Wong Jia Yi Geraldine

A0101522A
Dr. Susan Ang
EN4264: Modern Poetry
Week 5 Auden

Auden the Auditor (the Authority?): The Shield of Achilles

Audens most frequently quoted line is poetry makes nothing happen (In Memory
of W.B. Yeats, II.5). This line is commonly miscontrued as the quintessence of poetic
irony wherein a line of poetry self-consciously confesses its impotence whilst
indicating that its confession needs to be taken seriously. Such a reading of Audens
famous line, however, is only partially valid. It is valid to the extent that it recognises
that according to Auden, poetry, composed of words, unlike actions, has no practical
effect. Yet, it is is not wholly valid because it dismisses the potentiality of poetry to
provoke action, a potentiality that Auden champions in the oft forgotten posterior line
that describes poetry as [a] way of happening (II.10). In my interpretation of In
Memory of W.B. Yeats, I gather that poetry per se has no manifest impact but
nonethless has instrumental purpose, serving as subliminal provocation for practical
change through the psychological and emotional effects it impresses intersubjectively.
In this presentation, I aim to show how The Shield of Achilles, through its dialectic
between past and present, exemplifies Audens assertion that poetry makes nothing
happen but offers [a] way of happening.

To the extent that to make something happen is to take action, to create

tangible change in the real world, the world exterior to the psychological and

emotional world,The Shield of Achilles, like every other poem, with only words, in
itself makes nothing [practical] happen.

Does The Shield of Achilles serve as [a] way of happening or does it

remove the impetus for change by showing how the more things change, the more
things stay the same? Although Auden suceeds in editing the superfical details of the
shield, he does not counter the more substantial curse latent in the shield. Auden
follows the mythically predestined end of Achilles, ending his poem with the
affirmative that Achilles [] would not live long (67). Is this the resultant
restriction of Audens choice of the mythical method 1? Given that myths are set
stories that form our collective consciousness, the fate of Achilles, by tradition, is
already predetermined and overdetermined, with all/ That carries weight [] in the
hands of others (38-40). By framing the contemporary past in a myth, is Auden
suggesting that the past is immutable?

I contend that by modernising the mythic account of Achilles shield, Auden

has already challenged the immutability of myths. Although his revision of the myth
falls short of altering the ending, it nonetheless demonstrates that our shared past can
be re-written. The fact that Auden does not use his poetic license to propose an
alternative ending for Achilles suggests that Auden sees a short life as the inevitable
end of a cold and hardened fighter, namely the strong/ Iron-hearted man-slaying
Achilles 2 (65-66) who in contemporary consciousness, remains alive in spirit. This

Mythical method is a term coined by Eliot to decribe the intertextual employment of myth to
[manipulate] a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity. (Eliot)
2
The polysyllabic adjectives, Iron-hearted and man-slaying, by virtue of being a composite of
morphemes that do not necessarily go together, raise the question of alternatives. Instead of an ironhearted man-slaying warmonger, might not a modernised Achilles be a warm-hearted dragon-slaying
protector?

continuity from past to present, could be [a] way of happening; it invites a reevaluation of the value of glory in death vis-a-vis the value of life by throwing
Achilles heroism into doubt.

Is Achilles vengence more justified than some cause that is absurdly

[p]roved morally just by statistics, that are amoral (17)? Audens poem, by
setting up a dialogic comparison between Illiadic heroism and modern conceptions of
heroism, prompts readers to rethink the concept of heroism and adopt a more critical
stance to monologic propaganda such as that which is broadcasted from a
disembodied voice out of the air (and out of thin air) that discusse[s] nothing
and only indoctrinates a belief that leads, with finality reinforced by rhyme, to
grief (16-22). While the connection between grief and a perverse belief appears
fixed in rhyme, the rhyme, need not be between belief and grief. In this ababbcc
rhyme scheme, the last two lines can be changed together to still rhyme but on a
different sound, and convey a different meaning. Moreover, Audens modified shield
of Achilles, already metapoetically demonstrates how the present need not repeat the
past.

