ok so now im going to get into this beast. Auden grapples a lot with temporality in his poetry. He says the hallmark of modernity itself is this temporal anxiety or alienation, the Arcadian and the Utopian are two responses to the movement of time in modernity. This dovetails perfectly with the analysis of time under capitalism by someone like david harvey. Time is relative to the movement of matter. And culture has a material basis. Thus, as the material basis keeps changing, with the industrial revolution, then with the digital revolution, culture becomes shapeshifting and, if we are honest, subservient to Capital. And the human response is then to seek to swim against the quickened stream of time by longing for a lost Eden, or to swim with the tide, to make use of the progress, and there is some progress, to anticipate a new jersualem. The first is the Arcadian Type, the Second the Utopian type. But an auden ice breaker was to ask people what was their arcadian or edenic city like. did it have trains, baths, mills, newspapers, what type of trains? etc. He gets into these two types in Horae Canonicae: Vespers

So with a passing glance we take the other’s posture; already, our steps recede, heading, incorrigible each, towards his kind of meal and evening.

Was it (as it must look to any god of cross-roads) simply a fortuitous intersection of life-paths, loyal to different fibs

or also a rendezvous between accomplices who, in spite of themselves, cannot resist meeting

to remind the other (do both, at bottom, desire truth?) of that half of their secret which he would most like to forget

forcing us both, for a fraction of a second, to remember our victim (but for him I could forget the blood, but for me he could forget the innocence)

on whose immolation (call him Abel, Remus, whom you will, it is one Sin Offering) arcadias, utopias, our dear old bag of a democracy, are alike founded:

For without a cement of blood (it must be human, it must be innocent) no secular wall will safely stand.

the utopian could forget the blood of the victim, the arcadian could forget the innocence. so much of audens poetry finds its frame in this chart. so the right side\left side contrast aesthetic and ethical potency and actuality. the left thinks of the blood of Christ the right His innocence without the blood. Blood shows up on the secondary symbols on the left side of the chart above.

but there is essential being in eden or paradise and this contrasts with existential being and the knowledge of good and evil and the dualism of experience. auden is going trad christian with this chart and not some dbh monistic universalism. yet the truth is quite profoud, that with the fall, with the knowledge of good and evil, we lose contact with the human essence, with man´s glassy essence as shakespeare would call it. we were not made to know evil and to know evil is tricky. evil does not exist, so our knowledge of evil is an ideal, mental something that picks out for a real absence of being.

with the primary symbols auden fixates on water and light. water refers to sense, and light to intellect. those who are more given to sense fall into nature, they fall into nature as a refuge and salvation. those who are more given to rely on intellect fall away from nature, seeking to dominate nature. this leaves the left side of hell as a dark sea, and the right side of hell as a mid-day desert.

the further point is that auden brilliantly connects society with the light or intellect metaphor. so its common night for those following sense, i.e. they are more likely to fall into intellectual conformity with the crowd or society. for the right side the error is private light, they seek to escape society for illumination.

the forest and mountain are also instructive but more about will. the right side fantasy wishes to dominate, wishes to escape nature and ascends the mountain as a paradigmatic adventure. the left side seeks refuge in the canopy of the forest, they perhaps seek to carve out a small dwelling and garden in the wild forest that protects them from storm and perhaps also intruders.

this all is a thrilling depiction of the fall of man. with the knowledge of good and evil there is a separation between essence and existence, between knowing and doing. this sends men, naked, ashamed, dizzy, horrified by sin, in two different directions into the sea, or into the desert, up the mountain, or into the forest, into the crowd, or into solitude.

the way right seeks knowledge, the way left seeks power. the way right seeks the pure word as means to knowledge, the way left seeks the pure deed as means to power. yet the fatal flaw is that seeking refuge in nature gives one power without purpose. seeking release from nature give one knowledge without power. what is missing is knowledge of our purpose which lies beyond nature. we need a living, powerful Word beyond nature to orient our action, and an illuminating, powerful Deed beyond nature to give limit to our knowledge.

and the mean is the city, where hopefully these extremes of word and deed, of solitude and company, of light and darkness, of sea and desert can come together and compliment eachother.

w.h. auden´s chart

Stephen Weller

·

August 25, 2025

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