Refugee Blues-W.H.Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden was born in the year 1907 in York in England. He was an EnglishAmerican poet His most notable works include ‘Funeral Blues’, ‘September 1, 1939’, ‘The Age of
Anxiety’ and ‘For the Time Being’. He won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1947 for ‘The Age of
Anxiety’. Auden died in the 1973 of natural causes. The poem ‘Refugee Blues’ was written in 1939.
The poem describes the condition of Jewish refugees during the period of Nazi Germany
Refugee is a person who is forced to leave his country in order to escape war, persecution,
or natural disaster. The use of the word ‘refugee’ implies that the poem is about a person or a group
of people attempting to escape their country, Nazi Germany, but cannot, due to the fact that they
do not own passports; leaving them homeless. ‘Blues’ refer to a song of sadness and mourning.
The poem starts with a narrator, who is later revealed to be a German Jew, describing a
large city which is home to ten million people some of whom are well off and live in luxurious large
houses while others live in slums and shabby houses. Yet, the narrator tells his companion that there
is no place for them. He remembers that they once had a country long ago, and believed it to be
their own. But now that country is so distant to them that to see it they have to browse through an
atlas and he knows that they can’t go there either.
The narrator then remarks on how every spring the flowers grow anew on the old tree that
grows in the village churchyard, and mourns to his companion that old passports can’t renew
themselves, remembering how the country where they wanted to go had rejected them saying that
they were as good as dead if they didn’t have updated passports. It seems that it is their misfortune
that they are still among living, considering his dejected tone as he addresses his companion. He
remembers how the people (who were responsible for providing the war refugees homes) had been
polite to him, yet couldn’t help him because of the politics and had told him to return next year.
Recalling a public meeting that he had attended, he remembers that a person had accused them of
trying to steal away the livelihood of the occupants of the city by barging in, and informs his
companion that the man had been talking of them.
He thinks that he heard the rumbling of an imminent storm, but it turned out to be Hitler
sentencing them all to death. He sees a dog securely wrapped in a warm jacket, and a cat getting
inside a car, the door of which had been held open for it and considers them fortunate because they
aren’t German Jews. He notices the fish swimming freely in the water at the harbour and the birds
flying wherever they want in the skies when he goes to the woods. He marvels at them for not
having any politicians and wars as they were not human beings.
He then tells his companion that he had had a dream in which he saw a magnificent building
which could accommodate a thousand people yet there was no place for them in it anywhere. He
remembers how when he stood on the plains and looked through the falling snow, he could see a
thousand soldiers marching towards them, looking for them, to kill them.
The poem explores the themes of hopelessness, helpless condition of the Jews during the
reign of Hitler in Germany and portrays the plight of Jews escaping Nazis.
THE STONE BY W W GIBSON
Wilfrid Wilson Gibson is best known today as a leader of the Georgian poetry movement,
even though most of his best work was produced after this movement had faded in prominence.. His
poem, on the other hand, has directness, simplicity, and a strong sense of sarcasm, and it tells
captivating stories in a compact and dramatic manner.
A young woman’s sweetheart died at a stone quarry, according to the poem. The tragic news
of her lover’s death left her speechless. She exudes a strong sense of bereavement. The poem starts
out with a bang. It all begins when two people are having a chat. In the first line, the woman
approaches the poet and requests that he cut a stone.
A large boulder had struck her lover at a stone quarry three days previously. He was
lingering and full of vigour notwithstanding the warning and shot fired. Suddenly, a boulder fell, and
he was discovered beneath it. His eyes sensed his demise as he spotted the rock. When the poet
noticed this, he knew he had to tell his sweetheart. He was terrified, and his words were carefully
chosen. But before he could say anything, he noticed she was frozen in place since some miserable
soul had already delivered her the news. The man flung open the door and informed her of her
lover’s death, oblivious to the consequences, leaving the woman lifeless.
By glancing at the woman’s expression, the poet can deduce what would have transpired.
