Redtree Times

We would rather be ruined than changed

We would rather die in our dread

Than climb the cross of the moment

And let our illusions die.

–W.H. Auden

Epilogue, The Age of Anxiety

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These words were written by poet W.H. Auden in the aftermath of World War II in his Pulitzer Prize winning poem The Age of Anxiety, a work that later was translated into music in the form of a symphony by Leonard Bernstein  and ballet by Jerome Robbins.  I didn’t know much about this work when I stumbled across this short passage and I don’t suppose that its acclaim or history have much to do with the the thought it provokes. 

Reading these four lines immediately brought to mind the transitional phase we’re moving through.  It is a time fraught with fast moving change and many of the things we held onto as absolutes seem fragile and illusory now.  It probably felt much like this to many of those who lived through the war years of the 30’s and 40’s, as though you were attached, with no control at all,  to the back of an angry beast who is rampaging.  All you have to hold onto is your fear.

It seems like many of the groups vying to gain power over the direction of this rampaging beast of a nation lend creedence to the words above.  They fear and despise the idea of change, even inevitable change, and would rather see the whole shooting match go up in smoke rather than alter their illusions of what we once were or what we could be in the future.

I know this sound somewhat cryptic and I don’t want to blurt out the obvious here right now.  Just a thought that rose from the four simple lines above.