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   kc4u Teacher
   College - Senior

   eNotes Editor

   This is a very complex idea voiced by Auden. It is extremely ambivalent. When we read it today, there are two clear directions over here. One is the idea that poetry on the level of action or event is rather passive. This is a distinction that we have made normative--the contrast between the narrative schema of prose as opposed to the associative and relatively a-logical schema of poetry. Meaning in poetry is less ideologically contrived and more of a fluidity. Poetry is less causal and thus more eventless compared to prose.

   In the post-existentialist era, nothing has been converted into a thing indeed. Sartre 's and Camus's ideas have added a new dimension to nothingness as an event--the pure condition of being. So, in this sense, poetry does have its own event / happening which is that of nothingness.

   As far as Indian English poetry is concerned, in most of the poets, the Modernist spirit of Auden is less evident than a post-colonial/geo-political/ ideological and political orientation and thus the ideological charge leads to eventfulness. But someone like Jayanta Mahapatra's poetry does have a happening of nothingness. Consider his long poem Relationships.

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   Posted by kc4u on Tuesday December 1, 2009 at 10:16 AM