(c) 1976, Times NewspapersW.H. Auden: Collected Poems

Doc ref: TLS-1976-0917             Date: September 17, 1976             (Page 1143, 1 of 1).

POETRY -TLS 'SEPTEMBER 17 1976: 1143

. An oracle turned jester

E DW ARD MENDELSON (Editor) :

W. H. Ailden : Collected Poems 696pp. Faber and Faber. £7.50.

By DaVid Rromwich'

poetry of griefs agains t the poetry canonic~l status. And we can still tween " The Letter" (1927) and" On of grievances. But Auden went read the ballad of " Miss Gee "- This Island " (1935) has kept its' considerably further than this. In M iss Gee, who, being t90 meek to . original vilfour. The best of these prose and in verse, he gave perhaps live and too thwar ted,-grows a can· poems, untItled at birth but eccen· the mOSt limited description of the cer and dies-and we can applaud \,!'i cally christened in their after· aim and use of poetry that has the flat pitiless gaze .of the poet. years, come back to the memory

This is the Auden canon as planned hr:r id~~e !~~id ';,o~~;r d)o:~o~~ Th~;~~3:~.b!~:,:~~li~ugh; li~~~~ ~~F~o::es:~~n~~!r~~~~s~~f!

~~r~~den;, ~~~uf.~~t . Wh;c~~!r~hfpt?, the more harmless indoor pastimes. And Mr Rose the surgeon hover "; " Again in conversations /

would nevertheless . have heen ~~ o:q~~bi'fi~y rh~~e ~~i~ ~i!~r-o:i M~~:s~t ~:~r~~ ~~ ~~~~tudents, ftv~adki~~eJi,a~ea:;;:f ;~:e~O:d ::!~ ~~~[;~~et~~e~ s~~~t~:l d?a~~: ' :~:i poetry, and it made a pleasant Said, "Gentlemen, if you 'please, one " ;" The strings' excitement, variant titles, bVt otherwise keeps change from the c1im~e of ;elits We seldom see .a sarcoma t'h .~ app~au1ing 1fum '~; " ~il! Y~d the apparatus to 'a helpfui'minimum, A~~den El~~~ame ve~iie ~,'trCt~eoS:ou ~i As fat ·. advanced .as this." turn ha e~ ea,~ ?,;. at t ey sal and , is good to the eye and the modesty. In art as il) life, .however, Or perhaps we will shudder a little, ~~in~ ~o s b~~in ; tOda;./~:t y::su c~~~· touch . . We shall h ave to wait for modesty must never be confused i~t~n~~d. ~~r isths;che~s~nOd~ech~?Z: sider what it is you do "; " It was

~n:Z~~~~~e~~fn:e ~~~~~ r~~d ru~ryi~;ce~~ty. A~~~'~\ is J~~::hi~~ of targets for an exercise in nil i::~~~s ~~; ~. ;hlski~n!~ ;::ut~/~!~ the canon as a pa limpsest, compare ingratiate, and he is out to bully admirari. no history "; ". 0 where are you the rubbed-out edges with the bold himself as well as' others. Here Courage, or the courage of these going' sai d reader to rider " ; "Con· outline laid over them, and arrive one reaches' the heart of his impulse particular convictions, together with sider this and in our t ime " ; " Doom at some conclusion about the poet's to revise. For, more than most an unworried pertinacity in the . is 'dark and deeper than any sea· character. In the meantime Auden' s poets, Auden in every phase was campaign to disgust, AlJden learnt dingle ";" Hearing of harvests rot·

