Commonplace

I've been lazy about producing original content for this space lately, and I'm not really sure why. In lieu of my own bons mots, here are a few thoughts from W.H. Auden, published in 1952. They were translated into French and back into English; the original English has been lost. (Via Harper's.)

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What English-language poet has not at times rebelled against a language in which the suffix -s makes a noun plural and a verb singular?

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Rhymes, meters, stanzas, etc., are like servants. If the master is just enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly, happy household. If he is too tyrannical, the servants give notice; if he is too weak, they turn slovenly, impertinent, drunk and dishonest.

The poet who writes "free verse" is like Robinson Crusoe on his island: he must do all his cooking, laundry, darning, etc. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independent produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor: empty bottles on the unswept floor, dirty sheets on the unmade bed.

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As societies grow, their poems tend to grow shorter. A peasant will listen to interminable epic poems in the village square; the literary man in big cities reads sonnets in his bath.

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Propaganda is the use of magic by those who no longer believe in it against those who still do.

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I look down from an airplane upon a stretch of land which is obviously continuous. That, across it, marked by a tiny ridge or river or even by no topographical sign whatever, there should run a frontier, and that the human beings living on one side should hate or refuse to trade with or be forbidden to visit those on the other side, is, from the height where I find myself, revealed to me as ridiculous. Unfortunately, I cannot have this revelation without having the illusion that there are no historical values.