Notes by Nijinsky

an excerpt from September 1, 1939 
by Auden


The windiest militant rash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.


For me, this stanza compared a longing for love to a rash,something aggressive and easily spread, something that cannot be contained. It also compares the human heart to a mad man writing about his lover - that humans have the ability to love in spite of imperfections with complicated, messy relationships. In essence, this stanza is about how love cannot be controlled and all we really want out of life is to be loved unconditionally by one person. We just want to be loved at all. But in the end, we "cannot have" exactly what we want.

As far as language, while the lines lengths and rhythms are irregular, the language itself is very precise. It sounds nice due to devices such as slant rhymes (have/love, man/have, wrote/heart, rash/wish) and one exact rhyme (bone/alone). There is also a certain backbone given to the poem by the capitalization of each beginning line.

I think the stanza adds a breath of air to the bleakness of the poem's contingencies about war and national suffering. While it is still a stanza tinged with sadness, it reminds us that love cannot be stopped, even in the most difficult of times, that it will always spread and grow without fail - even a mad man cannot help but love. While we may crave a kind of love we cannot have, there will still always be the need and there will still always be the effort to try.
Auden seems to be reflecting on this need even in the midst of a war and a country in shambles.


~


NY Times Article: a 62-year-old poem finds rebirth


I think it is wonderful when a poem can resurface after so many years and find ground in a situation that occurred even after its penning. It shows the power of poems and words themselves, that a poem with no connection to 9/11 can still burrow its way into the event and signal for people a meaning and also be a comfort.

However, while the poem was celebrated, it was also picked apart -- as violating politics and government and pride, as a poem that ignores politics altogether -- and I believe this is where readers may have been in the wrong. Maybe the poem attacked politics and was "unpatriotic" but people need to remember that the poem was not written for this time -- it was written decades ago, when politics and such would have been different. To pick apart a poem because of these so-called problems would be missing the point. It talks about the towers in the darkness. It talks about a mad culture and what schoolchildren learn and the strength of collective man. Yes, some parts might be offensive to some people. The important thing is that Auden's  gift to the world some years ago meant something to some person struggling to find footing in a difficult time. This is what poetry is meant to be -- if it makes a difference to one person, then I think it is a gift.