~:~ar~s:}yec~~~~o!d-:r~o Mr~~~ ~~ce~~~d s~cie~ ~ha~1l1~~efdIspr:;~~ ~~berai£ ~f ~h:~~ili' ;~~ :~~~i~~ i.i~gina~~e :;:~~~~;'t~bi~d r~~S!ir~~ trid~:~'sfi!I.a~t i~a:~~ a °fe':~~:ra~t~ with: f1r~t as the voice from the sible

h since thfe tr~thb d La,wre.;~e forgive a happy childhood, called

able spirits ought ' to remain on rr~:~' !.~~n a~ ~~:~~~~ns:f! ~:~~e:~ . ~~~~e;' ;tSo 0 ~:~t~n a ake~s~~ ' th: :~i~';.ou~~gins~h~, Ea;t~k~~~,~~~s~:J the 'scene to ask if this was not if! his qu·est. And if one holds the attitude of Auden's early work and over; Oul' side feels the cold,/ And after all another disguise. In his full career in mind, one will see finds himself resisting those enjoy· life sinks choking in the wells of foreword to I'he Collected Shorter how pervasive was his fear of able but esoteric psychologists, trees." On these poems rests Poems (1965 ), Auden defended msolation : the revisions are issuing, Groddeck and Homer Lane. can do Auden's claim as one of the great revisions " a~ a matter of principle" not from a conflict between one no better than to look up Lawrence's inventors of modern poetry. Leafing by quoting Valery: " A poem is manner and its success01', but from Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious through Robin Skelton's anthology, never finished ; it is only an anxiety, which has become and its seguel; Fantasia of the Poetry of the Thirties, and hearing abandoned." The allusion is not almost a ruling passion, about Unc011Scious. There he will come Auden in poems as individually ~:~e~~d~1 'Au~~:'~yp;~~ i:~te~~ manners in genera\. ~on k t~e S L~ader'th thb. GrouPe the realized as MacNeice's " The Sun· matters, saw the work of a poet as . " Human beings ", announces the ' n~eN: roJ~le:h' W l:ea~h EWd light on .~h~'d~arden; andh Hetl?' forming an activity of unbroken narrator of The Age of Anxiety, ~f the 'Pur!in.S;iri~. e" The ~~~~;s'" one If;~l~ his ei~fr~enlCe a~ meditation. To decide what the ' ~;ebe~~~:s~~~~thi~t~r~efu~~ ili:; oWfanderLear

wr" ehnacse'sits sOcuhraCreaclt·nerl.ostnl.eC an invigorating f&ct.

~~l~c =~1fa:.:ew~~ amf:.~=!~~ have first pretended to be it ; and improvised arias, about the peace Auden is at bis height perhaps might be as important as a com· they can be d ivided, not into the that belongs to the her o returning only in Paid on Both Sides, me one pleted poem. What could a poem hypocritical and the sincere, but home." Consider", with its celebra. verse drama of our t ime that is ~e !~~ ~~def~~i~heJh~x~~~~~io~an~f ~~n~h:nda~~e w!~d k~h";; ~~e~o~~~ tion of the hawk's·eye view in which really sh'se apd Jeal

.ly

drAmd· The feeling on a given occasion? What a very strange generalization. an absen~e of c~mpassio~ is no~ble ~uos7ai~ed a;Jim~e of~~~ indivi~ua~

Play·acting, one might object, =::er~~ ep:S~:~=d, ~~~d~/ac wi:h operating within the group, and the Auden generally revised for senti· simply does not have so central a frisson' flaw at the heart of all human

