Between Blinding and Enlightening: On Auden, Myth and Knowledge

Abstract

James George Frazer and Sigmund Freud confirmed the sustained but divided critical interest in myth characterizing modernity and ranging from eschewal to espousal. The Enlightenment thinker Bernard de Fontenelle treated myth as a superstitious obstacle to understanding. For the Romantics, mythopoeic sensibility provided a “vital way of knowing the world” and a welcome alternative to abstracting reason. W. H. Auden was a novice poet forming his poetic voice in the 1920s when anthropology and psychology were inspiring the early generation of modernists to the use of the “mythical method” as a means of grasping the present. In this context, Auden also pondered deeply over myth and its relevance to contemporary poetry and society. This paper aims to examine Auden’s ruminations on the category of myth for its capacity to deliver knowledge and enlightenment, but also blind and manipulate man and his consciousness. First, the present paper focuses on Auden’s understanding of myth as a discourse for establishing useful and fruitful connections between the past and the present with the hope of broadening our awareness of the underlying attributes of the condition humaine. Then, it also proposes a counter-movement, drawing attention to Auden’s suspicion of condemnable collective narratives with the potential to shade truth.