AUDEN’S CONCEPT OF LOVE

The term ‘Love’ remains present in almost each poem of W.H. Auden but one must not take it as intense personal motion which conjoins a lover to his or her beloved. In general sense, the term is referred to emotional content and is related with romantic love which was fostered by different poets of different ages like Shakespeare, Bryon, Shelley, Keats, Browning and W. B. Yeats. Almost in all ages, the term was either taken as a magnetic force (infatuation) between two bodies or as ‘gravitational force’ existing between two souls (platonic love). Unlike, his ancestors, Auden refer love as something impersonal and detached feeling so his poetry is the reflection of intellectualism and his presentation of an idea or a concept employed in the poem is for conveying a particular idea in his poetic thought and has the scarcity of emotional content, immediacy and urgency. Narsingh Shrivastava deserves:
As a result, there is, obviously, a lack of agony, rupture, regret, yearning and passion that we generally find in the love poems of such poets as Spencer, Shakespeare, Donne, John Keats, Robert Browning and W.B. Yeats…

In his poetry love is employed in several ways and under different influences. It is expressed by Auden resulting in several interpretations and observations in his poetry. Denis Davidson makes clear that love has made itself a hazy conception in his poetry when he says:
I don’t think that a study of Auden’s poems reveals absolutely clear concepts of love. Self love, Eros, Agape (and the terms themselves are capable of many interpretations) seem much like ready-made concepts imparted into poems, rather thatn conclusions arrived at by the poet after due examination of human behaviour.

But if we glance at the development of Audent’s poetry from the very inception, we will find that love evolved in Auden’s poetry by and by. Justin Raplogle and Richard Hoggard found a healthy growth of love in the mind of Auden since 1927 to 1950.

In the beginning of his poetic career, Auden penned of love as sex-instinct. It was a love that played a dominant role in the novels of D.H. Lawrence. As Auden was influenced by the theory of Freud sex, prior to this, in the Victorian age, the term of love was considered as taboo but with the advent of 20th century Freudian love has been dominating over poetry, novel and drama and Auden was naturally influenced by this wave of thought. He felt love of Eros or Libido under the influence of Freud but when he came under the influence of Marxism he looked upon love as a way living-fraternal love. According to him, love should not be suppressed but it should bring a sea change in the environment in the society, so that our society may be healthy and inspiring.

Auden came under the influence of Marxism in his second phase of poetic career. It was the philosophical aspect of Marxism which was more important as far as Auden’s poetry is concerned. Auden’s important works are psychological but not based on political theories. He stressed on human heart to reform society. Auden adopted philosophical Marxism and avoided political Marxism. According to him a philosophic man must observe his environment carefully and observe the facts to gain the true knowledge which enables man to change and control his environment. In this period Auden gave emphasis on the need of right choice and environmental control.

In his later period in 1938-39, he came under the influence of Christianity and began to look upon love as universal love called a ‘Agape’. As an ardent believer of God, he raised the universal love to the state of the love of God which was defined as submission and surrender to God’s wish called ‘Logos’. As he was under the under the influence of Kierkegaard, he felt that the entire universe moved towards a predestined design, the design made by God. Since this design is mysterious and unknown and man may seem free to choose but his choice is strictly limited by the design of God and even up to the last his love in social life remains fresh in his poetry but at the fag-end of his career he started celebrating life’s blessedness in his poetry and his acceptance of lip becomes even more joyous. For examining the love poetry of Auden better it is necessary to look into his poetry under various influences.

Love under Freudianism:-

The period in between 1928 to 1933 is the period in which the poetic thought of Auden is Psychological because he was deeply influenced with Sigmund Freud. In 1929 during his visit to Berlin, Auden came into the contact with the doctrine of American psychologist Homer Lane. In his early poems, a reference to the psychological theories can be easily found but the influence of Freud greater than any other psychologist as an intelligent novelist and with a special leaning towards science Auden readily studied the finding of psychology and made a use of its terms and definitions. According to him the first and vital force in man is sexual love which inspires man and woman to go into each others arms. Sexual love, the life force in man when excited is called ‘Id’. When the Id is suppressed by cultural and social moral it becomes a destructive force in the individual and this repression makes the individual a neurotic and causes in him to certain diseases. Like in the poem ‘Petition’ (1920), Auden gives bent to the idea of suppression of sexual love that causes in man a ‘neuralitch’, ‘exhaution’, ‘quinsui’ and ‘the distortions of ingrown virginity in woman’. In one of his early poems ‘The Prologue’, Auden tackles the word Love to mean sexual love with its entire psychological connotation. Personifying love as life force he addresses:

O Love, the interest itself in thoughtless Heaven,
Make simpler daily and beating of man’s heart; within,
There in the ring where name and image meet,
Inspire them with such a longing as will make his thought
Alive like patterns a murmuration of starlings
Rising in joy over worlds unwittingly weaves. (51)
According to Freud, sexual love is a creative desire called Eros which is in action is the life force called Id but in suppression, it transforms into the destructive fore called Thanatos in psychology. In other remarkable poem ‘Our Hunting Father’ (1934) Auden finds sexual love as life force rising in individual for his or her personal glory.
Our hunting fathers told the story
Of the sadness of the creatures,
Pitied the limits and the lack
Set in their finish features;
Saw in the lion’s intolerable look,
Behind the quarry’s dying glare,
Love raging for the personal glory. (43)
Therefore, in this poem the poet plainly asks the conservatives why the lovers should suffer from sexual hunger and why the sexual love should work in man as an ‘anonymous”. He asks again, why should love, as sexual love and life force in man and woman repress itself;

“To hunger, work illegally,
And be anonymous?” (43)
Auden holds a scientific view and does not agree with the romantic view of love. He holds that the stories of boys meets girl are totally based on fake and false notion of love and such love poems have had an era of mirrors (if an age of false images of love). To him love means, sexual love that bursts forth as life force which remains a creative force only during a particular period of life and under particular conditions. Sexual love bursting forth as life force in an individual can uplift him to the status of right God, if and when it is allowed a free play in the society which will subdue the super ego in man. In 1933 writing about love, Auden tries to prove it to be an effective panacea for cultural ills of mankind.