~u~nt b~i~~era~~~~~::i ~fd,,, ;:~ ~a~ute~~~!Y~i~~:::o~~~:d' s!H~ We c"an see as the hawk sees the action is laid b~e. We figh~ others sound", one may raise a simple -evidentily true. Baudelaire writes one cC;>Iicentrated spot where beats :::'et~,;~~:~: :~ccae;!~r~hl's °i': th~ enough objection. To play the ,sage somewhere of " the aristocratic I'he h~~heart. of our Pl'ere' . ., trap Our loyalty t o all "Whose or pedant, and chasten the record pleasure of giving offence ": equai'ly Love 1S a tbin~ 110 be ear1}ed, 'VOic~ in the rock/ A!'e noW per· of an earlier renegade self, is never aristocratic is the pleasure of having titrough c.entun~ . of patient petual " is always necessary and good for t he character ; the resu1ts, it in one's power to. offend but eff?rt. It IS a d~ffi~~lt, co'!'plex always destructive. The self· when it is a poet who does this, are holding back. And Auden's earliest ~aInten.ance of lD~ltv~dual lOteg· iuiPosed ailment is · here tre.ated seldom happy far the poetry ; and role, in which he sought to offend nty dR'ough<?"Ut the I ncalcula~le humol'j)usly, and tellingly, as an Auden is an exception to neither all, and his latest, in which he processes of mterhu!D;" polarity. apprOi;>riate emblem of sick ances· rule. Poetry survives, he said in offended none, were not markedly • •• Who can do It. Nobody. ' tor.woTsbip: the Doctor cures the his elegy for Yeats, " In the vaUey different in the demands they made Yet. we have all got ~o wounded 'Spy by removing from his of its making where executives/ on the player. Both entailed a do It, or else sufft:r ascebC body 'an enormous tooth, which Would never want to tamper." Poets steady awareness of the risks and to~~s of . star~uon and" was growing ninety·nine y~s a:e the f.irst to tamper. Consider attendant rewards of authoritY. The pnv.ation or of distOrtion and oyer· before his great grandmother was the following inconspicuous change paradox that the word frames, with stram .and slow collapse 1OtO born . If it hadn't been taken out in " Paysage Moralise": its rival connotations of power and corruption. today he would have died yester· It is the sorrow; shall it melt? trustworthiness, was not lost on But Auden can touch us as Law· day" And the final chorus is our

Would gush, flush, g~~nwa:rese ~:::cie ~ :f!t~;:n uneasy stance r:i~c~a~~ !li:~:~t~a~:fr~~'i~~ ~::i~t approach to an Auden

mountains and t>hese valleys, The mark of his best early poetry ~~~~ou::n!1~i;nso~r J!~:~:. re~:~ Though he believe it, no man. is And we rebuild OUi' cities, not d!'eam is the widely distributed shock. sees the moods, in the end, as frank. strong.

