From Cleverness to Wisdom

NONES (81 pp.)--W.H. Auden--Random House ($2.50).

Wystan Hugh Auden is a monstrous clever fellow. As an undergraduate at Oxford (1925-28) he was the most precocious of a literary set that included such precocities as Louis MacNeice, Stephen Spender, Christopher Isherwood, Cecil Day Lewis. These lads were esthetes-with-a-difference: instead of snubbing the grown-up world, they lit into it with sardonic and superior howls. At least one of them (Spender) went all the way to Communism before he got his second wind. Auden went even further--to the U.S.

Now, at 44, a U.S. citizen, an Anglo-Catholic, an earnest and pedantic scholar, Auden has become a kind of younger opposite number to T. S. Eliot. Like Eliot, he has lost the sympathy of many former admirers in his native land, who consider his expatriation and his orthodoxy a humdrum comedown for a promising poet.

In spite of this loss in intelligentsia popularity, Auden continues to be a clever fellow, even on the side of the respectable angels. His latest book of verse, Nones (the title refers to the ninth hour--3 p.m. --of the monastic day, and means "mid-afternoon"), shows that he can write to order, in satirical vein, more brilliantly than anyone since Byron:

Thou shalt not do as the dean pleases, Thou shalt not write thy doctor's thesis

On education,

Thou shalt not worship projects nor Shalt thou or thine bow down before

Administration.

Thou shalt not answer questionnaires Or quizzes upon World-Affairs,

Nor with compliance Take any test. Thou shalt not sit With statisticians nor commit

A social science.

Thou shalt not be on friendly terms With guys in advertising firms,

Nor speak with such As read the Bible for its prose, Nor, above all, make love to those

Who wash too much.

Thou shalt not live within thy means Nor on plain water and raw greens.

If thou must choose Between the chances, choose the odd; Read The New Yorker, trust in God;

And take short views.

His cleverness still runs away with him occasionally, and kicks up such a dust that most bystanders can't make out what he's up to; but he is learning to keep his nag under control. Even in his irresponsible heyday candid friends sometimes said of him that his brilliance was self-defeating; his verse was lucid in flashes but never memorable. Said one critic: "His words lie dead on the page." But in his latest book he shows signs of attaining that memorable magic that only the best poets have:

... Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK On a pink official form ...

Altogether elsewhere, vast Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss, Silently and very fast.

Auden is more than a lively idea-man now. Inquisitive as ever, and incorrigibly witty, he is also devoutly wishful to be maturely wise. Thus he adjures his five senses:

Be happy, precious five, So long as I'm alive Nor try to ask me what You should be happy for; Think, if it helps, of love Or alcohol or gold, But do as you are told. I could (which you cannot) Find reasons fast enough To face the sky and roar In anger and despair At what is going on, Demanding that it name Whoever is to blame: The sky would only wait Till all my breath was gone And then reiterate

As ij I wasn't there

That singular command

I do not understand,

Bless what there is for being,

Which has to be obeyed, for

What else am I made for,

Agreeing or disagreeing.

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