That said, Audens poem is undeniably fixated on pastness at the expense of

looking forward and this problematises its ability to inspire a clear vision of the
future. Written in past and past-perfect tense, the poem relates what Auden has
observed of his age against the backdrop of the classical age but fails to convey what
he envisions. Contrary to much of the rest of Audens oeuvre, The Shield of
Achilles, is unmistakeably reticent with regards to Audens opinions and desires. The
poem is so restrained that it would hardly be mistaken as a clarion call. Auden, via his

poetic persona, apparently positions himself as a reporter (conservative) rather than a

revolutionary (critical and creative). If a reader, like Audens poetic persona, adopts
the role of a dispassionate and dispossessed observer, passively accepting the stated
observations as grounded in a historical and mythological past presumed to be fixed
in stone, the poem will be effectively ineffectual. Furthermore, given that the poem
was published in 1952, years after the Second World War, and centuries after Homers
epic was written, the poem appears to be a belated recollection, too late and too
lethargic to be of any use.

Yet, it is the pastness of the past that Auden precisely resists in employing the
mythical method that demonstrates how the past is still alive in the present and subject
to renegotiation. The Shield of Achilles despite, or in fact, precisely by looking
backwards in time, is [a] way of happening because perspective on the past affects
our thoughts and actions in the present and the future. The Shield of Achilles is a
mouth (In Mermory of W.B. Yeats, II.10), articulating the horrors of
contemporaneity through superimposition upon antiquity in a way that illustrates how
the past, present and future is shaped by our perspectives and worldviews. If we were
to pay attention to the innovative aspects of The Shield of Achilles, we will recognise the past and recognise how the past is capable of being repeatedly re-visioned
and re-written.

Through a revised Hephaestos, Auden paints [q]uite another scene (30) on

Achilles shield. The altar for religious sacrifice of heifers is substituted with a
site for the torture and execution of humans (28, 25, 26). Perceived through modern
lenses, sacrifices to pagan gods tend to be understood as superstition but Auden

recoups the value of ritual pieties (24) by elevating them over the humiliation and
dehumanisation meted out by an ungodly and callous (bored) (22) authority.
Audens use of the phrase should have been (28) does more than highlight the
discrepancy between what is known and expected based on Homers epic, the
progenitor of this modern verse, versus what is presently depicted in this new
creation. The phrase bespeaks Audens preference for the dying traditions that he
attempts to ressurect by raising the ghost of the altar in the readers consciousness.
Evidently, Auden as accessed through his poetic voice, is not as neutral as discussed
earlier. By setting up a dichotomy between past and present, Auden not only suggests
that the present can be other than what it is but also advances that it should be
different from what it is.

The way forward, Auden covertly puts forth, seems not to be a continuation
down the slippery slope of human progress but a return to a peacful pastoral past.
Nostalgia for a bygone Golden Age where fields are filled with gold, with harvest
corn (Homer, XVIII), and where the land is fertile with vines and olive trees (2) is
made palpable in the recurring structural oppositions between expectation and reality.
Three times, [Thetis] looked over [Hepahestos] shoulder/For (1-2 etc.) something
she hopes to see on the shield, only to be disappointed again with the connector but
(5 etc.) that consistently signposts the failure of reality to correspond with her
imagination. But there on the shining metal/ His hands had put instead (5-6) of a
verdant landscape, a concrete jungle, [a]n artificial wilderness and a wasteland:

A plain without a feature, bare and brown,

No blade of grass, no sign of neighbourhood,

Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down, (9-11)

The negationswithout, no, nothing and nowhere highlight the

absence of idealsnature (grass), community (neighbourhood), nourishment
(eat) and rest (sit down)that are immortalised in Homers vision of Achilles
shield, paying tribute to them by marking their loss. In Audens version of Achilles
shield, gone is the joyous revelry of Homers wedding feast celebrating the
harmonious union of two lives that is likely to beget more lives. In its place,
destructive competition, decay and death that characterises the modern era are
symbolically represented by the weed-choked field (52) supplanting thedancingfloor (51).

Instead of boys and girls dancing in harmony with one another as on Homers
shield that reflects Homers world, the axiom[atic] (57) reality of Audens
world/shield is [t]hat girls are raped by virtue of being physically weaker and two
boys knife [metaphorically and/or literally] a third who is unable to oppose their
combined strength (56). Through the characterisation of the urchin, we learn that
these abuses of power are not only normative but unquestionable (axioms) in his
world (57-58). In this warped world, beauty is substituted by misery, the "boy who
made sweet music with his lyre, and sang the Linos-song with his clear boyish voice"
(Homer, XVIII), is replaced by a ragged urchin (53), a victim of violence, who in
turn becomes the perpertrator of violence. The absence of any mention of a prior
attack from the bird implies that the boy was not acting in self-defense but is picking
on his physical inferior to pay forward the violence he has suffered in the hands of
someone with superior power. The boy has ostensibly been corrupted by a society

desensitised to violence and is caught in the chain of violence that echoes Audens
aphorism in September 1, 1939, Those to whom evil is done/ Do evil in return.
(21-22).