. of islands. Others have tried it and will try confessions of weakness, of faHure, He th!llks to be ca·l,Ied the. fortunate, The altered version gives" It is our again of bls own · indebtedness to the To bnng home a WIfe, ·to hve long. sorrow ... " . It 'is an emphatic bit To finish that which they did not system of iUus-ions he hates and But h e is defeated; let the son of scoring. and what is gained is begin: would dispel. For the band of heroic Sell the farm lest · the mountain emphasis. But I'he .loss is very Their fate rnust always be the same conspirators that dominate hi.s work fall ; great: the poem has given up some· as yours, are plainly shadowed rather than Hi s mother and her mother won. I'hing of its tacit strength. "Our To suffer the loss they we:f~ ;!~~id shadowing, among the .watched not His fields aTe used up where the

~~~w ~:;;\:::.~~i~~t;~~is; ;~~O;t~~~: Holders of one position, wrong for teee ~:~t~~~e~h;:rr de~~!:~Yb:~:; T.he c;ntours worn fi.:~~esifvi:~~re ment. Our and son'ow, by the way, years. of all others cannot accept it. Their . ' show ~l~~~t d~~ w~~ a:a~~~~~~' w~:r~,or~ ~e" cm~~o::a~o o/he

a J!fei~~:dr:::; fate reads out its sentence, simple Passage for water he will miss it: the first version, it was slowed and say alas but cannot help or pardon." . lli.~ !~C~~~~e~if: :~:m~n:har:'~o o~o~ ; Give up his breath, his woman, ?is tihen halted, as if stunned, only at But there it does not work. stri~e the tragic note .. yet have the No life to touch' .though '1ati~~a~~re ~~,~;t~~~~r J.~s~n';~;~ of the firs t :;~~egn:~u~~~;criticism as usual is tragIc need to step qmetly. ' be

More painful and harder to miss To say this is to e_quate goodness ~~r at;: ~d~~~to;~lr~~~, Big fr uit, eagles ab~ve the stream. is a change in the Yeats elegy with success . It would have been To be joke for children is . To m.ove from thI S to the ag'P·es· itself. " 0 all the illSllrUmems bad enough if I had ever held Death's happiness : slve mIddle style of 1935-45 IS a agree/ The day of h is death was this wicked doctrine, but that I Whose anecdotes betray bewildering drop. Auden ha.s a dark cold day" bas become should have stated it simply be· His f.avourite co-lour as bille, b~c,:ome the good pOC! <!f responsI' " What instruments we - have ~:li~e ~~:~ti;:ets. t~ui~e i~~~~~~: Colour of distan,t bells blhty : the vagueness IS 10 thb rolel h:~~e ~II' t~'e i~;:r:t!~ntV;~ ~~ ~~; able. - And boy's overalls. ~~~i'::le 1~:e~!e'wa:u1dn~a~:it.erT~e so 1S perhaps a sirok~ fQr modera· In fact , the sentiment is conSIsten t Few of Auden' s grateful r eaders style nC)w is Dryden plus contem· tion and ~ruth. But the -poem has with everything Auden believed have been tempted to solve the para· porary journalism. Stretches of For s topped singing. " l1his LOved One", about history. The u'ouble is rather dox of an angry poetry which is the Time Being, especially Herod's a very early poem · which Yeats that these lines resis t any historica l most confident and most beautiful speech. at'e in the mode of Jean anthologized, used to address a context. They are brilliantly anony. where it is most cautiouli . The Anouilh 's updating of Greek "Face that the sun/Is supple on ". mous, t he feeling they impart is far gratitude seems enou,8h. tragedy. Yet Auden's conspirarorial We are now to favour" Face that f rom local, and they should not I, decent with the seasons, move phase hin ts directly enou~ at his the sun / Is lively on". Here it is have been kept for the end of Different or with a different love, later cOUl·tship of the SO(lJa l muse': surely sou nd and sound alone that "Spain". Nor question overmuch the nod, the progress has its logic. The

~j:tdi~S h~~ :e~\S~hf d~; in ~h~ Who are the "old gang" that r.::t s~~:e:n~l:s o~~~~ ~~~i~~~rr: god O;~~~~·~, ~~h i~ne ofma~ouh~ie ~~: short vowel sounds : yet it seemed must b~ k~~d off ih Auden 's early Always afraid to say more than English Auden will repJ"int in toto.

