"The Sea and the Mirror: A Commentary on Shakespeare's ''The Tempest''" is a long poem by

W.H. Auden Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in ...

, written 1942–44, and first published in 1944. Auden regarded the work as “my ''Ars Poetica,'' in the same way I believe ''The Tempest'' to have been Shakespeare’s.” The poem is a series of

dramatic monologue Dramatic monologue is a type of poetry written in the form of a speech of an individual character. M.H. Abrams notes the following three features of the ''dramatic monologue'' as it applies to poetry: Types of dramatic monologue One of the mo ...

s spoken by the characters in Shakespeare's play after the end of the play itself. These are rendered in a variety of verse forms from villanelles, sonnets, sestinas, and finally Jamesian prose, the forms corresponding to the nature of the characters e.g. Ferdinand addresses Miranda in a sonnet, a form traditionally amenable to expressions of love. The poem begins with a "Preface" ("The Stage Manager to the Critics"), followed by Part I, "Prospero to Ariel"; Part II, "The Supporting Cast, ''Sotto Voce'', spoken by individual characters in the play, each followed by a brief comment on the character of Antonio; and Part III, ''Caliban to the Audience'', spoken by Caliban in a prose style modelled on that of the later work of

Henry James Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...

. A "Postscript" ("Ariel to Caliban, Echo by the Prompter") closes the work. The poem is dedicated to Auden's friends

James James is a common English language surname and given name: *James (name), the typically masculine first name James * James (surname), various people with the last name James James or James City may also refer to: People * King James (disambiguati ...

and Tania Stern. It was first published in 1944 together with Auden's long poem, his Christmas Oratorio "

For the Time Being ''For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio'', is a long poem by W. H. Auden, written in 1941 and 1942, and first published in 1944. It was one of two long poems included in Auden's book also titled ''For the Time Being'', published in 1944; the ...

" in a book also titled ''For the Time Being''. A critical edition with introduction and copious textual notes by Arthur Kirsch was published in 2003 by Princeton University Press. Auden's burgeoning relationship with Shakespeare's corpus can also be seen in his ''Lectures on Shakespeare'', also edited by Kirsch, delivered 1946/7 and diligently reconstructed from student notes.

Part III "Caliban to the Audience"

''Caliban to the Audience'', the longest section by far of the work, is a

prose poem Prose poetry is poetry written in prose form instead of verse form, while preserving poetic qualities such as heightened imagery, parataxis, and emotional effects. Characteristics Prose poetry is written as prose, without the line breaks associ ...

in the style of

. In it, Auden reflects on the nature of the relationship of the author (presumably

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

) to the audience of '' The Tempest'', the paradoxes of portraying life in art, and the tension of form and freedom.

Edward Mendelson __NOTOC__ Edward Mendelson (born March 15, 1946) is a professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Lionel Trilling Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. He is the literary executor of the Estate of W. H. Auden and the au ...

asserts that Auden took six months to arrive at its form but the result was a work the poet favoured above all others for many years. The poem itself is in three parts with a short introduction, where the "so good, so great, so dead author" is asked to take a curtain call, and being unable to do so, Caliban stands in his place to take the questions. The first section is a meditation on the dramatic arts, in various personifications, the Muse for the dramatic arts, Caliban as the Real World, and Ariel as the Poetic world. The second section is an address to Shakespeare on behalf of his characters, reflecting on the "Journey of Life" – " the down-at-heels disillusioned figure" and the desire for either personal or artistic freedom, with the disastrous results if either is attained. The third section is a meditation on the paradox of life and art, with mutually exclusive goals, where the closer to Art you come, the farther from Life you go, and vice versa. Caliban says he "

eels Eels are ray-finned fish belonging to the order Anguilliformes (), which consists of eight suborders, 19 families, 111 genera, and about 800 species. Eels undergo considerable development from the early larval stage to the eventual adult stage ...

something of the serio-comic embarrassment of the dedicated dramatist, who, in representing to you your condition of estrangement from the truth, is doomed to fail the more he succeeds, for the more truthfully he paints the condition, the less clearly can he indicate the truth from which it is estranged." This owes much to Auden's reading in Christian (existentialist) philosophy at this time. The section ends with a coda of sorts, with the paradox is resolved through faith in "the Wholly Other Life". It was important that the style be as artificial as possible to suggest Caliban's unnaturalness, neither able to leave the island with the others, nor, because the curtain has fallen in this meta-theatrical medium, remain put. He occupies a limbo of sorts which Auden identified in letters as specifically sexual, having been conceived as 'the Prick'.

References

* John Fuller, ''W. H. Auden: A Commentary'' (1999) *

, ''Later Auden'' (1999) *

W. H. Auden Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in ...

, ''The Collected Poetry of W. H. Auden'' (1945) *W.H. Auden, ''The Sea and the Mirror'' (1944) *W.H. Auden, ''Selected Poems'' (2009)

External links

The W. H. Auden Society
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sea and the Mirror, The 1944 poems Poetry by W. H. Auden Works based on The Tempest