Funeral Blues by W.H. Auden

As requested, here is my Analysis of Funeral Blues, by W.H Auden

Note that these analysis do take time within my already busy schedule , and I may not be able to deliver in time of which you may want/need them.

However it's been an honor to analyse works of art, especially this one, and it is through works like these that I find meaning in literature. Please do send me more recommendations, and I do hope to post again soon.

Funeral Blues

1. Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
2. Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
3. Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
4. Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. 
6. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
7. Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
8. Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
9. Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. 
11. He was my North, my South, my East and West,
12. My working week and my Sunday rest,
13. My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
14. I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
16. The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
17. Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
18. Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
19. For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Background on the Author

• Wystan Hugh Auden was an English-turned American Poet, born to this Earth on the 21st of February 1907 in York, England until his departure on the 29th of September, 1973 in Vienna. 
• He found his passion for poetry at the young age of 13, when his friend Robert Medley, an artist of figurative styles, asked and encouraged him to write poetry. 
• Auden was a homosexual and celebrated his sexuality with Christopher Isherwood, an individual of which he co-wrote “The Ascent of F6” a play which included this piece of poetry. 
• The two maintained a casual, sexual friendship between intervals of interacting with other men.
• Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form and content.

Background on the poetry piece 

• Auden first wrote the piece in 1936 as part of the play “The Ascent of F6”. The poem was made to be satirical, made to make fun of a dead politician. 
• It was reworked into a cabaret with the help of Benjamin Britten, who wrote the tune, in 1938. 
• In 1994, it was featured in the film “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, skyrocketing Auden’s fame once again after his death. 
• The poem now is used as a dirge. 
• Note the changes of it’s interpretation over time from a satirical piece of writing to mock to one being used for comedy, and lastly now one to honour the dead. 
• As with many of his poems, it features informal language and objects of everyday life such as a telephone. This mingling is a powerful modernist move, one which suggests that only by embracing the modern world can art come to terms with the complexities of human experience.

Structure

• The poem follows the simple AABB rhyme scheme throughout. 
• A pair of rhyming lines in iambic pentameters are known as heroic couplets, as is the case within this poem.
• Note that this was made theatrical and entertainment purposes contrary to the war poems which are made to relay the experiences of war in a very serious atmosphere. As such there is a sense of comedy and rhythm to this poem that make it easy to the tongue and easy to the ear. As such the AABB rhyme scheme is used for these purposes. 
• This poem is a elegiac stanza is a quatrain written in iambic pentameter. Note that it is highly irregular in its meter, with the addition or subtractions of a few syllables between every line. A pair of rhyming lines in iambic pentameters are known as heroic couplets.

Tone

• The opening tone of the poem is comical, possibly indicating stanzas and lines that Auden did not decide to cut from his adjustments from 1936 to 1938.
• The references to mourning are clearly over exaggerated such that it is difficult to take the poem seriously at all. 
• It is when the tone switches in the third stanza, when the narration switches from one of an omniscient presence to one of a first person. Either than that, it is clear that the poem is made to sound witty and mocking rather than one of a serious tone.

First Stanza

• Note the imperative “Stop all the clocks!”. 
• The word “stop” itself creates a sense of urgency as it implies a sharp and quick reaction from the reader. It is only found later on that the imperative itself is ridiculous, as there is no urgency in “stopping all clocks” or “cutting off the telephone”, thus indicating the over-exaggerating tone of the poet that illustrates the idea of the poem being one of a mocking nature. This begs the question: Who has died? Why has he died? And what significance does his death have? This adds to the playful tone of the poem as it allows the reader’s imagination to extend of those beyond reason, especially when the surreality in the later paragraphs is introduced. 
• The word “stop” is ironic, as it is put in the beginning of the poem itself. 
• The speaker alludes to the idea that death is an indication of the ceasing of time for that individual. 
• However the pace of the poem is fast, as seen by the lack of punctuation used to slow down the pace of the reader (ellipsis, full stops, exclamation marks… etc) and instead uses commas interchangeably with full stops (or not at all) to maintain the fast pace of the poem.This is known as comma splices. 
• This makes it feel as if time is running out for the poet, as if there is no time to mourn for the dead, or that his own death is soon approaching. 
• Note the tone demanding silence, as he is asking the ‘phone to stop ringing’, the ‘dog to be quiet’ and so on. It is in this way that the poet is asking for all aspects of life to be halted for this very situation. By doing this the poet is trying to (over) emphasise the seriousness of this death in a mocking way. This emphasis could be in context with his personal relationship with this individual, or society’s relationship with the individual (ie a person in politics).
• Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
• Note that a drum that is muffled and pianos that are ‘silenced’ still have the ability to make sound, as weak as it may be. This gives a very ‘dulled’ atmosphere to the poem, as they would be similar to the sounds heard had our auditory senses be ‘dulled’, and thus a (overly) dramatic atmosphere. This could reflect the mood of the poet, who feels as if his senses has been dulled by the death of this individual. 
• Formality
• Note the formality in the first stanza, as if the poet is an individual in charge of the funeral and that nothing should go wrong. In essence, he is representing the perfect form and structure of a funeral that society would expect when an individual passes away. However it does sound apathetic in this sense, and that is where we have an alternate interpretation to the first stanza. 
• Alternatively, one could interpret the formality as a front to hold back the grief that the individual is truly feeling; perhaps he is feeling a deep sense of despair but hides it in the flurry of his work. 

