inherited, he had been only too pleased that someone else—in this case Antonio—should take the responsibility for action, and only too late discovered that his freedom had depended upon his own acceptance of this responsibility. Antonio was 'Prospero's first failure, Caliban his second. Mr. Auden's inter- pretation of Antonio is interesting ; in The Tempest Antonio never speaks (save for a brief aside to Sebastian) after the revelation of Prospero's identity in which his own downfall is inevitably implied. Auden gives him a chance to speak. Secret and cynical, he repre- sents the despotic state.
In more general terms, he is the egoist, the solitary, the irreconcilable, " the Only One Creation's 0 " ; the evil in all of us which takes its chance when the good is lazy and in- effective: the evil which bides its time, desires no reconcilement and knows no change of heart. The other characters are portrayed with varying success and insight. Each has his contemporary counterpart: Gonzalo, the diplomat, betraying the truth even when he sees it ; Sebastian, the would-be traitor, relieved to find his secret still his own. All the political axes are hallmarked and some of the edges are blunted with over-grinding. But as a work of the imagination it transcends the political issue and it should send every reader back to The Tempest. (Why cannot some company put on this play instead of yet another production of Hamlet?) The second half of " The Sea and the Mirror " is in prose, and consists of an address from Caliban in which he speaks both for himself and for the audience who, he imagines, resent him as too much like themselves. And then Caliban opens his attack. He is the sensuous, bodily man, and accuses the poet, be he Shakespeare or Shelley, of neglect. Caliban is always enslaved to Ariel, the creative imagination ; real needs are subordinated CO imaginary gratification ; reality is sacrificed to romance ; until the day comes when the poet tiring of Ariel offers him his release. But Arid does not .move "Striding up to Him in fury, you glare into His unblinking eyes and stop dead, transfixed with horror at seeing reflected there," not what you had always expected to see, " a conqueror smiling at a conqueror, both promising mountains and marvels, but a gibbering, fist-clenched creature with which you are all too unfamiliar," not Ariel, in fact, but Caliban.
This quotation is not long enough to give any idea of the involved prose style. Auden's written English might often be a translation from the German—interminable sentences, inversions, endless rela- tive clauses,- clever asides. Read aloud, much of this pretentiousness goes. Auden is essentially an orator and a rhetorician. He knows hew to get his effects, the arresting phrases, the party slogans, the current catchwords, the impressive clichés. Superficially, the pace seems fast ; that is only because he takes so many words to express the simplest ideas. The reader is irritated ; the listener is satisfied
to find how well he follows the apparently difficult argument. The reader, detecting with his eye (never with his ear) the use of various
conventional verse forms, the vilanelle, the triolet, the sestina, etc., is disappointed' by the poet's failure to use the form adequately ; the listener, not always knowing if he is listening to prose or,verse, is content to follow the speech rhythms, in the use of which Mr. Auden is singularly adept.
" The Sea and the Mirror " (like Robert Helpmann's ballet on Hamlet) is a real work of dramatic extension and adds something to our knowledge and appreciation of the play. But the Christmas Oratorio, "For the Time Being," leaves us cold. The story remains, as it has been for so many inferior artists, a useful ready-made frame- work with a guaranteed emotional content. If the story is used to interpret modern problems, why, one wonders, stick to such out- moded classifications as Wise Men and Shepherds? The political programme, the psychologist's jargonese, the adolescent's infinitely mild and boring pornographic fancies are all incorporated. Herod's speech is the dramatic key to the poem, but even here, at the crux of the story, Auden indulges for 19 lines in an irrelevant private joke. Then he continues with an outline of the society which will evolve if the Christ is not killed, and concludes:
" The New Aristocracy will consist exclusively of hermits, bums and permanent invalids. The Rough Diamond, the Consumptive Whore, the bandit who is good to his mother, the epileptic girl who had a way with animals will be the heroes and heroines of the New Tragedy when the general, the statesman and the philosopher have become the butt of every farce and satire. Naturally this cannot be allowed to happen. Civilisation must be saved, even if this means sending for the military, as I suppose it does. How dreary."
These two works contain much that is original. The greatest single influence is probably Grimm's Fairy Tales, with which Auden has been for some time very much preoccupied. Like all original work it provokes both criticism and enthusiasm. It is worth reading, and worth reading more titan once. But to give it a fair hearing it should be read aloud.
SHEILA SHANNON.
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