~~g~\~e!~rli'~~~. mTI~!lho dp~Y~~~y c~~~g ~~~~I~Y . asser~~e~h~ hav~obr::n ~~~: it meant. ~~e a~~~f~~l n~~ f~a~ ~~~~~gtl:a~~~ sessed by a bad motive. The b~ Here at least one ought to trust from V:e~kness, ~nd the drama

~i~':iO'~~ a fine flower of poetic haviour they are denounced for ex· the tale. Auden's poetry knows reaches its climax in the "Letter tends from the sin ks of personal what its author sometimes forgot : to a Wound ", where the wounded

In the mid·1940s Auden began, cowardice to the summits of politi. that what it seeks to j oin-life and man's love fo,' his own limiting in bracing moral tones and on every cal oppression . The drawing to· deatih, isolate heroism an d the defect allows it, after endless possible occasion, to lay down the gether of two vastly different sorts sense of community-must remai n coss.%ting, to establish complelte laws of modesty proper to the poet. of corruption, that which comes of forever parted. There is nothing domination over his mental life. In Poetry, he had said, makes nothing power and that which comes of to be done. And this knowledge Auden 's view the case i-s repre enta· happen. Nothing, that is, in particu· fear , is an astonish ing feature of brings to Auden's early poetry its rive-he printed the "Letter " lar, nothing right away, norh ing Auden's ideology. In forty years unique dignity and it air of self· separately in his fi~t collected to bet on : so one might have it has not ceased to be a puzzling uffi.Qeot and unapp~ .. sed 10 l eli· volume. And in the nHd-1930s his gathered too from Robert Frost's human lap e. Yet none of the poems ne ·. poetry shows him growing steadily perfectly balanced . appeal for the connected with this lapse is without Muc1\ of what Auden wrote be· convinced rhat society u itself a

rl1 WILLIAM WORDSWORTK

Harris, Rendel Word.lwortlt's Lacy 1935 110

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.1800-7805 1929 $25 - On Books and their Writers. Edited by E. J. Morley 3 ,/• 160

Roppen, George Evolution and Poetic Belief. A S tudy in Some Victorian and Modern Writers 1956 125

Searle, January Memories of William Wordsworth 1852 ' 120

Sergeant, K. The Cumberland Wordsworth $IS

ShackfOrd, M. Wo;dsworth's Interest in Pointers and Pictures 1945 1l2.Sa

Shairp, J. C. -Aspects of Poetry · 1881 $20 - The . Poetic Interpretation of Nature 1877 115

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Smart, George Thomas . ' . . Wordsworth, A Lecture 19.02 IS

Smith, David Nichol \ Wordsworth. Poelry and Pros~ ' with Essays by Coleridge, Hoz­Jittand DeQu;ncey 1921 lIS

Smith, Nowell Wordsworth's Literary Criticism 12a

Stobart, J. C. The Wordsworth Epoch 112.50

Strong, A. T. Three Studies 1921 Ita

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Vizetelly, Ernest Alfred Loves of the Poets 1915 13(1

Wain, J. . . Contemporary Re,';elVs of Ro-mantic PO"y 1953 112.5(1

Wiltson, John ~94 Annals of It Quiet Va:%

. Wellesley, Dorothy

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...

(c) 1976, Times NewspapersW.H. Auden: Collected Poems

Doc ref: TLS-1976-0917             Date: September 17, 1976             (Page 1144, 1 of 1).

..... 1144: TlS SEPTEMBER 17 1976 .

~vo~l~rt~7 illifvid~::~~~n:tS se!~~~~ ~~aJ<~~~ -,his cOnversion is whole-

We mOils ~dlrlive-: in a world tha't is the sum of all rhose things we cannot do . This is what Auden says., t !relessly, in every P'lssible context. Zut his diagnosis has not altered. It is only that the prog.nosis has l '~rned pessimistic. With a curious Edeli,ty to his old beliefs, he was able to ohoange sides without ever changi ng his mind. The lesson he discovers in Melville belongs pro­perly to himself. EVil is unspectacular and

· always human, A n.d shares our bed and eats

at our own taQle, And we are introduced to

· Goodness every day, Even in drawing·rooms among

a crowd of faults; He has a name like Billy and

is almost perfect, :Jut wears a staIn mer like a

decorat ion: .\n& every time they meet the

- same thing has to hal>pen ;

