LitLetter 148: Danse Macabre by WH Auden

Goodbye to you all.

A grisly dance

The origin of the word macabre seems to lie in the Biblical name Macchabaeus, specifically Judas Macchabaeus, a Jewish priest who successfully led revolts against invading Seleucid forces in 165 BC and known for his personal ferocity in battle. In European culture, the title ‘Danse Macabre’ first appears on a fresco painted in 1424 in the Church of the Innocents in Paris. Somewhere along the line, a danse macabre became a personification of death summoning representatives of all walks of life to their inescapable fate, the grave. Oh, and by the way, to remind folk of the fragility of their lives and the vanity of the glories of earthly life. Macabre has come to mean, therefore, related to death, deadly, gruesome, and grisly.

Enter WH Auden who wrote the following poem in 1937. It is one of the most disturbingly powerful poems and should come with a warning: Caveat Lector! (Reader beware!).

Danse Macabre by WH Auden

It`s farewell to the drawing-room`s civilized cry, 

The professor`s sensible whereto and why, 

The frock-coated diplomat`s aplomb, 

Now matters are settled with gas and with bomb.  

The works for two pianos, the brilliant stories, 

Of reasonable giants and remarkable fairies, 

The pictures, the ointments, the frangible wares 

And the branches of olive are stored upstairs. 

 

For the Devil has broken parole and arisen, 

He has dynamited his way out of prison, 

Out of the well where his Papa throws 

The rebel angel, outcast rose.  

Like influenza he walks abroad, 

He stands by the bridge, he waits by the ford, 

As a goose or a gull he flies overhead, 

He hides in the cupboard and under the bed.  

Assuming such shapes as may best disguise 

The hate that burns in his big blue eyes; 

It may be a baby that croons in its pram, 

Or a dear old grannie boarding a tram.  

A plumber, a doctor, for he has skill 

To adopt a serious profession at will; 

Superb at ice-hockey, a prince at the dance, 

He`s fierce as a tiger, secretive as a plant.  

O were he to triumph, dear heart, you know 

To what depths of shame he would drag you low; 

He would steal you away from me, yes, my dear, 

He would steal you and cut off your beautiful hair.  

Millions already have come to their harm, 

Succumbing like doves to his adder`s charm; 

Hundreds of trees in the world are unsound: 

I`m the axe that must cut them down to the ground. 

 

For I, after all, am Fortunate One, 

The Happy-Go-Lucky, the spoiled Third Son; 

For me it is written the Devil to chase 

And to rid the earth of the human race.  

The behaving of man is world of horror, 

A sedentary Sodom and slick Gomorrah; 

I must take charge of the liquid fire 

And storm the cities of human desire.  

The buying and selling, the eating and drinking, 

The disloyal machines and irreverent thinking, 

The lovely dullards again and again 

Inspiring their better ambitious men.  

I shall come, I shall punish, the Devil be dead, 

I shall have caviar thick on my bread, 

I shall build myself a cathedral for home 

With a vacuum-cleaner in every room.  

I shall ride the parade in platinum car, 

My feature shall shine, my name shall be Star,

Day-long and night-long the bell I shall peal, 

And down the long street I shall turn the cartwheel.  

So Little John, Long John, Peter and Paul, 

And poor little Horace with only ball, 

You shall leave your breakfast, your desk and your play 

On a fine summer morning the Devil to slay.   

For its order and trumpet and anger and drum 

And power and glory command you to come; 

The graves shall fly open and let you all in, 

And the earth shall be emptied of mortal sin.  

The fishes are silent deep in the sea, 

The sky is lit up like a Christmas tree, 

The star in the West shoots its warning cry: 

‘Mankind is alive, but mankind must die’.  

So good-bye to the house with its wallpaper red, 

Good-bye to the sheets on the warm double bed, 

Good-bye the beautiful birds on the wall,  

It`s good-bye, dear heart, good-bye to you all.

This can be real. This can happen anytime between now and then. That is the everlasting dread and so horror of the poem. Is this the closest to nightmare on paper?

Auden’s skill is supreme. Stanzas 1 – 4 set the scene. The Devil is out, abroad, invisible like a virus (here it is influenza and could so easily be Covid), and the pace of the lines has a furious march – just as the Devil would speed. Even if you try, you cannot read or say these lines slowly. Rhyme and rhythm play their role also; Auden was a renowned rhyme master. The poet wraps his reader up in the slick horror, no matter what that reader’s background, wealth, security, or privileged position. The Devil’s in your cupboard, under your bed, cannot be escaped. Another Auden stylistic lure, the use of everyday language to make his audience comfortable as he prepares to frighten the living daylights out of these people.

The Devil is a skilled shape-shifter, ‘even superb at ice-hockey’, and imagine the levels of depravity to which he could drag the human race.

Stop for a second to take a breath. The context of this poem is immediately the Spanish Civil War (‘with gas and with bomb’). In the middle distance the inevitable rise of national socialism, fascism, hatred, and self-aggrandisement. And in the longer term, the portrayal of the human race as:

       The behaving of man is world of horror, 

A sedentary Sodom and slick Gomorrah; 

…morse codes a message of almost ‘well, they deserve it’.

There is a subtle shift at this point in the poem. The speaker becomes a self-confessed ‘Diable-meurtrier’, a Devil Killer, who will chase the Devil, despite all his disguises, to avoid the fate of mankind plumbing even further depths of shame. To be kind to man, he must eradicate mankind. So our Devil-killer (also narrator) takes on that devilish role:

       ‘I must take charge of the liquid fire 

And storm the cities of human desire’

Does it really matter who is doing all the killing? The Devil? Or his self-appointed Killer? This may be Auden’s point – that whatever their origin, the behaviours of mankind – ‘the buying and selling, the eating and drinking’ – must be eradicated and this may be the work of the Devil, or some other being who will supplant the Devil. It does not matter.

       ‘Mankind is alive, but mankind must die.’

In many ways, I find this poem more at home in 2021 than in 1937. The societal dysfunctions and wealth inequalities from which the pandemic only distracted observers will return. The climate change crisis looms not even in the background. The greed and shamelessness and lack of humanity of swathes of the global population are pervasive. The frangible (brittle, fragile) wares, the disloyal machines and irreverent thinking, the red wallpaper, the warm double beds, the beautiful birds on the wall – it’s goodbye to all that, dear heart, goodbye to you all.