Auden's Ironic Masquerade: Criticism as Morality Play

Abstract

Poets sometimes carryover their skill in "arranging ... and placing/ carefully" from the making of poems to the significant arrangement of pieces in anthologies or collections. W. H. Auden, for example, appears to have arranged the essays in his collected criticism, The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays (Random House, 1962), in an ascending hierarchy related to Kierkegaard's aesthetic, ethical, and religious categories. Of the book's eight divisions, the first three, "Prologue," "The Dyer's Hand," and "Well of Narcissus," are devoted to the aesthetic sphere; for their subject-matter is, chiefly, the artist, the artistic process, and the work of art. The next three divisions, "The Shakespearian City," "Two Bestiaries," and "Americana," deal with works of literature that have attempted to represent human beings in their historical setting. Auden believes that such literature is a product of the Christian consciousness, and that there is, invariably, a tension between its aesthetic and ethical dements. The last two divisions, "The Shield of Perseus" and "Homage to Igor Stravinsky," treat comedy and music: the two artistic modes which can, in Auden's view, most nearly represent the religious sphere. He holds that music is the one artistic medium that can represent the religious significance of temporal acts, and also that "Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are irresponsible puppets of fate or chance." (The Dyer's Hand, 474.)