Regrettably, modern society has selectively inherited the worst of Achilles, his
vengeful spirit, while failing to continue Achilles legacy of honour and compassion.
Unlike in Homers world, there is no trust or empathy in the urchins world, only
domination and selfishness. To emphasise the depravity of the world the urchin
lives in, Auden uses two absolutes in the desciption, never heard/ Of any world
where promises were kept,/Or one could weep because another wept (58-59).
Contrastingly, in Homers world, Achilles avenges Patroclus death to make up for his
failure to uphold his promise to return Patroclus to his father and takes pity on
Hectors father who pleads to bury his son. In this light, the tragic description of the
urchins ignorance is rendered ironic. While the urchin is artistically embedded in
Homers world, we are culturally embedded in Homers world and as heirs of this
world where promises are honoured and empathy is exemplified, we are reasonably
expected to possess a notion of a world like Homers, a world more honourable and
compassionate, a world that we can revisit and realise (to some extent).

Homers society, however, is not without its weaknesses. Closer examination

of what is omitted from Homers shield reveals negative aspects of Greek culture that
are not so far removed from the unsavoury practices of the contemporary soceity
reflected on Audens shield. Cruelty and suffering manifest on Audens shield but
obscured from Homers shield are not in fact absent in the latter. Audens depiction of
men who lost their pride (43) finds its counterpart in Achilles dishonouring of

Hectors corpse that is subliminally brought to mind through Thetis desire to see
Hephaestos render on the shield atheletes at their games. During the atheletic
matches held in honour of Patroclus, Achilles has Hectors corpse ignobly dragged by
the heels behind his chariot. Scrutiny of The Illiad further reveals that rape is not
foreign but part and parcel of Greek military culture that uses females are battle prizes
and so reduces them to commodities that can be passed, independently of their will,
from one male to another.

Evidently, Homers world is not free from criticism. Audens laudatory

treatment of Homers world, limited by its scope of the shield, incites an investigation
of the reality that lies outside Homers shield. By surfacing moral failures of humanity
and exposing them as timeless, readers may pessimistically conclude that these are
innate and unchangeable. On the other hand, readers, may optimistically hope that
having surfaced these perennial issues, we can confront them in ways we have
neglected to do so in the past and so rewrite the future that Auden has conspicuously
left unwritten for the reader to conceive (which is a way of happening) and create
(which makes happen).

Possible Discussion Question

Why does Auden use various distancing techniques, elide his personal voice, use the
mythic method and avoid specificity when describing the modern society?

Works Cited
Auden, W.H. September 1, 1939
Auden, W.H. In Memory of W.B. Yeats
Auden, W.H. The Shield of Achilles
Eliot, T.S. "Ulysses, Order and Myth." people.virginia.edu. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Sept.
2014. <http://people.virginia.edu/~jdk3t/eliotulyss
Homer, translated by Samuel Butler. "XVIII." The Iliad. Print.

Appendix: The Shield of Achilles

Source: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/shield-achilles

The Shield of Achilles

W. H. Auden, 1907 1973
She looked over his shoulder
For vines and olive trees,
Marble well-governed cities
And ships upon untamed seas,
But there on the shining metal
His hands had put instead
An artificial wilderness
And a sky like lead.
A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.
Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place:
No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;
Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.
She looked over his shoulder
For ritual pieties,
White flower-garlanded heifers,
Libation and sacrifice,
But there on the shining metal
Where the altar should have been,
She saw by his flickering forge-light
Quite another scene.
Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
A crowd of ordinary decent folk
Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led forth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.

The mass and majesty of this world, all

That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help and no help came:
What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.
She looked over his shoulder
For athletes at their games,
Men and women in a dance
Moving their sweet limbs
Quick, quick, to music,
But there on the shining shield
His hands had set no dancing-floor
But a weed-choked field.
A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, whod never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.
The thin-lipped armorer,
Hephaestos, hobbled away,
Thetis of the shining breasts
Cried out in dismay
At what the god had wrought
To please her son, the strong
Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
Who would not live long.