What do you think this W.H. Auden poem is about?
HUNTING SEASON
"A shot from crag to crag,
The tell-tale echoes trundle;
Some feathered he-or-she
Is now a lifeless bundle
And, proud into a kitchen, some
Example of our tribe will come.
Down in the startled valley
Two lovers break apart:
He hears the roaring oven
Of a witch's heart:
Behind his murmers of her name
She sees a marksman taking aim.
Reminded of the hour
And that his chair is hard,
A deathless verse half done,
One interrupted bard
Postpones his dying with a dish
Of several suffocated fish."
Do
Your
Own
Homework
>>7474078
Oh, I'm 42 years old. I can assure you, this isn't homework. It's merely curiosity.
>>7474064
>first paragraph
straightforward picture of hunting done in the hunting season, though a little more sad than usual
>Behind his murmers of her name
>She sees a marksman taking aim.
c.f. Aeneid IV, Dido as a deer wounded by a hunter as a simile for her love for Aeneas; Aeneas fearing to be ensnared and "inflamed" by Dido's love. Dido also dipped her fingers a little into witchcraft toward the end.
>A deathless verse half done,
>One interrupted bard
c.f. Sonnet 65 (tenuous)
the bard, who has thus written about hunting so tragically, is not quite done saying what he started to say; but, in any case, must get up and eat. And the fish who died by suffocation are no less sad than the feathered he-or-she the poet lamented.
"suffocated fish" refers, I presume, to the inability of fish to breathe outside of water.
The poem may be about love or about hunting. To be honest, I haven't made up my mind about it.
>>7474064
>A shot from crag to crag
reference to Auden's failed Western screenplay
>The tell-tale echoes trundle;
Poe ref
>Some feathered he-or-she
ahead of his time ref
>Is now a lifeless bundle
abortion ref
>And, proud into a kitchen, some
>Example of our tribe will come.
?
the rest is about marxism
>>7474064
I don't think suffocating fish is an ethical way to prepare them. Best practice is to pierce the brain. Someone should contact this man and set him straight.
>>7474334
The most common way for fish to die in commercial net fishing practices is by bleeding out or suffocating. Both are excruciatingly painful for the fish.
>>7474064
poems aren't "about" anything, except what they say.
we know that the poem is "about" hunting season, is "about" a shot that hits "some feathered he-or-she", it's "about" two lovers in the startled valley, and it's "about" the bard who gets up from writing to eat.
Can we get it all down into sentence? A "meaning"? A "moral"? If we could, why would anyone read poetry?
So don't ask for what it's "about". We can supply you with the allusions and suggest how some stanzas relate to the others. But we can't tell you what it's "about" any more than Auden could.
>>7474486
What an insufferable cunt you must be.
>>7474486
>he doesn't know
>>7474486
>>7474064
I think he feels sympathy for the dead bird (though it is imaginary) in the first stanza.
The second stanza? Dunno. I think that the lovers are also animals. Probably it's to do with the guilt of eating animal corpses. The second stanza implies that animals have rich inner lives.
In the last part, the poet is yoked back into reality, and despite his pretty poem, he still eats the fish.
"He postpones his dying" by killing.
Auden (as far as I know) loved meat more than most. Yet it seems like it was not without scruples.
>>7474799
It never occurred to me that the couple in the second stanza weren't human.
>>7474505
>>7474511
>>7474535
So you see no problem at all with the question "What is this poem about?"
"There are no lines with more melancholy beauty than these by Burns:--
The white moon is setting behind the white wave,
And Time is setting with me, O!
and these lines are perfectly symbolical. Take from them the whiteness of the moon and of the wave, whose relation to the setting of Time is too subtle for the intellect, and you take from them their beauty. But, when all are together, moon and wave and whiteness and setting Time and the last melancholy cry, they evoke an emotion which cannot be evoked by any other arrangement of colours and sounds and forms. We may call this metaphorical writing, but it is better to call it symbolical writing, because metaphors are not profound enough to be moving, when they are not symbols, and when they are symbols they are the most perfect of all, because the most subtle, outside of pure sound, and through them one can the best find out what symbols are.
. . .
The form of sincere poetry, unlike the form of the "popular poetry," may indeed be sometimes obscure, or ungrammatical as in some of the best of the Songs of Innocence and Experience, but it must have the perfections that escape analysis, the subtleties that have a new meaning every day, and it must have all this whether it be but a little song made out of a moment of dreamy indolence, or some great epic made out of the dreams of one poet and of a hundred generations whose hands were never weary of the sword." - Yeats
“A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” - Frost
You can approximately describe the subject of a poem. Alright, I'll admit that. But I object very strongly to the idea that this will ever adequately answer the question, "What's it about?"
