Thursday January 19, 2023; 1:07 PM EST
- If there were a Hall of Fame, a Hall of Shame, a Hall of Disrepute for world leaders, a few of the leading candidates for inclusion were active in the 1930s. The poet W. H. Auden wrote several poems about the ones everyone knew about in those years. The shortest of those poems, "Epitaph on a Tyrant," ended after just six lines. Still, he managed to pin down a good number of the most common traits of a tyrant, or a would-be tyrant, traits that we recognize in some politicians to this day.#
- The tyrant wants everything to be just so. To be perfect, at least as the tyrant defines it.#
- The tyrant tells pretty stories, too simple to be misunderstood. The tyrant's poetry is meant to be chanted back to him in a great loud auditorium.#
- The tyrant is very good at human psychology, and how to turn it to his advantage.#
- The tyrant loves weapons, and weapon systems, and how they can be deployed.#
- The tyrant gathers sycophants around him, people in fancy clothes who laugh loudly at all his jokes.#
- And finally, make sure you know what you're getting into if you plan to make the tyrant angry or unhappy. #
- Auden packed information like this into his six-line poem, crystalizing in one memorable, memorizable little packet a guide to a very dangerous type of human being. The basics are distilled there.#
- Lots of people don't like bookish poetry, which is very sad, since poetry and any of the arts are part of our inheritance as human beings. We're entitled to live enriched by the emotions and insights of the arts. They help us us grow larger in spirit and more daring and committed in daily life.#
- And lots of people say they don't understand or enjoy the poetry you find in books. I blame myself as a former English teacher for some of that. Now it's payback time. I'll bet you a nickel you'll understand Auden's "Epitaph on a Tyrant" when you read it aloud in a moment. And I'll bet you another nickel you'll be moved by this six-line poem.#
- Epitaph on a Tyrant | W. H. Auden
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.#
- Now, while I have your attention, let's make a date to talk about Shakespeare sometime. He's part of our entitlement, our inheritance as a human being too. He knew so much about us, and he knew how to make it sing.#