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"my treason engendered by traitors beyond me"


  • James1990
    Nov 9 1:25 PM
    Reply
    Hello, I hope this is the correct place to ask this. In Louis MacNeice's "Prayer before Birth", the following verse sounds wonderful, but I'm struggling to really understand what it means: 
    I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
     when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
        my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
           my life when they murder by means of my
              hands, my death when they live me.
    See the entire poem here: http://www.artofeurope.com/macneice/mac1.htm Any help is appreciated

  • imkleyurflesh
    November 9 ↑
    Reply
    The notion of Original sin vs. the denial of such thought?

    This is a guess.

  • hendiadys
    November 9 ↑
    Reply
    You really need to take into account the whole poem, especially the last three words, "otherwise kill me". But what he appears to be saying overall is that he cannot escape being at one and the same time himself and a compound of all the influences and inheritances that accompanied his birth.
    It seems to be a poem for declaiming, rather than believing.
    Let me recommend Macneice's "Autumn Journal" as a less OTT picture of the poet, and his "Bagpipe Music" as a restorative.

    • Cynewulf
      November 10 ↑
      Reply
      I have a 1st edition of MacNeice's 'Collected Poems 1925 - 1948' (Faber & Faber). I always assumed it wasn't worth a great deal as it is not classed as a collectors item. However, a friend of mine who owns a rare & second-hand book shop offered me a fair few spondoolies for it.

      I have held on to it. He has always been one of my favourite poets. He also wrote poetry in Midland's dialects as he taught & lived in the English Midlands (Birmingham).

      You should *have a butchers at Liz Lockhead's Bagpipe Musak.


      *Cockney rhyming slang ~ 'Have a look' (butcher's hook).

      • ea
        November 10 ↑
        Reply
        can't get a butcher's at Bagpipe online, unfortunately but have spent some time with MacNeice today. I remember you talking about him last year in connection with the Pylon Poets of the 30s. Didn't realize he was Scottish! and a damn fair rhymer. Well, this piece presented in the thread is very STRONG. I'm glad the sock puppet posted it. I actually like that Art of Europe site quite well and have had it up as my webaddress on my page in the past.

        • Cynewulf
          November 10 ↑
          Reply
          I am pretty sure MacNeice was born in Belfast. Lockhead is Scottish though, with a name like that she'd have to be.

          MacNeice was one of the Pylon Poets, named after a Spender poem about pylons. I think Auden was the other pylon.

          That's the trouble with sock-puppets, they usually have someone's hand up their arse...

          Oh, & talking of MacNeice's 'Autumn Journal' ~

          http://allpoetry.com/poem/4658371

  • Matt Holck
    November 9 ↑
    Reply
    don't believe in original sin


    maybe Abortion?

  • ea
    November 9 ↑
    Reply
    I think it can be applied very well to abortion, especially given the title itself and these lines from the second stanza:

    I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
    with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
    on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.

    The third stanza:

    I am not yet born; provide me
    With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
    to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
    in the back of my mind to guide me.

    seems to be a prayer for what the fetus may intuit life ahead holds.


    But then you get into the fifth stanza:

    I am not yet born; rehearse me
    In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
    old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains
    frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
    waves call me to folly and the desert calls
    me to doom and the beggar refuses
    my gift and my children curse me.

    and you can apply it to a wider meaning - what any person must go through in this life.

    Sixth stanza:

    I am not yet born; O hear me,
    Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
    come near me.

    To me it seems like a prayer to be protected against human folly and the dangers of life - as if anyone knows while they are waiting to be born, what they are in for in this life, and would quail at the thought.

    This is especially true in the seventh stanza, where the speaker contemplates having to grow up to become yet another "cog in the machine", a "lethal automaton" who will get blown like "thistledown" which speaks to me of a soldier being used in a war, "those who would freeze my humanity" and "dragoon" me. Again, this could be a fetus fearing abortion or a grown person facing war, in my opinion.


    The final stanza begs, if I can't live free from all this, why come into the world at all? Just let me be done with it before it's begun.


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