Consider Auden as an Anti Romantic Poet.

Auden as an Anti-Romantic Poet

Among the modern English poets, Auden ranks in importance next only to T.S. Eliot. Auden’s early poetry had some traces of Romanticism but he cannot be designated as a romantic poet. In his conception of anti-romanticism, Auden was much influenced by Eliot’s Essay ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’.

Auden’s poetic theory and his practice during his long career as a poet establish him as an anti-romantic poet. According to him, a poet must have no decided opinion to put into his poetry. He must be clinical and dispassionate about life. While he composes his poems, he must remain detached from his own feelings. Thus like T. S. Eliot he is an anti-romantic poet.

There is an apparent lack of emotion in the poems of Auden. He rejected poetry as a magical means of inducing emotions in the poet and the readers, and accepted the view that poetry is a ‘game of knowledge’. This knowledge of good and evil leads us to the point where it is possible for us to make a rational and moral choice.

Auden is anti-romantic in his treatment of nature. Auden never sees nature in any of the traditional ways. He does not portray it, like the Georgians of like the nineteenth century poets, hold it up as an example to escape from the industrial city.

In his treatment of love, Auden is not a romantic but realistic, since his love poetry meditates rather than emotes. The most remarkable feature of his treatment of love is that it distinguishes his poetry from the traditional English love poetry by its significant intellectual content and effect. In ‘Lullaby’, the lover speaker is aware of the mortal and guilty nature of his beloved, and of his own faithlessness. But both are human beings and prone to weakness. Hence the lover finds his beloved entirely beautiful and desirable or lovable in spite of all her faults. Thus in his treatment of love Auden is also anti-romantic.

To sum up, in his conception and practice of poetry, Auden is clearly anti-romantic. By temperament he has been a counter romantic. He has been hostile to that spirit which swells the writer’s ego.