W.H. AUDEN: Language

[RonPrice]

Part 1:

W.H. Auden(1907-1973), one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, published his Letters from Iceland and a book of poems entitled On this Island in 1937. This was an historic year for the community I have come to be associated with for the last 60 years: the Baha’i Faith. As the Baha’is of North America were planning their first international teaching Plan in 1936/7, Auden also published a play The Ascent of F6.

My parents were about to meet in the late 1930s and the world was on the edge of a crisis in which it had been enmeshed since 1914 and from which it has yet to recover. In the 70 years from 1937 to 2007 Letters From Iceland went through 20 editions and the Baha’i Faith grew from an international community of, perhaps, 100,000 members to one of, perhaps, 7 million.-Ron Price with thanks to “Letters from Iceland,” Wikipedia, 31 March 2011.

Part 2:

You died just as I was finding
some pleasure in my vocation
and I really only got ‘into’ you
when I found much pleasure
from my avocation. You always(1)
said that a writer was a maker &
not a man of action; well, W.H.,
after 40 years of action, of being
jobbed, I was happy to be a maker.

You also said that a writer’s private
life should be of no concern to anyone
but his family and friends. I like that,
but on the internet and in our society
this is very difficult to achieve and the
issue is really quite complex, far too
complex to deal with in a short poem.

You left a great deal of autobiographical(2)
words and me too W.H., me too. And,
finally, thanks for The Dyer’s Hand which
was published in ‘62 just as I began my(3)
travelling-pioneering for the old Canadian
Baha’i community in my other lifetime.
------------------------------------------------------------
Part 3:

1 1973-my first year of enjoyment as a high school teacher. From 1999 to 2011 I learned much more about Auden than the little I had already known in my role as a teacher of literature. These were the first dozen years of my retirement from FT work during which I found pleasure in writing. An avocation is an activity taken up in addition to one’s regular work or profession, and taken up for enjoyment.

2 Humphrey Carpenter, “Preface,” Auden and Biography, George Allen and Unwin, 1981.
Readers interested in Auden can now read the Auden Studies Series and go to the internet hyperlink: http://audensociety.org/criticism.html for a list of relevant reading.

3 In Auden's brilliant collection of essays, "The Dyer's Hand" (1962) he makes the fascinating(at least to some) point that:

"The critical judgment "This book is good or bad" implies good or bad at all times, but in relation to the readers future a book is good now if it's future effect is good, and, since the future is unknown, no judgment can be made. The safest guide therefore is the naive uncritical principle of personal liking. A person at least knows one thing about his future, that however different it may be from his present, it will be his. However he may have changed he will still be himself, not somebody else. What he likes now, therefore, whether an impersonal judgment approve or disapprove, has the best chance of becoming useful to him later."

Ron Price
31/3/'11 to 28/8/'14.
Updated for: Philosophy Now

[Arising_uk]

I've just got to be a pedant here Ron, as you have claimed 'editor', so check your title and your signature for how long you've been one.

[RonPrice]

I have checked my signature, Arising_UK. You will find at accurate. Any pedantry you exhibit should be excused for a man who has dedicated over 6000 posts to his site.-Ron

[Arising_uk]

Shouldn't that be, "Thank you, I've corrected my signature and you'll now find it accurate."?

Glad to be excused tho'.

How's the "Lanaguage" going for you Ed!
p.s.
Pardon me if I've misread your tone.
p.p.s
It's not my site, I'm just a regular drinker at this well.

[RonPrice]

Thanking you, Arising_uk, amd wishing you well whatever role you have here at this site. I'm off to take care of a grandchild who keeps me busy when not writing and editing.-Ron

[Arising_uk]

Well, nice to hear that and best wishes to your family but you do understand that I was just questioning the spelling of "language" in the title of your post? (Of course I was having a little laugh at your expense given you claimed the role 'editor')

You know that you can just edit it don't you?

If so, and you do, then I'm happy with requesting the mods delete my posts(you can then delete your replies) so that the thread is again pristine. As I assume that it would be of interest to some, as the Baha’i Faith is not much heard of by many.
p.s.
Shouldn't that mean it should be in the religious section?
p.p.s
Oo! Are you just a spammer?

[melonkali]

RonPrice,

Clarifying, in case anyone else got a bit confused, as I did -- it seemed to me your initial post (almost?) implied a connection between Auden and Bahai? Looking into it further, I could not find that Auden was ever affiliated with the Bahai movement. He was described as an "existential, this-worldly" Anglican, and loosely affiliated with Catholicism.