mitted and, temporarily, uncel·tai n to whom the g uilt should be attached; as soon as ·this is known, the inllDcence of everyone e lse is certain ". A work of art sucb as The Tri,!l , on the other hand, assumes a world in which" it is ~he guilt that is certain and rhe crime that is uncertain ; the aim. of the hero's investigation is not to prove his innocence (which would be im­possible for h-e knows he is guil,ty),

/, but to discover what, if anytbing, he has done to make himself guilty ". l1here are critics who will prefer to can this tbe Kafka theme or the Chi Ide Roland th eme'. But, of our contemporaries, it was Auden who appropriated it mos t tborougbly and s elfconsciously.

-~ t is the Evil that is helpless like a loyer

,:' nd has to pick a quarrel and

It is the subtle and a rtful fo'rm of the confidence game which he plays artlessIy in his revisions . It gives his anxiety free rein , without the in­decencies of simple exhortation, or t he idiocies of confess ion. It pr.e­sents in full figure the th·reat of his nervous sense of duty and isoJa­tion : yet we feel rhe th reat as some­th ing named, informed by ' dramatic energy, and mastered. In a 'poem

Auden's Cermany---a Munich street in 1930 photographed by Tim Cidal, {I'om Iris exhibition" In tire Thirties" of 1956 Auden received a definitive at the Photographers' Calleyy, 8 Great Newport Street, London ~VC2, until September 28. Tim Cidal, born last word from hi s accuser. Society,

. succeeds, ' .. :ld both are openly destroyed

in Munich in 1909, was (with his brother ' George) one of the first great pho/>O-repoP'lers. The 105 photo- the Group, ~he Superego, the Orher, graphs in the exhibition, which has been shown at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem , illustrates the period had long since become the " they",

· before . our eyes. . p,·ececJ.ing the Nazi deluge in Europe, with street scenes from Israel, Italy and Polllnd as well as Germany. impenetrable and unreflecti ng and' In a picture of 1939 · Benes and Masaryk confer on a sofa with a map of Europe on the wall behind; .from never to be questioned, whom Auden :.. oci~ry, the family, have trtumphed,

with all their capacity for evil: we can . only give them our pledge. Sympathy is the gift Auden has come most keenly to desire in his !>oeti'y, and it is, he seems to think, a qut:Jiry more nearly allied to prose than to poetry. In the run·on Jines of his elegy for Freud he brings ~he , which-side·am·l·supposed·to·be­on theme to a final resolution.

the same yem', on another sofa, in London. a British bowler hat and umbrella lie abandoned: s'hares ·with Kafka and Edward Lear.

3 ut 11e would' have us remember , most of all

to be enthusiastic over the night, ilOt only for the sense of wonder

it :alone has to offer, but also because it needs our love. With

. . large sad eyes its delectable creatures look up

. and beg us dumbly to ask them to

follow: they are exi les who long for

the future that Uies in .our power, they too

; . wou ld rejoice if allowed to serve enllghtenment

like him, evell to bear our cry of . " Judas ",

as he d id and all must bear ... 1 who sel·ve jr.

of Aude n's " fellow· trave ller " ;lhase nothing need be said , since, acc6iding to b.is wish and the pre­~e,nt · vollll)'l~,. it n.eyer happen ed. In Letter t() " ~ord Byron and New Year Leltllr \ve are overhearing a charm­ing ·":colwersational wit who will do ubtles.s be equally charming to' readers ' a cen t U/' y frol1\ now . . The

Age of An.:l:iet y is a long dull forced amusement cledicated and devoted to Betjeman. But there remain three~ poems, in a wholly new manner; in which one feels that Auden is writing at the top of his powers. The manner is that of the oracle wbo unhappily knows too much; the poems are " The Fall of Rome ", "Under Sirius", and "The Shield,

h~s A~~,~~ili;~g T1~~ ~~!t sO:i~i~e~f

"Who are you and why?" For when in a carol . under the

apple-trees The reborn featly dance

There wiH also·, Fortunatus, Be those who refused the·ir

chance, Now potte.·ing shades, querulous

bes·ide the salt-pits, And mawkish in their 'wi.(s,

. To whom these dull dog-days Between event seem crowned with

