A Human Testament

Louis MacNeice died recently. Among the English poets of the Thirties he stood out as a one-man variety show, embodying the confidence in humanist values, the intellectual energy and the sense of expanding horizons that belonged to that epoch. That will do as a solemn epitaph. But, coming nearer home, MacNeice could touch the heart. One gained the over-all impression of a warm, versatile, witty man, never a woman-hater, one who liked the glitter of big towns as much as the green quiet of an Irish village, the only real hedonist among the moderns, who insisted that what is natural is mainly good, a broad-minded agnostic with a respect for the other man’s religion. Some biological element gave his poems their subtle verve and brightness, like a ball balanced on a fountain. The presence behind the verses, knowledgeable and humane, seemed that of the perfect lounge bar companion, the man whopage 662 knows nearly all the answers, but has never wanted to construct a theory out of them. To read the early MacNeice was to receive instruction in the art of being human.

The war turned MacNeice for a while into a great poet (I think of ‘Prayer Before Birth’, ‘Brother Fire’, ‘The Libertine’, ‘Prayer in Mid-Passage’, ‘The Streets of Laredo’, ‘Slum Song’ and ‘Street Scene’) – as the wave swells to its greatest height before toppling. A man as much in tune with the lives of others as MacNeice was, is obliged to share completely their heroism or stagnation:

. . . Then came the headshrinking war,
the city Closed in too, the people were fewer
But closer too, we were back in the womb
Nevertheless let the petals fall
Fast from the flower of cities all.

From which reborn into anti-climax
We endured much litter and apathy hoping
The phoenix would rise, for so they had promised.
Nevertheless let the petals fall
Fast from the flower of cities all.

And nobody rose, only some meaningless
Buildings and the people once more were strangers
At home with no one, sibling or friend.
Which is why now the petals fall
Fast from the flower of cities all.

I quote from ‘Goodbye to London’, one of the many good, sombre poems in MacNeice’s last volume. After the war MacNeice lost the thread of meaning in the urban labyrinth, but in these last poems he recovered it again. The voice is direct and steady, with no trace of spurious consolation:

. . . We flicked the flashlight
And there was the ferryman just as Virgil
And Dante had seen him. He looked at us coldly
And his eyes were dead and his hands on the oar
Were black with obols and varicose veins
Marbled his calves and he said to us coldly:
If you want to die you will have to pay for it . . .

MacNeice’s last book is in a sense a summing-up, a paying of bills left long unpaid, personal rather than political. There is deep melancholy at thingspage 663 out of joint, a sense of loss, but no abatement of courage. It is, from the most human of poets, an entirely human testament.

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