Autumn Journal, Louis Macneice

Written between August and December 1938, Autumn Journal is still considered one of the most valuable and moving testaments of living through the thirties by a young writer. It is a record of the author's emotional and intellectual experience during those months, the trivia of everyday living set against the events of the world outside, the settlement in Munich and slow defeat in Spain. 'He completely seizes the atmosphere of the year of Munich. He tolls the knell of the political thirties with melancholy triumph.' Cyril Connolly.

This long poem is one of the most beautiful pieces of poetry I have ever read. I have an affinity for the 1930s... It was a strange time; hope and despair and horror and poverty and class division all rolled into one era. And while MacNeice only writes about a few months at the end of the decade, he manages to capture the whole mood of the thirties. The poem is very personal and the private 'diary entry' atmosphere gives us the impression that we are intruding on his quiet moments of recollection. He breaches the boundary of private/public by writing about the impending war, Spain in ruins along with his marriage, as well as anecdotes about history. Like Auden does in Oxford, Macneice condemns the education system for not preparing him for what the real world showed him, for not preparing him for the despair and desolation that life in the thirties constructed and maintained. It's a poem written about a war, a poem written at the end of an exhausting decade and at the beginning of another horrifying ten years to come and it captures that atmosphere of not knowing splendidly.

It might seem pretentious recommending a book of poetry. Most people don't like poetry in small doses, let alone a whole book of it. But Autumn Journal doesn't read like poetry, not entirely. The beats and half rhymes are cleverly used, not as a gimmick gesture but as a 'secret' rhythm that pushes the the poem onwards and much of it's beauty passes the reader by unless actively looking for rhyme schemes and counting the syllables. The 'secret' rhythm parallels the way that time is passing and driving events on in the narrative, as well as in the poetic structure.

The poem is not a war poem, not by a long shot. It's too beautiful for that. With lines like the following, it is hard not to be moved by the emotive images Macneice conjures.

"...We cannot ever
Live by soul alone"

"This make believe of standing on the brink" xvii

"You cannot step into the same river twice" xv

"the perfectionist stands forever in a fog" xiv

and my favourite

why bother to water a garden
that is planted with paper flowers?

I read this book for a class on the 1930s. Everyone who took the 1930s class enjoyed and was moved by Autumn Journal. No one could explain why. For me, Autumn Journal is a beautiful creation that defies explanation, that defies definition.

What I think gives Autumn Journal its potency today is hindsight. You can see the still lingering hope throughout Autumn Journal, the desire for Spain to be resolved, for appeasement to work. Yet, in the 21st Century, we know what comes in 1939 - and it's heart breaking.

"To-night we sleep
On the banks of Rubicon - the die is cast;
There will be time to audit
The accounts later, there will be sunlight later
And the equation will come out at last" xxiv