Marxist Euphoria

The influence of karl Marx did not even leave the poets alone. Marxism sees literature as an ideology that reflects the struggle between the classes and the economic conditions which is at the bbasis of man’s intellectural and social evolution. Awareness of socio-economic problems haunted the poets of the 30s. Auden, Spender, and C.Day Lewis wrote poetry largely social criticism.

Auden was considerably influenced quite early in his career by Karl Marx and leftiest thinker. Indeed, in his poetry we find a marriage of Freud and Marx when causes of disorder in the individual psyche are said to be the same as of the social disorder ie., repression. According to Raplogle, “the period from about 1933-38 can be llabelled Auden’s marxist period, just as the earlier can be albelled freudian.” Political Marxism was not the sort of Marxism that interested him, in his writing at least. His “Marxism” is much more a conception of human nature than a political theory a diagnosis of special illness, not a partisan programme for action.

Auden’s The Dance of Death reveals he Marxism influence on him. Though he was not a thoroughgoing Marxist, he was drawn to marxism because if the intellectual discipline it offered to him. Spain 1937 is fine political poetry born of his republication fervour and the frenzied desire to fight Fascism. Auden’s later poetry shows his faith in christian love as the Panacea for the ills of the society.

C.Day Lewis is the most menifest of revolutionaries. Spender is a poet less of revolution than of compassion. His communism is conditioned by his strong liberal convictions. His heart bleed when he finds the jobless poor loitering in the street and turning:

Their empty pockets out,

the cynocial gestures of the poor”.

Auden, Stephen, Spender, Lewis and Louis Macneice, writes Ifor Evans, dedicated themselves to empty poetry in social and political problems. Middle class, public-school englishmen, ashamed of their privileges, they viewed england’s economic depression and despaired of the future.

Auden expresses this forcefully using the old fifteen syllabkle line, the line of tennyson’s Locksley hall:

"Smokeless chimneys, damaged bridges, rotting wharveb and choked canals

Tram lines buckled, smashed trucks lying on their sides across the rails.”

To them all, the soviet union was a system of construction and hope, and behind the Svoet Union lay Maxism, to their minds a stronger and more consitent doctrine than anything suggested by the english leaders, neither attachment was profound or formal.