The word is love,
Surely on fearless kiss would cure
The million fevers. (47)

Love under Marxism:-

Auden came under the influence of Marxism in 1933, a sort of intellectual change occurred in Auden’s poetry. The Marxist period is a period between 1933 to 1940. Political and economic events of the decade contributed a great deal to bring about a change in Auden’s mental orientation. The industrial unrest, economic discover and discrepancies, crisis, disappointment and dismay influenced Auden up to a large extent and he relented himself to Marxist theory. A gentle transition from Freud to Marx made Auden a Freudian Marxist because he could not escape totally the theories of Freudinor checked himself in expressing his notions absolutely influenced by Marx. Rather a vital force of Frudian theory continued to flow in an under-current way in his poetry. To deliver the goods, love, and life force has to work not only for the ‘I’ but for the ‘We’. Love has to flow among individuals as selfless behaviour. According to Hoggard, Auden argued himself in this way:

Since ‘Love’ can flourish only in the field of relationships, the greatest obstacle to its free growth is self-regard. If that rules ‘the hard self-conscious particles collide’. To the self-absorbed, all men are enemies; only with extreme difficulty can there be any moving out to a relationship, any submission of the ego in friendship. But not until the ego is forgotten in love can there be an escape from the prison cell.
The remedy for all the cultural ills needs action and rational control. Rational attitude makes this world orderly and orderly world is concerned with right choice which is indispensable. Auden himself says:

Yours is the choice to whom the gods awarded
The language of learning and the language of love
Croaked to move as a moneybag or a cancer
Or straight as a dove. (55)
Auden considers selfless love as the greatest one but selfish love which breeds hate is also powerful as well. Auden pens:

Love finally is great
Greater than all, but large the hate,
For larger thatn man can ever estimate. (55)


Love under Christian Existentialism (Kierkegaard)

After the repression of individualism in 1938 and promises of kierkegaard’s existentialism, Auden came under the Christian existentialism and began to consider the nature of love from the point of view of Christian religion. In the last phase of his poetic career (around 1938), he began to go to the Church also and became optimistic through and through believing that even for the sinful there is love, charity and brotherhood. He tries to make his readers understand that the way is difficult but we must faith and act:

Let us therefore be contrite but without anxiety,
For powers and Times are not gods, but moral gifts from God.
Let us acknowledge our defeats but without despair,
For all societies and epochs are transient details.
Transmitting an everlasting opportunity.
That the kingdom of Heaven may come not in our present,
And not in our future, but in the fullness of Time,
Let us pray. (29)
But during his discussion of religious beliefs in his essays and critical articles, Auden accepted the Christian belief of Agape that actually meant love of God for man. It is surrender to God’s design which is the essence of right human freedom. Human freedom means religions faith-faith in the blessedness of God’s designs. The sacrifice of Christ is an evidence of love of God for man. Christ, the son of God born for the saviour of mankind from the fires of hell. Since God loves man selflessly all the Christian must love their brothers selflessly and they should also love God at the same time. Therefore, Agape does not mean only selfless Christian brotherly love but also love of God for man. Auden advises that man should return to Christ for the sake of selfless love. He sings-

It would be best to go home if we have a home,
In any case good to rest.(20)
To sum up, we can mark out that in the poetic sojourn of W.H. Auden from psychological to the spiritual or from ‘Eros’ to ‘Agape’, love took many shapes and forms from sexual love assuming the form of life force to a selfless behaviours and principal of life among individual became ultimately selfless love for man and God. Auden argues that perfect love for others is possible only in genuine religious minds and such love is first, the selfless Christian brotherly love and then love for God, his designs and vise versa. It is evidently clear that the Auden’s concept of agape or selfless love is the result his deep brain-churning over the nature of loving human behaviour and the umbrella of Christianity remains present above the concept of Freudianism and Marxism. Richard Hoggard remarks:
That hazy concept ‘Love’ contained the beginning of his faith; I had been introduced…to fill a vacuum which neither Marxism nor Freudianism could fill; it gradually assumed supreme importance, and in the process put both other main influences in their places.
Therefore, being a 20th century poet of love and sympathy, Auden realized well that only Christian love is the remedy of Christian scenario and so unlike romantics, Auden keenly communicated his views to his readers and tried to establish a rapport with then which made him outstanding modern poet with modern thought.



References:
Narsingh Shrivastava, W.H. Auden As a Poet of Ideas. New Delhi: S. Chand & Co., 2000.
Dennis Davison, W.H. Auden. London: Evans Brothers Pub. 1970.
Selected Poems of W. H. Auden. S. Sen (ed.) New Delhi: S. Chand & Co., 2002.(All the verses of Auden are extracted from here)
Richard Hoggart, W.H. Auden: An Introductory Essay. . London: Chatto & Windus, 1964.