| Chapter 1: | Signposts: the Limitary in W. H. Auden's Imaginary |
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Chapter 1
Signposts:
The Limitary
in W. H. Auden's Imaginary
There is no change of place:
No one will ever know
For what conversion brilliant capital is waiting,
What ugly feast may village band be celebrating;
For no one goes
Further than railhead or the ends of piers,
Will neither go nor send his son
Further through foothills than the rotting stack
Where gaitered gamekeeper with dog and gun
Will shout ‘Turn back’.
—“XXXV” (Summer 1930?)1
No one will ever know
For what conversion brilliant capital is waiting,
What ugly feast may village band be celebrating;
For no one goes
Further than railhead or the ends of piers,
Will neither go nor send his son
Further through foothills than the rotting stack
Where gaitered gamekeeper with dog and gun
Will shout ‘Turn back’.
—“XXXV” (Summer 1930?)1
It is remarkable how frequently in Auden's works certain words reappear—words like limit, boundary, border, frontier, lime, and pale. They are more than simple leitmotifs. Cumulatively, they suggest a vast fabric of