Auden would hate this time. He preferred the ideas of conventional morality and manners: if one was to break those laws (and he did) one was to be discreet. I admire is wish for steam power and a quieter landscape.

But I am glad for my automobile, internet, and the fact I hear the train from across the harbour and not from the foot of my hill.

Enforced cultural amnesia diminishes the richness of a society’s own cultural life by excising parts of history that are politically inexpedient. It deliberately distorts history and mutes the voice of a former age. Even if one is opposed to an ideology, one must understand it to oppose it effectively and argue from a position of knowledge. The fear of encountering anything contradictory to one’s worldview is another aspect of the desire to have ‘freedom from speech’, which Greg Lukianoff identified in his latest book about censorship on American university campuses. In the case of the destruction of monuments, this censorious desire is even more extreme. It represents a desire for ‘freedom from history’ – from the speech of dead people and vanished authorities. These modern iconoclasts’ abhorrence of past ideas, and their desire to attack a present-day rival group, means they have a double incentive to remove unpopular symbols.
Groups which seek to destroy public monuments do not feel they have any obligation to present historical periods in a balanced and honest manner. The stiffness, grandiosity and absurdity of the worst excesses in public monuments undermine their own credibility, but, to the censorious mentality, the danger is that if anyone is exposed to it, the monument may plant a seed of support.

Why do I the quote one of Auden’s better light poems? Because it gives a warning. Not all progress is for the good. Auden, above all, was grounded in reality. The fools in the senior common room have their feet firmly planted in the air, for they deny there is such a thing as the ground.

Doggerel by a Senior Citizen
(for Robert Lederer)

Our earth in 1969
Is not the planet I call mine,
The world, I mean, that gives me strength
To hold off chaos at arm’s length.

My Eden landscapes and their climes
Are constructs from Edwardian times,
When bath-rooms took up lots of space,
And, before eating, one said Grace.

The automobile, the aeroplane,
Are useful gadgets, but profane:
The enginry of which I dream
Is moved by water or by steam.

Reason requires that I approve
The light-bulb which I cannot love:
To me more reverence-commanding
A fish-tail burner on the landing.

My family ghosts I fought and routed,
Their values, though, I never doubted:
I thought the Protestant Work-Ethic
Both practical and sympathetic.

When couples played or sang duets,
It was immoral to have debts:
I shall continue till I die
To pay in cash for what I buy.

The Book of Common Prayer we knew
Was that of 1662:
Though with-it sermons may be well,
Liturgical reforms are hell.

Sex was of course —it always is—
The most enticing of mysteries,
But news-stands did not then supply
Manichean pornography.

Then Speech was mannerly, an Art,
Like learning not to belch or fart:
I cannot settle which is worse,
The Anti-Novel or Free Verse.

Nor are those Ph.D’s my kith,
Who dig the symbol and the myth:
I count myself a man of letters
Who writes, or hopes to, for his betters.

Dare any call Permissiveness
An educational success?
Saner those class-rooms which I sat in,
Compelled to study Greek and Latin.

Though I suspect the term is crap,
There is a Generation Gap,
Who is to blame? Those, old or young,
Who will not learn their Mother-Tongue.

But Love, at least, is not a state
Either en vogue or out-of-date,
And I’ve true friends, I will allow,
To talk and eat with here and now.

Me alienated? Bosh! It’s just
As a sworn citizen who must
Skirmish with it that I feel
Most at home with what is Real.

W.H.Auden.

Audrey Assad: How Can I Keep From Singing 2.1 from Avila Institute on Vimeo.