#23: Dissent
WH Auden and DH Lawrence on dissent
Poets have been a sword to foolishness, vanity, hubris, authoritarianism for centuries. Here are WH Auden and DH Lawrence with sharp swords.
Auden first, a poem titled August 1968
The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach,
The Ogre cannot master Speech:
About a subjugated plain,
Among its desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.
In August 1968 tanks from the USSR invaded the then Czechoslovakian capital of Prague. The power of Auden’s simple, biting satire is a neat juxtaposition to his powerlessness to impact the event itself. Except - for one such as Auden, the ultimate prize is much greater. His words become immortal, surviving much longer than the desperate state that called itself Soviet Russia. Auden almost predicts the desperation of the USSR (to dissolve twenty-one years later) by his reference to the desperate victims of the Ogre. The Ogre becomes the final victim. The poet unintentionally reminds us how far we have moved on.
And the ‘drivel gushes from his lips’ comment is likely to become an even better-known line as our current global political dialogue becomes more drivel-like.
Lawrence second. A fine example of dissent, his contrarianism. The poem is titled Don’ts.
Fight your little fight, my boy,
fight and be a man.
Don't be a good little, good little boy
being as good as you can
and agreeing with all the mealy-mouthed, mealy-mouthed
truths that the sly trot out
to protect themselves and their greedy-mouthed, greedy-mouthed
cowardice, every old lout.
Don't live up to the dear little girl who costs
you your manhood, and makes you pay.
Nor the dear old mater who so proudly boasts
that you'll make your way.
Don't earn golden opinions, opinions golden,
or at least worth Treasury notes,
from all sorts of men; don't be beholden
to the herd inside the pen.
Don't long to have dear little, dear little boys
whom you'll have to educate
to earn their living; nor yet girls, sweet-joys
who will find it so hard to mate.
Nor a dear little home, with its cost, its cost
that you have to pay,
earning your living while your life is lost
and dull death comes in a day.
Don't be sucked in by the su-superior,
don't swallow the culture bait,
don't drink, don't drink and get beerier and beerier,
do learn to discriminate.
Do hold yourself together, and fight
with a hit-hit here and a hit-hit there,
and a comfortable feeling at night
that you've let in a little air.
A little fresh air in the money sty,
knocked a little hole in the holy prison,
done your own little bit, made your own little try
that the risen Christ should be risen.
Here’s another version of ‘to thine own self be true’. Don’t be conventional for the sake of it - family, relationships, a home, the prevailing culture. Rather, ‘do learn to discriminate’. If you could bequeath one sentence to your children, and only one, this one may come close to your choice.
‘…and fight/with a hit-hit here and a hit-hit there’, so that you let in a little air and sleep well at night (remember the phrase from Yeats’s The Choice – ‘the night’s remorse’?) and do your little bit ‘that the risen Christ should be risen’. For DH Lawrence, the stakes could not be higher.