Since Munich, What?
"Since Munich,what? A tangle of black film
Squirming like bait upon the floor of my mind
And Scissors clicking daily. I am inclined.
To pick these pictures now but will hold back.
Till memory has elicited from the blind
Drama its threads of vision, the intrusions
Of value upon fact, the sudden unconfined
Wind of understanding that blew out
From people's hands and faces undesigned
Evidence of design, that change of climate
Which did not last but happens often enough
To give us hope that fact is a facade
And that there is an organism behind
Its brittle littleness, a rhythm and a meaning
Something half-conjectured and half divined
Something to give way to and so find."
Squirming like bait upon the floor of my mind
And Scissors clicking daily. I am inclined.
To pick these pictures now but will hold back.
Till memory has elicited from the blind
Drama its threads of vision, the intrusions
Of value upon fact, the sudden unconfined
Wind of understanding that blew out
From people's hands and faces undesigned
Evidence of design, that change of climate
Which did not last but happens often enough
To give us hope that fact is a facade
And that there is an organism behind
Its brittle littleness, a rhythm and a meaning
Something half-conjectured and half divined
Something to give way to and so find."
-The News-reel ( first published in Louis Macneice's The Springboard, collection from 1944).
Louis MacNeice's poem News-reel is generally not anthologised in collections of World War 2 poetry. And the poem is omitted from Louis MacNeice's Selected Poems (edited with an introduction by Michael Longley) from 1988. Just happened to find the poem by chance in a copy of Collected Poems of Louis MacNeice edited by Professor E.R. Dodds.
Next to the rise of radio, one of the great changes in media between the two World Wars was the legendary Pathe Newsreels, which were screened before major feature films at the cinema up to 1970 in Britain.
If nothing else, the poem highlights MacNeice's skill as a social observer but delves deeper. There is a great tension between the individual and the current events. The idea of the newsreel as being an accurate record is questionable and prone to be being tampered with, whilst the narrator's is selecting and possibly censoring their own inner pictures. Reminds one of how George Orwell's war work in the Ministry of Information led to the fictional Ministry of Truth in the novel 1984. The poem is quite short, and doesn't need to be pulled apart line by line, but raise thorough questions concerning how 'News' is constructed.
Louis MacNeice was born in Belfast, 1907, his father was an Anglican minister, his mother died when he was aged six. MacNeice was educated in English public schools from the age of 10, and then attended Oxford University, and became a classics lecturer in Birmingham,then at Bedford College,University of London. He visited Spain with Anthony Blunt in early 1936 on the eve of the Spanish Civil War. Later the same year, MacNeice visited Iceland with W H Auden.
MacNeice was living in London as from 1938. In 1939- 1940 he was in the USA for months at a time. In 1941 MacNeice returned to London and worked for the BBC, both as a broadcaster and radio producer, dying in 1963 from pneumonia contracted whilst out working with BBC sound engineers, exploring potholes to use for special effects for his play 'Person from Porlock'. LONGLEY Among his successes on radio must be the plays Columbus from 1944 (with music by Sir William Walton) and The Dark Tower from 1946, (with a score by Benjamin Britten).
His first poetry collection Blind Fireworks appeared in 1929, but really it was Poems 1935, published by Faber & Faber, which established MacNeice's reputation as a poet . Around a dozen more collections, were to follow, along with books of literary criticism. His one and only novel, Roundabout Way, published in 1932, using the name Louis Malone, has been rather neglected.
Philip Larkin praised MacNeice's work as follows:
"...his poetry of our everyday life, of shop-windows, traffic policemen, ice-cream soda, lawn-mowers, and an uneasy awareness of what the newsboy were shouting. In addition he displayed a sophisticated sentimentality about falling leaves and lipsticked cigarette ends...." LONGLEY
Macneice's 'Autumn Journal' ,written between August and December 1938, first published in 1939, must rate alongside George Orwell's novel 'Coming up for Air' as a superb literary depiction of the incredible tensions generated by the progress to World War 2. Autumn Journal approaches 3,000 line so poetry anthologies tend to just take a few lines samples from it. But the range of subjects it covers is far reaching : The Spanish Civil War, religious divide in Ulster, Ancient Greece, the author's own sexual frustration after the breakdown of his marriage and next love affair, everyday life in Britain as the 1930's stagger to a close, are woven into a griping narrative. There is this great sense of individual helplessness in the face of World events as preparations are made for war.
"If the puzzle has an answer. Hitler yells on the wireless,
The night is damp and still.
And I hear the dull blows on wood outside my window;
They are cutting down trees on Primrose Hill.
The wood is white like the roast flesh of roast chicken'
Every tree falling like a closing fan.
No more looking at the view from seats beneath the branches,
Everything is going to plan;
They want the crest of the hill for anti-aircraft,
The guns will take the view
And searchlights probe the heavens for bacilli " (part VII Autumn Journal) LONGLEY
MacNeice visited Barcelona in December 1938, and experienced bombing raids, though did not appear to have seen armed fighting there. MacNeice was exempt from military service during World War 2 on health grounds. His work certainly deserves to be recognised in any study of World War 2 poetry.
In 2023 a Louis MacNeice Society was launched.
Weblinks
In the Dark Tower BBC Archive on Four 'Louis MacNeice at the BBC'
Poetry Foundation Page on Louise MacNeice
Collected Poems of Louis MacNeice online Faber & Faber collection edited by Peter McDonald, 2007
Books
Collected Poems of Louis MacNeice Edited by Professor E.R. Dodds, Faber & Faber, 1966
The Myth of the Blitz, Angus CALDER, Jonathan Cape, London, 1991
Louis MacNeice's Selected Poems (edited by Michael LONGLEY)
Image
In the Public Domain courtesy of Wikipedia Britain. 'People in London look at a map illustrating how the RAF is striking back at Germany during 1940'. Interesting to see the uniformed airman amongst the civilians looking at the map.
Other blogs :
Bleak Chesney Wold 19th century history & literature blog
A Burnt Ship 17th century history warfare & literature blog
Contact: Michael Bully World War 2 Poetry@mail.com ( please ram words together without spaces)
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Michael@BleakChesneyWold
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