W. H.

AUDEN – SEPTEMBER 1,
1939: A LITERARY ANALYSIS
In this essay, I am going to discuss the literary elements such as metaphor, metonymy, irony
and synecdoche of this poem and how they articulate the theme of the text. Firstly, though, I
will shortly introduce the author. Wystan Hugh Auden was born in the city of York, northern
England on February 21, 1907. At thirteen, he went to Gresham´s School in Norfolk, here
Auden realized he wanted to be a poet. He spent nine months in Berlin when he was 21, there
he first experienced the political and economic unrest that became one of his main themes. In
1937, he went to Spain to participate in the Spanish Civil War. His visit to Spain affected him
deeply, and his social views grew more complex as he found political realities to be more
ambiguous and troubling than he had imagined. On January 1939, Auden moved to the US, he
spent the war there teaching. He died in 1973 in Vienna, Austria.1
The poem is written in nine stanzas, where each has eleven lines. The title,

“September 1,1939” refers to the start of World War II, when Germany and later Russia

invaded Poland. Although the title of the poem may indicate that like it will be about the war,

it is more about what causes a war. The text starts with the following lines:

I sit in one of the dives

On Fifty-second Street,2

when first reading this, one may think that Auden is referring to the centre of Jazz in New

York, but in reality he is talking about sitting in a gay bar. According to the Cambridge

Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus, the word “dive” refers to a place, hotel or bar, for

entertainment that is unpleasant because of the people that go there.3 On one hand it is a place

the author wants to keep private, by not naming it straight out, on the other hand, it is a public

place where anyone can go. The poem continues with:

As the clever hopes expire

Of a low dishonest decade. (Auden)

1
Carpenter, Humphrey. W.H. Auden: a Biography. London, UK.Faber & Faber, 2011. Part I, Chapter 1-2,5,7,
Part II, Chapter 2,7.
2
Auden, W. H. “September 1, 1939”. Poets.org, Academy of American Poets,
<https://poets.org/poem/september-1-1939>. All subsequent quotations from this edition will be indicated in the
text by parentheses.
3
“Dive, n.” Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus, Cambridge University Press, 2019.
<https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/dive>.
 Martišková 1

This poem was written in 1939, so I believe that by “low and dishonest decade” he is referring

to 1930s, which were hit by the Great Depression, everybody was losing their jobs and all the

hope was going away. Continuing with:

Waves of anger and fear

Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night. (Auden)

The first half of this passage refers to war, where waves of anger and fear are a metonymy,

part of a whole picture, for what war looks and feels like. War is taking a toll on everyone,

even on those who are not the target at first, so it is “obsessing our private lives”. It makes us

think about it and wonder if something can happen to us, too. The last two lines of the first

stanza refer particularly to the invasion of Poland. “Odour” brings negative connotations to

mind and paints a horrible picture in our minds, the personification of night, where night

should be calm and safe is “offended” by German army, making noise and killing people.

What is really interesting is that this poem became popular again after 9/11 attack on the

World Trade Center4, because the first stanza is scarily accurate for that day, too.

In the second, third and fourth stanzas, Auden is talking about the cause of war and

what foregoes it. He is taking a look at the social and psychological phenomenon that occurs

before the war. The poem continues:

Accurate scholarship can

Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad, (Auden)

4
Steinfels, Peter. “Beliefs; After Sept. 11, a 62-Year-Old Poem by Auden Drew New Attention. Not All of It Was
Favorable.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 1 Dec. 2001,
<www.nytimes.com/2001/12/01/us/beliefs-after-sept-11-62-year-old-poem-auden-drew-new-attention-not-all-it-
was.html>
 Martišková 2

Auden is saying that there was a lot of pent up frustration and anger in Germany, starting with

Luther and his reforms up until the World War II. Luther is a synecdoche to German culture,

because it is a part of a whole, one person who is known to be German. Continuing:

Find what occurred at Linz,

What huge imago made
A psychopathic god: (Auden)

Here, the author is referring especially to Hitler. “Linz” is a town in Austria, where Hitler

spent most of his childhood and a city, he later wanted to make to be his Führer city5. So, by

referring to the city it holds the meaning of Hitler, it is a metaphor. “Imago” is a term

referring to parental figure, it comes from Jung´s psychoanalysis6. It is a metaphor for Hitler´s

father, who was not a constant figure in his life and was probably abusive towards him and his

mother7, therefore creating “a psychopathic god”. Auden shows here that he believes that

psychopaths come from abusive childhood. The poem then goes:

I and the public know

What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return (Auden)

In this last part of the second stanza, Auden is referring to people learning from history.He is

pointing out that when people are oppressed or being treated incorrectly, they tend to respond

with doing the same, and that is how uprisings or even wars are created. It does not matter if it

is a small child who later becomes a serial killer, if abused when little, or a whole country that

turns against others when being oppressed. Next stanza continues with:

Exiled Thucydides knew

All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
5
Klaas, Heiko. “Hitler's Culture Capital: Linz Tackles Its Past as a 'Führer' City - DER SPIEGEL -
International.” DER SPIEGEL, DER SPIEGEL, 17 Sept. 2008, <www.spiegel.de/international/europe/hitler-s-
culture-capital-linz-tackles-its-past-as-a-fuehrer-city-a-578785.html>.
6
Ducret, Antoine. "Imago." International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. Encyclopedia.com, 18 Jan. 2020,
<https://www.encyclopedia.com/medicine/psychology/psychology-and-psychiatry/imago-psychology>
7
Stuttgart, Krysia Diver in. “Journal Reveals Hitler's Dysfunctional Family.” The Guardian, Guardian News and
Media, 4 Aug. 2005, <www.theguardian.com/world/2005/aug/04/research.secondworldwar>.
 Martišková 3

The elderly rubbish they talk

To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again. (Auden)

Thucydides was a Greek historian, exiled from democratic Athens, who wrote a book about

the first war that ever happened, the Peloponnesian war. He analysed the human nature in his

book, and he believed that it does not change8, it is just an “apathetic grave”, and therefore

wars will always happen. People are too greedy and not able to learn from their past mistakes;

it is a “habit-forming pain” that “We must suffer again”. In the fourth stanza, we come back to

New York:

Into this neutral air

Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong. (Auden)

“Neutral air” is metonymy for America´s neutrality during the war at the time, but also

complicity, because they did not try to stop Hitler. Neutrality was an ongoing thing during the

1930s, when western democracies decided to stay neutral and not interefere in Spanish Civil

War (Carpenter, 2011), where Auden spent seven weeks of his life, making them accomplices

of fascism. “Blind skyscrapers” are a metaphor for the private companies that have their

offices there. “Collective Man” symbolizes collectivism, where people inside this collectice

comunity care only about those within and put their well being over other things9; this is a

8
Walker, Vivian S. “From Pylos to Pyongyang: What Thucydides Can Teach Us about Contemporary
Diplomacy.” Small Wars Journal, <www.smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/from-pylos-to-pyongyang-what-
thucydides-can-teach-us-about-contemporary-diplomacy.>
9
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Collectivism.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica,
Inc., 19 Sept. 2007, <www.britannica.com/topic/collectivism>.
 Martišková 4

metaphor for the people of the US. They are being isolated inside their culture, kept in their

“euphoric dream”, being neutral and giving a blind eye to the war going on outside. But when

they look outside, they find out that the war is an outcome of an imperialism driven world.

In the fifth stanza, we return to the dives that opened this poem. Auden is describing

the atmosphere of the bar and how the inside world continues, even though somewhere

outside, someone else´s world is ending:

Faces along the bar

Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home; (Auden)

The people in the bar are in this makeshift world of theirs that is keeping them safe and out of

the outside world. They are being isolated inside, just like America was keeping itself isolated

from outside world. In the sixth stanza Auden talks about the private and the public again:

The windiest militant trash

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 bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone. (Auden)

The stanza opens with references to the military and politics, where “Important Persons”

stand for influential people or politicians. The verb “shout” may be seen as a propaganda in

comparison to lovers proclaiming their emotions to each other. The public meeting the

private. Everybody is seeking love, romance, but without having to give something back like

love, faithfulness. Everybody just wants to take, but not give back, the same with politicians,

they want to take, but are not willing to give anything back.
 Martišková 5

With eight stanza comes a change in attitude that Auden as an author and narrator

gives. He is suddenly not just a man in a bar, but a higher voice of authority. He as a writer

cannot change what already happened, but he can bring the truth to light:

All I have is a voice

To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die. (Auden)

