“September 1, 1939” is a 99-line poem by English poet W. H. Auden. It’s named for the date that Germany attacked Poland and instigated the events of World War II. The free-verse poem was written shortly after Auden’s widely criticized (some thought he was fleeing the war) move to New York City in January 1939 amid growing tensions in Europe. It explores the way that the average person, even across the Atlantic, was touched by the reverberations of war and thematically focuses on the power of the individual, the potential of human connection, and the cyclical nature of history.

Poet Biography

Wystan Hugh Auden, known widely as W. H. Auden, was an English poet, playwright, and literary critic. He was born in York, England, in 1908, though grew up in Solihull, a town near Birmingham. Auden’s household was devoutly Anglo-Catholic, and these influences inspired the poet’s fascination with art. While Auden became less religious as he grew older, the influence of music and language remained. His first poems were published in 1923 in a school journal. Shortly after, he went on to attend Oxford University, first on a biology scholarship and then moving to English literature. His early poems were influenced by the Romantic era poets such as William Wordsworth, and later by contemporaries such as Thomas Hardy and T. S. Eliot. After Oxford, Auden lived in Berlin for a short period of time; his experiences there with social and political upheaval would go on to inform much of his poetic work. In 1930, shortly after his return to England, Auden published his first collection simply titled Poems.

In 1935, Auden married Erika Mann, daughter of the novelist Thomas Mann. They had what’s become known as a “lavender marriage,” a union of convenience between a gay man and woman. Erika Mann also wanted to obtain British citizenship under the threat of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. They did not live together, but remained friends throughout their lives. In 1939, Auden moved to New York City. Though he continued to travel, even teaching at Oxford intermittently for several years, he eventually obtained American citizenship and settled permanently in the United States. He died in 1973 of heart failure, while on tour in Vienna.

Auden’s work received mixed critiques during his lifetime. He earned enough acclaim to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1947 for his epic poem The Age of Anxiety. He continued to release further volumes of his work, including Another Time (1940), For the Time Being (1944), and The Collected Poetry (1945). However, his enduring legacy was cemented after his death with the appearance of his poem “Funeral Blues,” also known as “Stop all the clocks,” (See: Further Reading & Resources) in the 1994 film Four Weddings and a Funeral, which brought new readers to his work. His poetry also made an appearance in the film Before Sunrise (1995), and “September 1, 1939” was revisited and widely broadcast after the American tragedy of September 11, 2001. Today, Auden has become a revered and canonized figure in English and American literature.

Poem Text

I sit in one of the dives

On Fifty-second Street

Uncertain and afraid

As the clever hopes expire

Of a low dishonest decade:

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.

Accurate scholarship can

Unearth the whole offence

From Luther until now

That has driven a culture mad,

Find what occurred at Linz,

What huge imago made

A psychopathic god:

I and the public know

What all schoolchildren learn,

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew

All that a speech can say

About Democracy,

And what dictators do,

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.

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.

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;

Lest we should see where we are,

Lost in a haunted wood,

Children afraid of the night

Who have never been happy or good.

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.

From the conservative dark

Into the ethical life

The dense commuters come,

Repeating their morning vow;

"I will be true to the wife,

I'll concentrate more on my work,"

And helpless governors wake

To resume their compulsory game:

Who can release them now,

Who can reach the deaf,

Who can speak for the dumb?

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.

Defenceless under the night

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, W. H. “September 1, 1939.” 1940. Poets.org.

Summary

The speaker sits in a New York City dive bar, their optimism for the future fading under the realities the decade has brought. There is a pervasive political landscape of anger and fear; the threat of war hangs over the night like a bad smell. Looking toward history, the speaker sees that this attitude has been building from the time of Martin Luther and seeped into German culture. A “psychopathic god” (Line 18) has been born, yet the speaker understands the basic human truth: When evil is done to someone, they react by bringing more evil into the world. Looking further back in history, the speaker examines the Greek general Thucydides, who wrote about how dictators repeat the same lies until their unassuming deaths. They drive out creativity and knowledge from society, and people become acclimatized to these environments. Now, the cycle is repeating again. Though the speaker’s country is supposedly neutral, the freedom reflected by the skyscrapers is just a façade. Soon, the people will look into mirrors and see the wrongs of society starting back at them.

In the bar, patrons go through their daily motions and pretend nothing is wrong. They hold onto the lights and music as cornerstones of reality. Without these familiar conventions, people would see the truth: they are lost and afraid, and not as blameless as they would like to believe. Though the world is filled with empty political promises, people’s own desires are more destructive still. As Nijinsky wrote about his lover Diaghilev, humanity’s greatest weakness is wanting what they cannot have. This is a selfish love, rather than a love to be shared with the world around them. Slowly, the patrons of the bar emerge from their stasis and return home, repeating promises to themselves of family loyalty and hard work. Yet they are prisoners of their own ignorance. The speaker wants to help somehow, but all they have are their words. They hope that with their words they can reveal the lies embedded in society, and the truth that the “State” does not exist in the way people want to believe. People exist unified by hunger, whether they are lowly citizens or those in power. The speaker believes all must come together as equals, or die divided. It’s within that unity that sparks of hope are born. Though the speaker is only made of matter and desire like anyone else, they hope to bring light and truth into the world.