>>7475046
>he still doesn't know
>>7474799
>>7474827
the lovers in the second stanza are humans as a metaphor for the animals, in the bard's imagination. as >>7474330 points out, it's an allusion to the Aeneid which ties in because the Aeneid had a somewhat laboured simile comparing Dido to a wounded deer:
est mollis flamma medullas
interea et tacitum vivit sub pectore vulnus.
uritur infelix Dido totaque vagatur
urbe furens, qualis coniecta cerva sagitta,
quam procul incautam nemora inter Cresia fixit
pastor agens telis liquitque volatile ferrum
nescius: illa fuga silvas saltusque peragrat
Dictaeos; haeret lateri letalis harundo.
Fagles's translation:
Dido burns with love — the tragic queen.
She wanders in frenzy through her city streets
like a wounded doe caught all off guard by a hunter
stalking the woods of Crete, who strikes her from afar
and leaves his winging steel in her flesh, and he's unaware
but she veers in flight through Dicte's woody glades,
fixed in her side the shaft that takes her life.
the bard, who is in the process of composition, sees a Vergilian pathos in connecting the story of Dido to the story of the hunted animal and the suffering we inadvertently inflict on animals. Yet while he is poetically and tragically imagining the death of some bird or mammal, he is interrupted for dinner; and he, too, is complicit in the suffering, eating fish that suffocated quite brutally in their last moments (which, as >>7474360 points out, is a common thing).
Dido is, by many poets, thought the most tragic victim in poetry. The bard, who is a perfectly average poet-figure, has chosen an obvious parallel (the drawn-out suffering of Dido) for an obvious reason.
There are a few barriers to imagining the lovers as literally animals. The first is that it's tasteless and fantastic. Animals do not think and feel like humans; still less do they speak each others' names. The second is that "He hears the roaring oven" makes no sense in any context other than the Aeneid, where Vergil is ALWAYS talking about Dido's feelings in terms of flames and fury, and where Aeneid is very worried that Dido will inflame his own feelings. Aeneas's last words to Dido are:
desine meque tuis incendere teque querelis;
Italiam non sponte sequor.'
(Cease inflaming both me and yourself with your complaints; I seek Italy not of my own free will.)
Later, Dido kills herself by sticking his sword in her side atop a burning pyre; the parallels to the deer simile and the various "burning" metaphors are obvious.
The lovers are human. You may make the case that the bard is imagining the animals as human lovers. But the lovers cannot literally be taken as animals.
>>7475144
and what do YOU think it's about, then?
>>7475148
And the marksman she sees taking aim?
>>7475148
I don't think Auden was beyond sexual distastefulness in his writing.
>>7475148
Also, I should add: the way humans inflict suffering without knowing, or while willfully ignorant, is not only a question of cruelty to animals. "Hunting Season" may look, in particular, at animals, but the Dido bit makes the broad significance clear. People often don't face the harm they do; as Aeneas ignores that he is leading Dido on, and even the sensitive bard dines on fish that suffered in dying.
>>7475197
He is Aeneas, he is pastor nescius, he is the bard who dines on fish. But really, he is the marksman; he can be anyone. He is man.
>>7475204
Who said sexual?
>>7474064
idk some vegan shit probably
>>7474064
'Kay, this literally what I built in my mind.
This poem is like a short film.
First scene:
A hunter from a tribe success in hunting a bird.
It's predicted that a member of the tribe will then come into the kitchen with said bird for cooking.
Second scene:
A man and a woman, lovers, are somewhere in the valley where the shot was heard, startling the animals.
The man for some reason thinks the woman is bad.
The woman is able to see the hunter taking aim again.
Third scene:
We're now sometime in the future. The man is remembering the second scene.
He was writing something when he remebered.
Now he also realises his chair is hard.
We ge to know his verse wasn't about death.
So he leaves it and goes to fetch himself some fish, which are remarked as killed prey too.
>>7476098
>suceeds
>remarked to be
>>7476098
Same anon, I got it.
The man hates the woman for wanting to cook the poor dead mammals.(not being a vegan)
Then the poem puts emphasis on "suffocated fish" to show his hypocrisy, and "postpone his dying" to show he needs it (to take the life of other beings) to survive.
Auden?
Pick one:
God
Love
Art
Suffering
Liberty
>>7475148
>and where Aeneid is very worried
meant to say Aeneas*
All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.
four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the merry deer ran before.
Fleeter be they than dappled dreams
the swift sweet deer
the red rare deer.
Four red roebuck at a white water
the cruel bugle sang before.
Horn at hip went my love riding
riding the echo down
into the silver dawn.
four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the level meadows ran before.
Softer be they than slippered sleep
the lean lithe deer
the fleet flown deer.
Four fleet does at a gold valley
the famished arrow sang before.
Bow at belt went my love riding
riding the mountain down
into the silver dawn.
four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the sheer peaks ran before.
Paler be they than daunting death
the sleek slim deer
the tall tense deer.
Four tall stags at the green mountain
the lucky hunter sang before.
All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.
Four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
my heart fell dead before.
>>7476125
>suffering
aaaaaand that's a wrap, folks!
OP tell us when you get it marked and let us know how we did
>>7476849
>no attribution
What is wrong with you
>>7474064
I think it's about... how hunting is bad... maybe he shot the woman by accident?