“To undo the folded lie” is a metaphor for saying or showing the truth. He is calling out

authorities, who are lying to people, taking from them, even though they have “buildings

grope the sky”, which means they are rich and powerful. For Auden this is not a state, and

people cannot exist alone, because we are social animals. He addresses all people that either

we “love one another or die”. This stanza was the most problematic one for Auden to accept

later in his life. He tried changing the text to love and die, because at the end we all die, and

he thought it was stupid leaving “or” there. Then he wanted to erase the whole stanza and at

the end he threw away the whole poem and asked for it to not be published until he is alive:

"Rereading a poem of mine, 1st September 1939, after it had been published, I came to the

line 'We must love one another or die' and said to myself: 'That's a damned lie! We must die

anyway.' So, in the next edition, I altered it to 'We must love one another and die.' This didn't

seem to do either, so I cut the stanza. Still no good. The whole poem, I realized, was infected

with an incurable dishonesty -- and must be scrapped."10

The last stanza has a totally different mood than those before, he is not stating truths,

neither is he hiding, he is seeking for justice in this world, praying for better lives:

Defenceless under the night

10
John Fuller, W. H. Auden: A Commentary, London, UK. Faber and Faber, 1998, page 292.
 Martišková 6

Our world in stupor lies;

Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame. (Auden)

In the first line, the poet is talking about the defenceless Polish people who are calling for

help, with their world “in stupor”. “The light flashing out on the Just” is hope that comes with

justice, at the beginning the night brought despair, the light brings hope in the eyes of justice.

“Eros and dust” are metonymies for love (since Eros is god of love and desire) and death

(since dust in the Bible is what we turn into at the end), which brings us back to the previous

stanza where he states that we need to love or die. Auden is saying that even though we are

surrounded by negation and despair, we should not give up and show love, hope and courage

in our “affirming flame”.

 Martišková 7

Works cited:

1. Carpenter, Humphrey. W.H. Auden: A Biography. London, UK. Faber & Faber, 2011,

<https://books.google.cz/books?

id=5wXvI4F54X8C&lpg=PP5&ots=oazqCitN50&dq=wh

%20auden&lr&hl=sk&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false>. Accessed 7 December 2019.

2. “Dive, n.” Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus, Cambridge

University Press, 2019,<https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/dive>.

Accessed 7 December 2019.

3. Ducret, Antoine. "Imago". International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis.

Encyclopedia.com, 18 Jan. 2020,

<https://www.encyclopedia.com/medicine/psychology/psychology-and-psychiatry/

imago-psychology>. Accessed 19 January 2020.

4. Klaas, Heiko. “Hitler's Culture Capital: Linz Tackles Its Past as a 'Führer' City - DER

SPIEGEL - International.” DER SPIEGEL, DER SPIEGEL, 17 Sept. 2008,

<www.spiegel.de/international/europe/hitler-s-culture-capital-linz-tackles-its-past-as-

a-fuehrer-city-a-578785.html>. Accessed 19 January 2020.

5. Fuller, John. W.H. Auden: A Commentary. London, UK. Faber & Faber, 1998.

6. “September 1, 1939 by W. H. Auden - Poems | Academy of American Poets.”

Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, <https://poets.org/poem/september-1-1939>.

Accessed 7 December 2019.

7. Steinfels, Peter. “Beliefs; After Sept. 11, a 62-Year-Old Poem by Auden Drew New

Attention. Not All of It Was Favorable.” The New York Times, The New York Times,

1 Dec. 2001, <www.nytimes.com/2001/12/01/us/beliefs-after-sept-11-62-year-old-

poem-auden-drew-new-attention-not-all-it-was.html>. Accessed 7 December 2019.

 Martišková 8

8. Stuttgart, Krysia Diver in. “Journal Reveals Hitler's Dysfunctional Family.” The

Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 4 Aug. 2005,

<www.theguardian.com/world/2005/aug/04/research.secondworldwar>. Accessed 19

January 2020.

9. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Collectivism.” Encyclopædia Britannica,

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 19 Sept. 2007,

<www.britannica.com/topic/collectivism>. Accessed 19 January 2020.

10. Walker, Vivian S. “From Pylos to Pyongyang: What Thucydides Can Teach Us about

Contemporary Diplomacy.” Small Wars Journal,

<www.smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/from-pylos-to-pyongyang-what-thucydides-can-

teach-us-about-contemporary-diplomacy.> Accessed 19 January 2020.