Welcome to Shelly’s
Poetry and Politics
W. H. Auden wrote poetry at a very exciting time in the history of English literature. Modernism was sweeping through the arts, demanding that art be made for its own sake, and not merely to undergird (or challenge) the party line. Auden, in his early days, wrote a good deal of overtly political poetry. He had a change of heart as time wore on, however, so much so that he moved firmly into the “art for art’s sake” camp with his own work, and in his expression of the idea that “poetry makes nothing happen.”
The Modernist idea that art exists for its own sake, and therefore should not directly engage politics is one that is open to eternal debate. Is there a place for political poetry? Can a poem that engages with politics be anything other (i.e., more) than mere propaganda?
The film Max is one that explores this notion from a very interesting perspective. What I first heard about the film, before watching it, was that it offered a sympathetic view of Hitler. I am not sure that “sympathetic” is exactly the word I would use. Rather, I think it offers a view of Hitler as a product of his times. And a large part of what was going on in his time was a raging debate about the intermingling of art and politics. In the film, the line ART + POLITICS = POWER is put to good use, and the interaction of art and politics is explored in a very thought-provoking way. The questions Modernism was profoundly 
concerned with are consistently probed in the film, and the images used to convey the debate are the sort that stick with the viewer for a long time.
Viewing the film Max and considering the question of the role of politics in art (or is it the role of art in politics?) brings to mind a video clip I saw in my undergraduate days in my Western Civilization course. The clip was very old, showing live footage of Hitler speaking to a crowd. I couldn’t understand a word of what he said, the whole thing being in German, but there was something very moving about it. The man was, at the heart of it all, a very skilled speaker. That was his art, and he was very good at it. It was, at the end of the day, put to use merely for the sake of propaganda. It is a classic case of art being put to use to do the bidding of politics, and to disastrous results.
Of course, one might consider that the film clip was wisely chosen, deliberately highlighting Hitler’s skill as a rhetorician. That, I suppose, raises another question — was the film clip shown in my class being used once again as propaganda, this time by someone highlighting a very different ideological angle?
That’s part of what is so tricky about the Modernist assertion that poetry and politics must remain separate. Is it really possible? Can we escape the ideologies we hold long enough to write our poems? Or are poetry and politics forever destined to remain intertwined?
© 2008 Shelly Bryant
Sunday, 02 March 2008