Regarding Bahai, I'm not sure that you are permitted to discuss your faith with me, since I made the Bahai "banished and shunned" list as a "covenant breaker" back in the 1990's for disobeying the dictates of the Bahai high council (the 9-member Universal House of Justice - UHJ) by refusing to "shun" or "avoid all contact with" someone (in principle, with ANYONE) based on the orders of this high council , especially for no given reason other than the high council had declared that someone else was a "covenant breaker" because of non-disclosed crimes.

The "banish and shun" policy was counterproductive in my case. I'd not really planned to run-up a long distance phone bill trying to contact some Bahai "covenant breaker" whom I'd never even heard of before, but once I read that "all Bahai's must now shun xxxxxx" in the newsletter, no power on earth could have stopped me. I had to know -- was this person the embodiment of evil? Upon contacting him, I learned that his crime was disagreement concerning the authority of the high council, the UHJ -- surprise!! I did further research on the internet and discovered he wasn't lying and he certainly wasn't the only former Bahai unhappy with the UHJ, not the only former Bahai concerned that Bahai's "unity" is based on a protocol of absolute control, which includes banishing and shunning dissenters.

I do see real potential for good from the (apparently strong) Bahai communities in the Middle East, India and Africa, places where the Bahai faith often replaces an even more dogmatic, authoritarian religion. It's not easy for most populaces to go from authoritarian dogma to enlightenment in one leap. The Bahai faith seems considerably more humanitarian and benevolent than the religions it replaces in these regions, and serves as a good middle step to enlightenment, IMO.

As the "new kids on the block", you guys have the opportunity to learn from the sad history of other world religions: eventually any living, viable religion has to "let go", relinquish authority, as members become (often with the help of religious institutions) better educated and enlightened -- otherwise, the religion fractures, corrupts and decays into a power-grab where the primary sacred responsibility becomes obtaining and holding absolute "divine" rule. I wish you well. rebecca

[RonPrice]

Belated thanks rebecca for your thoughtful post. I'll cut-and-paste a link here which might be of interest to you given the background you have had in relation to the Baha'i Faith. I came across the link myself after reading your post, a post which raised good questions, and a post for which I thank you.-Ron Price, Tasmania, Australia
-------------------------------------------
http://bahaistudies.net/susanmaneck/Hou ... ernet.html

[Arising_uk]

Schisms, splits and heresies in a religion, who'd have thunk it!

[RonPrice]

The Baha'i Faith has no divisions and sects, but does have a small group of covenant-breakers. See the following link on covenant-breakers:
http://bahai-library.com/wwwboard/messages03/720.html
---------------------------
There have been dissident Baha'is who have sought to create divisions in the community but they have been largely unsuccessful and the overwhelming majority (over 99.9%) of Baha'is today belong to one religious community headed by the Universal House of Justice.

Since the Baha'is claim to be trying to bring unity to the world, it would obviously not make a great deal of sense for the religion itself to be divided into sects. Therefore the founder of the Baha'i Faith and its successive leaders took steps to prevent the formation of schisms and sects. The successive stages in the leadership of the Baha'i Faith have been guaranteed by written documents conferring this succession. This has made it difficult for anyone else to set up an alternative leadership.

During his lifetime, Baha'u'llah faced opposition from some Babi followers of his half-brother Mirza Yahya Azal (1832-1912), who claimed leadership of the Babi movement. Some individual followers of Azal played important political roles in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906 and after, but this group never really formed a religious community although there is a scattering of individuals who still adhere to it.

For more on this topic go to the following links:

http://www.patheos.com/Library/Bahai/Hi ... Sects.html

and
http://www.arabicbible.com/christian/bahai_faith.htm
--------------------SOME COMMENTS ON HERESY----------------------
In the last decade the media of the world have chronicled the plight of the hapless Bahá'ís of Iran, and, in the process, people have learned a great deal about the Bahá'í Faith and the purported justification of the Iranian government's oppression of the members of a religion that writers have characterized as "benign," "beneficent," "a peaceful, law-abiding community," an "unoffending creed," a "thoroughly unfanatic religion," a modern religion that believes in world unity, universal education and the equality of men and women." Those who really know the Bahá'í Faith would agree that all of the designations can rightfully be attributed to the Faith, and yet over the last ten years it has been a crime in Iran just to be a Bahá'í. The catalog of reprehensible acts against the Bahá'ís is unreal, a Kafkaesque recital of atrocities: individuals doused with kerosene and burned to death simply for claiming to be Bahá'ís; thousands driven from their homes; properties confiscated; Bahá'í doctors, nurses, and teachers fired because of their religion; Bahá'ís' being accused as secret agents of Israel for sending money to support their world headquarters in Haifa; the holiest shrine in Iran—the house of the Báb—demolished; retired Bahá'ís losing their pensions; Bahá'ís excluded from receiving identification cards needed to purchase food and fuel;—arrest, abduction, torture, and death by firing squad.

