Funeral Blues

by W. H. Auden
 Music, poetry, and the related forms of poetic expression, illumination and calligraphy are in
themselves and in their aims, a means of catching a glimpse of the perfect reality.

There are thus many spiritual relationships between music and poetry. Many formal relationships
also exist between the two modes of expression. For example, poems are composed of self-sufficient
double-verses (beyts), while dastgahs are composed of more or less autonomous gushes.
Hafez once said, "Writing poetry is like stringing random pearls", meaning that the particular
beyts, though they may shed some light on the meaning of the poem, are not essential or sequentially
specific to its essence. That is to say, the meaning of the poem would remain intact if some of the beyts
were altogether omitted, or if their order were reversed. Likewise, the essence of the dastgah is the
daramad, with the gushes serving an almost secondary and unessential function. Nonetheless, just as
one cannot mix random gushes together to obtain a viable dastgah, the beyts must be treated in a careful
and precise manner to make for a meaningful development. Indeed, very few are well versed, talented,
or presumptuous enough to take many liberties with the poetic and musical repertoire. Furthermore, in
both forms, the artist resorts to a well-established repertoire of devices for expanding and ornamenting
ideas. Lastly, the rhythmic pattern of poetry underlies many of the commonly used musical rhythms, and
commonly used musical rhythms have served as the foundation for many a poem.

There are also many parallels between music and Persian calligraphy. Most obviously, they are
both expressions of the word, of the great poetic tradition of Iran. Both in calligraphy and in the
performance of a dastgah, the artist treats the underlying structure (the verse in the former, the gusheh in
the latter) in a manner, which individualistically yet faithfully conveys the essence of the underlying
form. In both arts, ornamentation is a major tool for achieving these individualistic effects. There are
two ways of ornamenting verses in calligraphy.

“Funeral Blues” by W. H. Auden is an elegy written for someone who meant a great deal to him
personally. Although Auden does not clearly state about whom the poem is written, one can understand
that the poet loved this person dearly.
In “Funeral Blues” Auden makes the bitter attitude of the speaker toward the subject of death
apparent to the readers using the symbols, imagery, personification, and the metaphor.

In the first stanza Auden states, “stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone”. The clock, being
stopped, may signify the fact that he who died has run out of time, but also to ask those who knew the
person he talks about to stop what they are doing and reflect. The telephone, being cut off, brings forth
the idea of silence. The poet calls for quiet and reverence (“Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,/
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,/ Silence the pianos […]”). Auden does this to show the
deceased the proper respect. He believes in honouring the dead with a moment of silence to pay respect.
The only sound the poet will allow is that of a “muffled drum” (“[…] and with muffled drum/ Bring out
the coffin, let the mourners come.”). In “Funeral Blues” Auden processes his dread through angry,
demanding imperatives, the verbs “stop”, “prevent”, and “silence” inform the readers of the poet’s brutal
authority. He writes in this manner to magnify the mood of sorrowful anger.

In the second stanza, the poet states “Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead/ Scribbling on the
sky the message He is Dead.”. These images insist that everyone should share the poet’s loss. The
metaphorical language and the personification emphasise the funeral tone, also personifying common
day objects intensify the grim tone. The gloom mood is amplified through the verb “moaning” and the
noun “nothing” from the last stanza; they empower the cheerless mood simulated throughout the poem.
Using the nouns with capital letters “He is Dead” puts the loved person on a pedestal, as a God-like
figure. Creatures and people alike participate to the mourning(“Put crepe bows round white necks of the
public doves,/ Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.”). A particularly interesting aspect of
the imagery used is light vs. dark. Any reference to the past is light and any reference to the present or
future is dark. Often, the dark imagery is seen to smoother the light. For example, white gloves are
replaced with black and white doves are blemished with a dark bow.

The third stanza with nine uses of “my” in three lines, the poet takes possession of his subject.
Auden wanted to convey that the person was the central element of his life (“He was my North, my
South, my East and West,/ My working week and my Sunday rest,/ My noon, my midnight, my talk, my
song;”). The poet compares the loved person, through means of metaphors, to a compass or a calendar,
as if to suggest that the loved one helped him define who he was and where he was. Auden also notes
that the person was his “talk”, his “song”. Talk implies words and perhaps creations with words, such as
poetry. He emphasizes that along with everything else, the loved one was his muse, his source of artistic
creation. Without his “inspiration”, the poet has lost his need to speak. The poet only uses once the noun
“love” once, and his tone is simultaneously sarcastic and despairing “I thought that love would last
forever: I was wrong.”. When the poet sees his mistake, when he understands that eternal love is
impossible, he realizes that hiss calls in the first two stanza’s were insufficient. Because of his loss the
entire planet and everything in the universe must come to an end. The infinitude of the universe makes
no sense, if love too is not infinite and eternal.

In the fourth stanza Auden states in the first line that “The stars are not wanted now; put out
every one,[…]”. This shows his vile mood and the extinguishment of light that signifies the poet’s hope
disintegrating. The poem engages in hyperboles and dramatic overstatements. In the poet’s mind there’s
no need to go on living, so there is no need to preserve the sun or moon or anything else that sustains
human existence, once the one you love is dead (“The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,/
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,/ Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;/ For nothing
now can ever come to any good.”). “Dismantle the sun” is Auden’s blunt way of conveying that
removing the sun the cycle of day and night would be eliminated, and so allow time to drift into an
endless and painless oblivion. The poet gives us the sense that measured tine is ultimately meaningless
because it is relative: for some, time moves all too rapidly, and for those who have “lost everything”
time stands still.

The poet’s exaggerations materialize in the form of the poem as well as in its content. The
dominant line are those of ten-syllable line (“Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone”; “Silence the
pianos and with muffled drum/ Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.”) and eleven-syllable-line
(“Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead/ Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.”).

The poem could also be seen as a parody of an elegy (satire) to a fallen political leader, since
Auden witnessed both World Wars and the deaths of many important public figures.

“Auden’s revision of “Funeral Blues” removes the burlesque elements of the early version
in its clear and honest presentation of an individual’s desperate attempt to cope with a devastating
loss.”
Aviya Kushner, in an essay for Poetry for students, Gale, 2001