Audibility

In 1937, W H Auden wrote his Letter to Lord Byron, an odd and playful piece of doggerel addressed to one of the most mercurial talents of English literature. In that longish poem, he says:

The Higher Mind’s outgrowing the Barbarian,
  It’s hardly thought hygienic now to kiss;
The world is surely turning vegetarian;
  And as it grows too sensitive for this,
  It won’t be long before we find there is
A Society of Everybody’s Aunts
For the Prevention of Cruelty to Plants.

In a place along the Dover coast, what really happened was that the Barbarians outgrew (or at least temporarily outmanoeuvred) the Higher Mind, which unfortunately consisted of those interested in supplying a proper education. However, there were indeed Aunts, except that they were carnivorous and interested only in preventing cruelty to their own plants. And yes, there were also plants. They sat glumly in the common room and then at the end of the day folded themselves up and went off to report to the Chief Barbarian.

I have always found Auden a wonder. He was a master at mocking the totalitarian state, but he also feared that it would come to pass in his lifetime. In times past, I often felt like his Unknown Citizen, of whom he wrote:

And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

The voice of Wystan Hugh Auden continues to resonate with us because, like George Orwell, he cared a lot for humanity, and was willing to share his words on the topic with his fellow humans.