olive And golden with sel~.praise.

Dryden's Seculm' Masque. For tech­nical precision over a short distance it scarcely has a rival in Auden 's work or in anyone e lse's. The Ameri- ." The Shield of Achilles ", wrinen can rhyme of clerk with work is perhal>s under the influence of cunning, and identifies the empire Simone Wei'l"s "The lI i·ad or, The whose carele s largesse ' Auden is PO.em of Force", mingles ' the grey e lsewh ere at pains to celebrate. world of the d eath camps wlnh the

"Under Sil'ius~' is a rhetorical thriving civi li zation depic~ed on the flollri sh , executed in a single s troke, shield, until neither is quite recog­which warns the la-zy epic poet nizable and both seem appalling. Fortunat.us of hi s coming disas ter: Only Auden would play Cas5.t1ndra " lm'prove th e man ", Auden says, to Achilles in th·is way. T'he ana­here 'as e lsewhere, "hy giving him c'hron istic dt:tails are deftl y man­a good fright". This poem .makes ' aged and the poem is a cal:e.£\11 t our the grandes t of all hi s gestures of de force. veiled mcnace_ Apart from these p()ems, Paid on How will you :Io,ok a nd wh at will ' Borh §ides, arid some ' lyrics in h i's

yo u do. whe n the basa lt first volume or a Httle after, Auden T o mbs of the ' sorcerers shatter call. be see n to best advantage in

And th ei r guardian m ega lopods ' h,s songs "Fis h in the unruffled Com e af te,\' yo,u pitter·pa ttel·? : lakes "; "Now the leaves al e fal­

Ho i" wi lf you answer when from- ling fast '" "Underneath· an abject their qualming spring .: willow " ; , " Make this night

The 'i mmortal nymphs fly loveable " a-nd, the poem to which it -. shri eki ng, is . sequ e l and counterpoint,

And out of th e open sky " Lullaby ": these are. intent on T h'e - pantocra!ic r i d.dl~ breaks- ': the mselves as trae poetry '1lust be. ,

BAD NEWS· WittgensteiJi

Yet the faithful reader of Auden From" moonless absences you never will find such a li st ungenerous, and heard of" they, who have seen he is right. A poet i s someone who everything, a.-e now asking for. total invems a new tone of voice: Early, surrender. And Auden, h e lpless in midclle, and late, Auden was busy ' their sight, wants the battle to con­doing so: in "Herman Melville ", tinue and call& the poem "There in parts of the Freud and Yeats Will Be No Peace". elegies, in the calm equipoise and There will be no peace. tact of Tlte Sea wid the Mirror, . Fight back, then, with such courage and- in "Bucolics " and "Horae as you have Canonicae ", which ace his unoffi- And every unchivalrous dodge you cial farewell to the art. One' may know of, watch him " doing " GI'aves or Frost Clear in your conscience on tbis : in poems as late as " Limbo Cul- Their cause, if they had one, is ture" and " Objects" (1957); but nothing to them now; what was closest to him he learnt They hate for hate's sake. early, mos t of all from Hardy; and But he had answered himself two his ty pical !,oem like Hardy's starts d ecades earlier. The choice of fl'om a meditation which must be weapons is really no choice. It is idiosy ncratic on a landscape which ' mere reflex. ~nd at last, as one of must be difficult. Hal'dy's" Where Auden's few inspired revi sio ns tbe Picnic . Was" and Auden's makes clear, we are the victims of U From scars \",het-e kes trels hover" our (}wn survival. are e mploying remarkably similar Clear, un scalea ble, ahead methods to _ r emarkably different Ri se the Mountains of In stead, ends. " In Praise of Limestone ", From whose cold cascading s trea ms

~~' i:;~~~~r s~~~vi~~:tr:; ~h et~s~~:-n~i~~ Non!! may drink except in dream s.

of the healing powel' of things ~i~h m~~at~::le ill~~i~~~s ~~ ~~r:;: beyond the huma-n thrall. I ' pendente we can sal.vage: hen ce the