Her heart was lifeless, and she stood like a stone. She didn’t scream or whimper in pain. The mother
of the boy was crying, but she didn’t cry for three days and nights. She remained still from sundown
till daybreak, she never closed her eyes. She didn’t weep, but her eyes were wide open. When the
poet returned from work on the fourth day, he noticed the lady waiting for him at his door and said,
“And would you cut a stone for him?” The woman said nothing and just followed the poet. She was
merely looking at the poet’s face as he sat in the chair. She was patiently waiting. The poet felt as if
her grey eyes were pulling his heart and taking his breath from him when he noticed her looking at
him.
The poet could no longer wait and rose up to begin cutting the stone into a square. She sat
alongside the poet while he worked, monitoring everything at all hours of the day and night. She was
watching each stroke as he carved the name of her lover, but she didn’t say anything. Her stillness
was broken by the stroke. Her gaze remained fixed on my hands. Her lips were bloodless when she
looked at me. Her heart was wounded deeper with each chisel stroke. It appeared as if she was
dying on the inside. She uttered his name and went through the open door with a sigh, never to be
seen again when the poet finished his work.
The poet worked late the next night because he was carving her name into the stone. a
result, the lady portrays the image of silence and sadness, as well as how she was so in love with her
beloved that she couldn’t bear the grief of his death and died after cutting his stone.
The Never Never Nest by Cedric Mount
This is a modern one act play by a modern dramatist called Cedric Mount. It depicts
the lifestyle of a naïve couple called Jack and Jill. The couple bought each and every luxury of life
on installments and lives cheerfully without being aware of the fact that they would be struggling
under the burden of debt in the near future.
The title of the play – “The Never Never Nest” has two negatives in it. i.e., the word
‘never’ is repeated twice ensuring that the nest would be never built. The double negative of the
title emphasizes the impossibility of realizing a dream home of theirs.
The word ‘Nest’ in the title literally refers to the home of birds. In the natural world birds
make their home by collecting straws and twigs of various trees. It can be temporary structure
since birds live in them temporarily with respect to changing weather conditions. The nest lacks
stability since they can be attacked by other animals. In the play, Jack and Jill conceive a home
which is cozy and stable. But their dream home they cannot realize because of their temporary
nature of residence in their home. They have not only purchased the ‘house’ on installments but
everything of the house- such as the furniture, piano, radiogram and the car. At the end of the play
we get to know that the couple had their baby on installments.
The life is of the couple is based on buy-now-pay-later marketing system; they were not
secure at all. The family’s income is low as compared to the total installments which are to be
paid every week. This situation tells that if anytime they’d be unable to pay the installments, they
may have to leave their house, which simply shows the insecurity of the couple’s life.
The title of the play is appropriate since it connotes the theme- the pathetic condition of
the couple.
The Never-Never Nest
-Cedric Mount
The Never Never Nest is a one-act play by Cedric Mount. The main characters are: Jack and
Jill (a couple), Aunt Jane and a Nurse. Jack and his wife Jill lead a comfortable and luxurious life in
their beautiful villa at New Hampstead.
One day Aunt Jane came to visit their house. Jack and Jill showed her their house, furniture
and all other household things with much pride. They had good furniture, a car, a refrigerator, a
piano and a radiogram in addition to their beautiful house. Aunt Jane was much impressed by the
facilities in the house. She thought that they had to pay a huge amount as rent, and she asked how
much it was. Jack and Jill said that they did not have to pay rent; they owned all the things including
the villa as theirs. Aunt Jane could not believe this. She doubted whether she wrote by mistake two
thousand pounds instead of two hundred in the cheque which she had given them as a wedding gift.
But when Aunt Jane asked seriously whether they really owned all the things, they said that they
bought all those things on instalment system. She asked them how much they had to pay as
instalments and how much Jack earned weekly. Jack replied that he earned six pounds weekly and
they had to pay seven pounds eight and eight pence a week as instalment. They would take loan
from certain finance corporations to pay the extra amount, and that also they would pay off in
instalments.