Among the reasons given by the Iranian government for the campaign of terror that has been waged against the Bahá'ís is the government's trumped-up charge that the Bahá'ís cooperated with the shah's secret police, SAVAK. Another charge is that the Bahá'ís are involved in prostitution since their meetings are attended by both sexes, a practice that is condemned by Islamic clergy. Additionally, Iranian authorities do not recognize Bahá'í marriages. Then, too, because the Bahá'í Faith is the only religion in the country that is excluded from any protection under the Iranian Constitution, those who declare themselves to be Bahá'ís are the prey to such individuals as a Muslim clergyman who instructed a crowd to hunt downs Bahá'ís and to deliver them to the Revolutionary Courts.

At the root of all the oppression are the charges of heresy that have been levied against the Bahá'ís. The Islamic government in Iran has maintained that the Bahá'ís are "fighting God and His Messenger (the Muslim prophet Muhammad)" and they are "creating discord among Muslims." For although the Bahá'ís accept Muhammad, along with Christ, Moses, Buddha, and a number of other prophets, their acceptance of Bahá'u'lláh, who proclaimed a new revelation from God in 1863, means that they have denied the general Islamic belief that God would send no prophets after Muhammad. Indeed, Bahá'ís claim that there will be additional prophets in the future. Thus, a Holy War has been waged against the Bahá'ís.

Of course, to those of us who like to think of ourselves as civilized, heresy is no excuse for violence, nor is the oppression of those accused of heresy. Certainly, the abhorrence of the peoples of the world toward what has happened to the Bahá'ís in Iran is fully justified.

[Arising_uk]

Whatever.

You god-botherers slay me. And I think you would to if you got the chance.

[RonPrice]

Thanks Arising_uk. I liked your quote: "Smile" they said, "Things could be worse". So I did, and they were. The quote fits well into the Australian ethos which I have been imbibing for 40 years since coming here from Canada at the age of 26.-Ron

[Arising_uk]

Sounds like a bonzer place then Ron.

[RonPrice]

People come to Australia thinking that, since it is an English-speaking country founded by people from England in the 18th century, that it will be another version of the USA, founded two centuries before that by another pile of people from England. Australia is not another version of the USA, or Canada for that matter--yet another English-speaking country--where I spent the first 25 years of my life. I wrote the following, reflecting as I did, on my life in Canada before coming to Australia and living, as I have done in this dry-dog-buiscuit of a continent for 40 years. I submit it here for your possible reading pleasure.-Ron Price, Tasmania
----------------
AN EARLY LANDSCAPE

The earliest moments, events, in the landscape of my memory seem to have an unusual clarity, as if they are scenes engraved on stone. It is not so much that these memories are soothing or particularly interesting, although I do find them so; rather, it is the place in memory where things start, the place of origins, or indelibly etched beginnings, domestic ritual's mysterious and precious beginnings. One describes and defines oneself in memory, in ritual's labyrinth of time. Identity is born, in part at least, in places like this: impressible, impressionable, fixed for life but changing with time's journey, changing right from the word go and yet curiously fixed. These memories become a part of life's grand ritual, repeated, gone over in the mind, a thousand times, and then some. -Ron Price, Pioneering Over Three Epochs, Unpublished Manuscript of Poetry, 1999.

Perhaps it is obsession
that gives these earliest memories
their haunting elaboration
and effortless detail,
that gives that mud pie
its tidy, straight sides
on the edge of spring
with the snow melting*
beside the house on
Bellvenia Road in RR#1
Burlington Canada where
I lived as a four year old.

Memory is nostalgia;
it is ritual aesthetic,
intense and accurate
and my life’s start
inseparable from fancy,
the landscape of my imagination.

Ron Price
10 September 1999

* this was my first memory

[Arising_uk]

Tazzy, now theres a place with a just about the most blood-soaked record in the Empires history of colonization.

Some people might think these things but they'd not be British then, as why would we think Oz would be like the States!? As I recall no war of Independence. We'd also doubt they'd be like Canada as there are no French there.

Your piece pretty much gives me no idea of the life you lived in Canada before you moved to Tazzy.