Second stanza

• Aeroplanes
• We see that in the second paragraph, his requests become more and more difficult to carry out and a lot more ridiculous. This only accentuates his mocking tone that was found in the opening stanza, if not already apparent. 
• Alternatively, the inclusion of aeroplanes may also be a form of a military sign of respect, flying in formation to signify his death thus the words “Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead”. This may give indication of the person in question. This gives indication that the man may have been involved in the military or at the very least, politics.  
• If we take the interpretation that he is not in hyperbole when talking about this, the poet is trying to convey the level of desperation that the poet is feeling in being unable to change the environment to match the level of grief that he has to bear watching the funeral procession take place. However, considering the background and context of the poem, this does seem unlikely.
• Capitalised “He Is Dead”
• This accentuates the statement as a fact, as if a piece of hard hitting news that is hard to conceive. 
• The capitalisation of the word “He” is found many times in the Bible. It is in this way that the poet is trying to relate the person who just passed away to divinity (perhaps in a mocking manner depending on your interpretation).

Third Stanza

• Personalisation
• This is the first time in the poem that we see the use of personal pronouns. This shows indication that the poet truly cares about the individual that was deceased. Not only that, but they knew each other on a personal level, possibly romantic if not intimate. 
• The use of every day terms, especially ones found in routine such as “Working week”, “Sunday rest” and “week” portrays the level of intimacy these two individuals had, such that they were always in contact every day of the week, and often quoted each other in conversation, thus the words “talk” and “song” 
• Direction
• “North” “South” “East and West”
• These indicate that because “He” was the four directions on a compass, the poet has lost his or her direction in life as he or she finds himself/herself in a rut due to his departure from this Earth.
• Note that this is more profound than being physically lost as it also conveys a sense of helplessness as one is unable to revive the dead. It is in this sense that the poet is now spiritually lost. This perhaps is one of the most profound lines in the poem.
• Love
• Note that the poet did not specify any sort of romance between the two individuals. Instead, the poet may just be expressing his or her love for being able to communicate and speak about each other in such a manner. However, the dramatisation of the first two stanzas may indicate their relationship as being romantic rather than the other.
• The contrasting interpretation that the first two stanzas are a form of mockery now holds little value, but it may be worth noting that there may be perhaps a love-hate relationship between the two individuals, as if the poet was and became obsessive in overwhelming and overcoming the deceased individual in terms of career or politics. This depends on the context of the play of which the poem was written for which due to time constraints I never had the time nor privilege to enjoy. 
• I was wrong
• This holds an interesting idea. Why would love not transcend death? Does one stop loving after someone has passed away? This gives rise to the idea that their ‘love’ was not romantic or intimate, if there was an further evidence that suggest it so, although unlikely. 
• Alternatively, it could merely indicate that the author would no longer be able to reciprocate any of the love that she has previously gave to the individual. Perhaps the plot was considering love as one of ‘give and take’ rather than just the living individual ‘giving’. In that sense, love has died for the individual. 
• Perhaps this may show indication of his or her ultimate intention to move on to find another person. Is it possible to love someone romantically when you have moved on to find another person? If so is that really ‘true’ romance?
• It is a beautifully evocative section that illustrates the bond between the two; note the theme of completeness in the language, which covers all four primary compass directions and all seven days of the week. Similarly, “noon” and “midnight” together cover, by synecdoche (parts standing for the whole), all hours of the day. The stanza, at the same time, reveals the tragedy of human life, which is that everyone must die and that almost everyone will experience being severed from a loved one.

Forth stanza 

• There was the physical, the (borderline) ridiculous, the metaphysical, and now the natural. This is the theme that the poet makes within this poem. 
• It is here that we see the emotional breakdown of the poet as his grief comes to a climax. Note the contrast in the third stanza, where the extent of the grief illustrated in the third stanza is appropriate to what is normally found at a funeral. However in the forth stanza the author goes beyond what is considered appropriate, to the point where there is the implication that the poet will be unable to recover from his or her grief. 
• It is here that it is possible to implicate that the mocking tone in the first and second stanza indicate a mockery not of the person, but of the funeral itself in being unable to satisfy the intensity of grief that the poet has. 
• In the fourth stanza the poet’s demands that Nature heed his grief, calling her to extinguish the stars and the moon and the sun and get rid of the ocean, such that the world reflects the emptiness within the poet. It is there that the poet is implying that human memorials to the dead will not be sufficient. 
• There is no hope at the end of the poem; the reader is left with the very real and very bitter sense of the man’s grief, since no end can be achieved without the poet’s lover.
• Note the use of metaphor in nature. 
• Stars represent the aspirations that we have in life
• The Sun and Moon is imagery for the Heart and Mind
• Ocean conveys a great depth in emotion and feeling and to some extent, spirit.
• There is a sense of irony here, for the rejection of these metaphors show that there are no more emotions worth feeling, but the will to reject these feelings show anything but. 
• It is in this way that the poem ends on a sad note, not only for the deceased but also for the poet, who has died spiritually in the process and is forced to continue living as a hollow shell without the deceased individual in question, which we may interpret as being far worse than actual death.