Aunt Jane was against the instalment system and her motto was cash down payment. she
disapproved Jack and Jill’s way of life. She refused to sit on the furniture there as they did not belong
to Jack and Jill fully, and she hastened to leave their house. Jack offered to take her to the station in
his car, but she refused to travel in a car of which he owned only the steering wheel, one of the tyres
and two of the cylinders.
Before leaving, she gave Jill a cheque for ten pounds to pay at least one of their bills. Jill
decided to pay the doctor’s bill with it so that they could at least own their baby as theirs. She put
the cheque in an envelope, addressed it to Dr Martin and sent the nurse to post it. When Jack asked
Jill why she sent the money to the doctor, she told him crying that with that one instalment, at least,
THE BABY WAS REALLY THEIRS!
The title of the play is appropriate since it connotes the theme- the pathetic condition of
the couple.
Father Returning Home (Dilip Chitre)
Dilip Chitre’s poem, ‘Father Returning Home’, which follows the tradition of the dramatic
monologue, most poignantly deals with not only the subject of the alienation experienced by the age
old persons but also individual alienation in modern society and urban rootlessness.
The poem is autobiographical in nature in the sense that in it, The poet has described the
inner restlessness and loneliness of his own father when he moved from Baroda to Mumbai in 1957.
Much of the poem is taken up with a visual description of this man, all of which emphasises his sense
of isolation and world-weariness. We first see him “standing among other silent commuters” in the
yellow light of a local train compartment, returning home. Despite his age and heavy bag, no one
offers him a seat because in modern cities, everyone is so wrapped up in themselves and their own
cares and concerns that they are left with no room to care about anyone else, least of all the elderly.
So monotonous and mundane is the tired and worn out father’s everyday routine that he
notices the suburbs sliding past with ‘unseeing eyes’. His clothes are wet and muddy and though it is
the end of the day, he is still bringing work home as his bag is “stuffed with books” and is falling
apart. His eyes ‘dimmed by age’ make it difficult for him to see in the dark, monsoon night.
In a particularly striking image, Chitre’s father is described as 'getting off the train/Like a
word dropped from a long sentence’. This gives a sense of his irrelevance in this society, which like
the train goes on unheedingly without him with other people, to some other destination. The poet
perhaps wishes to convey that elderly people are treated like words in the syntax of life, which can
be dropped as and when they have outlived their utility. They then become out of place in an
increasingly busy world.
Yet, although so downtrodden and so easily ignored, there is a hint of an indomitable spirit
within the poet’s elderly father when it is said that in spite of the fact that his ‘chappals are sticky
with mud’, he ‘hurries onward’, bravely enduring the vagaries of weather and alienation.
Significantly, it is not only the outside world but also his own home which appears as a
wholly unsympathetic environment. He is given ‘weak tea’ and a ‘stale chapati’. , and his ‘sullen’
children seem to largely ignore him by often having ‘refused to share/Jokes and secrets with him’.
Devoid even of family companionship, it is little surprise that he retreats to the toilet ‘to
contemplate/Man’s estrangement from a man-made world’.
The poem then, conveys an overwhelming sense of the sordidness and bleakness of one
man’s life. There seems to be no route of escape for this unfortunate character – except, it seems, in
the inner recesses of his own mind where he can dream himself away from the present time, into
the refuge of the far past or the distant future, with his ancestors and his grandchildren.
The poem thus plays up the contrast between this man’s frail and shabby exterior and the
rich, teeming inner life that still pulses within him. Despite all external setbacks, it seems as though
the mind can never be quite conquered. In fact, the final image of the poem is that of conquerors
when the poet speaks of how his father goes off to sleep thinking ‘of nomads entering a
subcontinent through a narrow pass’. As this man dreams of these hordes of ancient invaders of
India, coming down through the Khyber Pass, his rich, romantic, inner life is what continues to
sustain him through his uninspiring day-to-day existence in the modern world.