Auden frequently lacks the cheer ful welcome accorded to belief sounded or line·by· lin e con~entration as a valu·e in itself. The poems let that one associates with the greatest one see how shrewdly and yet pr e­mode.rn poetry. But he has a subject cariously, like the rest of us, Auden uniqu ely to him e lf. This is the built the. church of se li·knowle'dge skeleton-key quest, the qlJest with- on the rock of hi s own a lj-too·human out a goal. The cOon entional detee, nature: While remaining an alto­tive story, he wrote in The Dye,.'s gether d istinctive mora list he was Hand, assumes a world io which" it himself in th is sense a representa­is certain that a crime has been com- tive case.

Knowledge and Social Imagery \ .

GLASGOW UNIVERSITY MEDIA GROUP

It· is a common belief that television news in Britain on whatever chan nel is more objective, more trustworthy, more neutral rhan press reporting. The illusion is ex­ploded 1n thi s controversial study, based on exrhaustive monitoring of all television news broadcas ts over six months, January-June 1975. The authors took as their special sub-

ROBERT J. FOGELIN Provides an authoritative critical eva i'hario n o( bo th the Tractatus and Wittgen stein 's Philosophical Investigations . This oo{ik ex· amines the weaknesses of its argumelits. It goes on to explore Wittgenstein's 'own criti­cism of the Tractarian synthesi s and shows how these c ri ticisms form the basis for a radically new sta ndpoint in philosophy. A "guillents of the Philosophers !jeries £4.75

D1\ VID .BLOOR Is the sociology of knowledge applicable to objective scien'ces ? This book argues tha t it IS. In an untechnical way it discu sses the problems raised by this contention an d probes into the so urces of. resistance to this approach by a sociological analysis of our connection of knowledge .

Di"ect Ediriolt £3.25

_ jec! industrial news broadcas ts: by shawing - how TV Dews " favours" certain in divi duals . ~rid inst itutions by--.giving them mgre time • a,nd Wltus: it deni es the n e utral ity of the ne~, and directs light on the pictu"e of industrial society that TV news constructs.

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PSYC.HOPATH The Case of Patrick Mackay

TIM CLARK a nd JOHN PENYCATE Tn 1968 P a trick Mackay wa diagnosed " a cold psychopathic killel'" and committed " in d efinitely" to a m enta l 'hospital; in 1974 with a st ring of muggings and killings behind h im he was on trial for murder. Thi s i s a di sturbin g book by the BBC Pan orama team wbo originally investigated Mackay's case. It looks at the many important qu es­t ion s raised by the case and gives a detailed account of Mack ay's deterioration from his turbulent ch ildhood through to h is n1ul' der of his fr iend Fa ther Anthony Crear~, illus­trated with his own words . Illustrated £3,95

Cybernetics and the Philosophy of Mind

KENNETH SAYRE Professor Sayre brings a new approach to the Mind / Body problem. He examines the problem in terms of the conceptual links between the physical and mental behav-

_ ioural processes. using as a basis for hi s approach the theme of continuity between evolution, learning a nd con sciousness. £6.95

A Taste of Prison - Custodial Condit ions for Trial and

Remand Prisoners ' ROY D. KING and ROD MORGAN

This book deals with a ver'y sensitive area of concern in the system of trial and im­prisonment in Britai n . The authors discuss the fu n ctions of remand in custody within a changing prison system, and make a num­b er of proposals for th"e im provement of th e regime for remand pri oners.

Dirdt Edition £2 .75

Freedom and the Welfare State RILL JORDAN

Tn .t!his wide·ranging analysis of rhe re'lat ion­ship between freedom and we lfare Bill Jordan considers philosophical, l iterMY and political expressi ons of the ideals of liberty and relates them to present· day issues in social policy and the soc ia l se rvices . By the author of Paupers and Poor Parents.

£4 .50

Talking About Welfare Readings ill PhilosophY..(lnd SOCitlZ Policy

Edited by NOEL TIMMS and DA VID WATSON

The contributors, all eminent in the fi el ds of philosophy or odal policy, cover a wide' range of welfare is ues. In particular they d eal wi th the areas of personal and social welfare, the mora] j us tification of welfare provision and va rious concepts of com­munity. £5.95, paper £2.95

'Routedge& KeganPaul

J