She looked over his shoulder
For vines and olive trees,
Marble well-governed cities
And ships upon untamed seas,
But there on the shining metal
An artificial wilderness
And a sky like lead.
A Plain without a feature, bare and brown,
No blade of grass, no sign of neighbourhood,
Nothing to eat and now here to sit down,
Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.
Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place:
No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;
Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.
She looked over his shoulder
For ritual pieties,
White flower-garlanded heifers,
Libation and sacrifice
But there on the shining metal
Where the altar should have been,
She saw by his flickering forge-light
Quite another scene.
Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
A crowed of ordinary decent folk
Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led froth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.
The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others they were small
And could not hope for help and no help come;
What their foes liked to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish, they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.
She looked over his shoulder
For athletes at their games,
Men and women in a dance
Moving their sweet limbs
Quick, quick, to music,
But there on the shining shield
His hands had set no dancing floor
But a weed-choked field.
A ragged urchin, aimless and alone
Loitered about that vacancy, a bird
Flew up to safety from his well aimed stone;
That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, who’d never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.
The thin-lipped armourer,
Hephaestos hobbled away,
Thetis of the shining breasts
Cried out in dismay
At what the god had wrought
To please her son, the strong
Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
Who would not live long.
“The Shield of Achilles” is the
title poem in the volume of poems entitled, The shield of Achilles. Thus
it is a very late poem in the career of Auden. The lyric is divided into three
parts, and each part consists of three stanzas. Thus there are nine stanzas in
all. in each part the first stanza is in short lines , incantatory and
sing-song, with frequent Homeric echoes; the nest two stanzas are in longer lines.
In the third part the third stanza with which lyric closes again incantatory
and sing-song with Homeric echoes.
In this lyric Auden has used the
mythical technique popularized by T.S. Eliot, to make his comment on the modern
condition. The mythical method consists in juxtaposing the past and the
present, with the past serving as a comment, on the present. The past is
contrasted with the present, the similarities between the two are stressed, and
in this way some particular experience of situation is universalized. But the
differences also stressed and in this way the decadence and desolation of the
contemporary world is brought out. According to Monroe K. Spears in the poem The
Shield of Achilles “…. The shield symbolizes art, image of the human
condition. Auden’s version, however, is mock heroic, contrasting the Homeric
description to the life the modern artist must represent. In the shield of art
Hephaetus (the artist) shows Thetis (the audience), not the classical city, but
the plain of modern life on which multitudes are ordered about by totalitarian
rulers (a faceless reciting statistics through a loudspeaker) In stead of the
‘ritual pieties’, we have barbed wire enclosing an ‘arbitrary spot’ where there
is a travesty to the crucifixion being performed by bureaucrats --- while
‘ordinary decent folk’ watch, --- in which helpless individuals are shamefully
deprived of human dignity before death.”
Summery
Thetis, the mother of Achilles,
in Greek mythology, looks at the shield hung over the shoulder of her son. The
shield of Achilles was made by Hephaestus, the black smith of the gods, and on
it the artist had carved beautiful scenes depicting orchards, well governed
cities with marble statues and calm seas with beautiful ship sailing on them.
But the artist on a modern shield carves quite different scenes. There are
scenes depicting the artificial and desolate life of the contemporary
wasteland. It depicts a vast plain, desolate, bleak and barren, without
anything to eat, or place for rest and shelter. This is the modern wasteland,
full of crowds, who like dumb-driven cattle are unable to think for themselves,
and mechanically carry out dictates of their leaders and rulers, They are men
all hallow within. Their rulers have no personal contacts with them. They speak
to them in an impersonal voice, over the radio, prove by statistics that their
cause is just, and so persuade them to go to the war in which they are sure to
be killed. It is a terrible world of the past has been juxtaposed with the
desolate and bleak modern age and in this way its hollowness has been commented
upon.
In the second part, it is the
religious decay and desolation in the modern age that is commented upon. On the
Homeric shield, as on the Grecian Urn of John Keats, were carved scenes of
religious rituals, showing cows decorated with flowers, and wine and food being
served in celebration of some ceremony. But on the modern shield are carved big
concentration camps where pale prisoners of was are tied to the stake, and
brutally shot dead. In the past also there was much cruelty. Christ was
crucified, but the crucification was necessary for the regeneration and
redemption of mankind. It was martyrdom. But the mass killing in the modern age
carries no such significance. They are merely a measure of the spiritual
degeneration of the contemporary waste landers, who helpless and spiritless
allow themselves to be treated and massacred like dumb driven cattle.
In the third part we are told
that on Homeric shield was carved pictures of Athletes busy in their games, and
men and women dancing rhythmically and sweetly. On the modern shield, on the
other hand, there are no dancing floors or playgrounds but only ‘weed-choked’
fields. There are no sportsman but only ‘ragged urchins’ callously throwing stones
at birds, or girls being raped, or boys quarrelling among themselves and
knifing each other. Life is brutal and beastly, entirely lacking in the
sympathy, love and friendship, which characterized life in the past. Was ad
violence in the past was not soul-less or brutal as it is today. In the past
there were heroic warriors, like Achilles, fighting for their religion, for
their country, or for their beloveds; today there are only ‘ragged-urchins, and
senseless violence. The contemporary scene terrifies Thetis, and the lyric ends
as she goes away crying with dismay.
Thus by using the mythical
technique Auden has telescoped whole ages of history within the compass of
small lyric, and commented upon the spiritual decay and desolation in the
modern age.
*****