Scarica Auden's poems analysis: Funeral Blues & Musée Des Beaux Arts e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! APPUNTI DOCSITY BY 2119601 – ENGLISH LITERATURE 1 di 3 WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN (1907-1973) FUNERAL BLUES (1936) Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, --> innovation (Oxford poets) = technology + everyday life Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum = ovattato Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. = préfiche Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'. The beloved one Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, = tessuto elegante --> they need to be dressed up (craft collar) [vulgar/down-to-earth birds] Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. --> special occasion He was my North, my South, my East and West, --> he was my direction in life My working week and my Sunday rest, --> he was all the weekdays = everything My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; --> all day/night = everything I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong. --> even if the body is doomed to fail/corrupted, our love will last forever (in my heart/soul) The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, --> natural elements aren’t important anymore VS romantic poets (needed light & stars) Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, Has been the inspiration for all the poets before. --> there is no more need for light/mystery/ warmth, because I don’t have what I need to live anymore. Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; --> I don’t need nature any longer. For nothing now can ever come to any good. --> they are useless now that I don't have my beloved anymore, because he was my reference point in life. TITLE: Blues --> it was meant to be a song, but it was turned into a poem It's dedicated to a lost lover (somebody WHA had loved) --> he was homosexual It became a song dedicated to all the beloved --> film: Four weddings and a funeral (1990 +- --> Hugh Grant + Andy MacDowell) STRUCTURE: 4 stanzas --> each one is divided by imperatives APPUNTI DOCSITY BY 2119601 – ENGLISH LITERATURE 2 di 3 MUSÉE DES BEAUX ARTS (1938) = Fine Arts Museum – in Brussels (WHA visited it) About suffering they were never wrong, --> run-on-line (subject is in the next line) The Old Masters; how well they understood The Flemish painters --> they were right in depicting human suffering --> they represent tradition (doesn’t come back) Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; --> parallel lives without interference How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Christ --> reference to The nativity by Breughel the Elder Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course = follow its path in life Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot = unnoticed Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse --> reference to The murdering of the innocents by Breughel the Elder Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away --> reference to The fall of Icarus* by Breughel the Elder Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Probability Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, = ignored But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone = the farmer’s (& other people's) life goes on As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. --> everything follows its routine/path
