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Funeral Blues Notes Funeral Blues By W.H. Auden Introduction This poem, which is now presented as a straight-forward and heart-rending expression of grief for a dead lover, was originally written as a song in a mildly satirical play which Auden co-wrote with Christopher Isherwood. It was later adapted as a poem, and included in a collection of poetry published in 1936. It was first published with the inspiring title of ‘Poem number IX’ but in 1937 it appeared under the name ‘Funeral Blues’ in the anthology ‘Collected Poems’. In spite of its slightly frivolous origins, however, it is a deeply moving and beautiful poem. About the poet Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York, England, in 1907. He studied at Oxford University, where he began a degree in Science and Engineering before changing to an English major. He published a number of poetry anthologies which established his reputation as a poet, although he was also an author and playwright. In his youth he travelled extensively. His visits to countries such as Spain, during the Civil War of 1934-1939, influenced his poetry, Although he was a homosexual, he married a German woman named Erika Mann (daughter of a prominent German writer) so that she could become a British citizen and leave Nazi Germany safely. In 1939 Auden moved to the United States, where he lived for many years. Here he met his long-term partner, Chester Kallman, and eventually became an American citizen. Towards the end of his life, with his health deteriorating, Auden moved to Austria. He died there in 1973. Auden was acknowledged as one of the leading poets of his generation. He received many awards for his work, including the Pulitzer prize in 1948. Summary In the first stanza, the speaker lists the things he wants done to make his mourning clear. These are based on the old-fashioned rituals of mourning (see below). These are the kinds of things that a family would do in preparation for a funeral, to show their personal grief. In the second stanza the speaker shows his desire for the mourning process to be more public – he wants an aeroplane to advertise the sad event in the sky, and for the traffic policemen to wear black gloves and the city doves to have black bows around their necks. These demands are obviously not made literally, but they show how the speaker cannot bear the fact that for most people, life goes on as usual – he wants everyone to acknowledge this dreadful loss and share the grief of it. The third stanza describes how much the deceased meant to the speaker; how he ‘completed’ his life, and how he had presumed they would be together forever. It ends with a simple yet heart-breaking sentence – ‘I was wrong.’ Concluding the poem, the speaker proposes to obliterate and dismantle the entire universe, as a sign that without his loved one, he can find no meaning or joy in life. These extravagant instructions (‘Pour away the ocean’) demonstrate how the world has become a broken and useless place to him – promising good things but ultimately a hollow sham. Structure The poem consists of four stanzas of four lines each. Each has a rhyme scheme of aa, bb etc. The number of syllables in each line varies but there are about four beats in each line. The poem is a ‘dirge’ or lament for the dead and uses the solemn language and style of a traditional elegy; mixed in with this, however, are references to everyday modern items such as ‘traffic policemen’ and ‘telephones’. Diction and imagery The first stanza contains a number of instructions, each beginning with a short verb – ‘stop’, ‘silence’, ‘cut off’, ‘prevent’. These are all negative words, showing that the speaker wants a clear break from the everyday events of normal life. The only ‘positive’ verbs are to do with the funeral arrangements – ‘Bring out the coffin’ and ‘let the mourners come’. These lines give us a clear image of a house (and a life) silenced and immobilized by grief. The only actions which can be taken are the symbolic actions of mourning. Normal life is ended, and the ceremonial rituals take over. In stanza 2 the images become more extravagant, almost preposterous. The speaker would like a plane to circle overhead to advertise this terrible loss; he wants all the city pigeons to have black bows around their necks, and the policemen to wear ‘black cotton’ gloves. These are not realistic demands, but rather they illustrate the speaker’s need for his lover’s death to be widely acknowledged, and for everyone to share his grief. He uses the word ‘moaning’ to describe the noise of the plane, which mirrors the moaning of a grieving person. The message is ‘scribbled’ on the sky, as if written by a shaky, desperate hand; and the message is a simple ‘He is Dead’ – no need for a name, everyone must know who ‘He’ is. The use of a capital letter for ‘Dead’ emphasizes the overwhelming finality of what has happened. The description of the ‘white necks’ of the doves creates a picture of vulnerable fragility, imprisoned by the black bonds of mourning. The policemen’s black gloves are made of ‘cotton’, which emphasizes that they are not working gloves, but symbols of sadness and respect. In the third stanza, lines 9 – 11 give us a vivid picture of the importance of the dead person in the speaker’s life. He compares him to all four points of the compass, and to every day of the week. The words ‘noon’ and ‘midnight’ indicate all the hours of the day (this is synecdoche, when parts of the whole are used to represent the whole). He also represented everything joyful in life – ‘my talk, my song’. This touching tribute is followed by a simple statement – ‘I thought that love would last forever; I was wrong’ which gives a stark image of someone struggling to come to terms with a devastating loss which he had never anticipated. The imagery in the final stanza is dramatic, almost melodramatic – the speaker expresses his desire to ‘put out the stars’ and ‘dismantle the sun’ – all the traditional images associated with poetry, especially love poetry, are now merely insulting shams. These images give us a picture of someone ‘cleaning up’ after an event is over- the speaker uses words like ‘put out’, ‘sweep up’, ‘pack away’, ‘pour out’, as if the cleaning staff have arrived to clear up all the ‘props’ or decorations which were used to give the illusion of a pleasant scene, but which are now shown to be shoddy and fake. Tone You will not be surprised to hear that the tone of the poem is bleak, grief- stricken and despairing. The first stanza is sombre, as the speaker barks out instructions; in the second the tone becomes almost a little wild, as he wishes for extravagant – and impossible- displays of public mourning. In the third, a tender note creeps in as the speaker describes the all- encompassing nature of their love – ‘He was everything to me’ is a common cliché, but here the speaker takes this sentiment out of the realms of cliché with a vivid and touching series of images. The last line of this stanza shows the bitter depths of his grief in a simple statement – ‘I thought that love would last forever; I was wrong’. He clearly had such faith in the strength of their love that the idea of physical death taking it away did not occur to him. The dramatic tone returns slightly in the final stanza as the speaker describes how he would like to dismantle, pack up and put away all the elements of the universe which are ‘no longer needed’ now, and have lost their meaning for him. The extravagance of this description is prevented from becoming melodramatic, however, by the bleak desolation that is communicated by his simple words and images; and the final line sums up this feeling perfectly – ‘For nothing now can ever come to any good.’ Rituals of mourning Throughout history different societies have developed various methods of showing their grief at the loss of a loved one. In Europe and America these customs reached their height during the very formal and ceremonial Victorian era, during the 19th century. They have fallen away somewhat during the modern era but would still have been a familiar feature of life during Auden’s lifetime. It was far more common for people to die at home than it is today, and during a serious illness sawdust would be spread on the streets outside the house to muffle the clatter of horses’ hooves. Clocks in the house would be stopped at the moment of death, and while the body was in the house everyone would be as quiet as possible – hence the ‘juicy bone’ to stop the dog from barking. Mirrors and shiny objects would be covered with black cloth, and window and doors draped with black cloth and ribbons or wreaths. No music would be played, and after the arrival of the telephone this too would be silenced. The immediate family would wear black clothing (even underwear!) and the funeral procession would also use black draping. If a family was wealthy enough to afford an elaborate procession, the drummers who followed the coffin would wrap cloths around their drumsticks so that the solemn noise of the drums was ‘muffled’. The death of prominent figures such as national heroes (for example the Duke of Wellington, winner of the Battle of Waterloo against Napoleon) or members of the royal family would be followed by public displays of mourning in which state employees – and anyone else who wanted to show their sadness at the public loss – would wear black mourning clothes.
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