The Fall of Rome
The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.
Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.
Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.
Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.
Caesar's double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.
Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.
Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.
Commentary
for Cyril Connolly.
This poem may be read instructively with “Under Which Lyre,” the lyric that precedes it in Edward Mendelson’s Selected Auden. Both poems shrewdly juxtapose Roman vices and political intrigue with post-World War II America. In “The Fall of Rome,” the effect transcends both eras, presenting one fused vision of a civilization in decline. I especially admire the sheer tawdriness of details Auden selects. Any melodrama is swiftly undercut by the mundane, even pathetic. In this Rome, “tax-defaulters” consume the State’s attention; entrenched labor grievances compromise the Marines; and the city is threatened not by the outbreak of another plague, but by flu.
Further notes on content: “All the literati keep/An imaginary friend” probably refers to the poet’s opinion (see the essays comprising his prose collection, “The Dyer’s Hand”) that poor writing can often be attributed to a disregard for one’s audience. Thus, an “imaginary friend” betrays the poet into “the spell of self-enchantment when lip-smacking imps of mawk and hooey/write with us what they will.” That line comes from “The Cave of Making,” Auden’s tribute to Louis MacNeice.
Finally, who can resist smiling at the all-too-recognizable image of “an unimportant clerk” who writes “I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK/On a pink official form”? Auden alone of 20th-century poets is so attuned to the discordance between our personal and professional lives. (Again, see his essay, “The Poet and the City” for a great analysis of this distinction in ancient and modern times.) One thinks immediately of his lines from “September 1, 1939”:
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow,
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work."
As in the best of Auden, content in “The Fall of Rome” is inseparable from the syntax that disperses itself across the regular stanzas. The ABBA rhyme-scheme allows each scene to cohere at the center, then ripple away to an unexpected relationship with the opening line. More strikingly, the clever enjambments (the continuation of a phrase across a line boundary) assure us right away that Auden will avoid a singsong rhythm. In the first stanza alone, we get startled by “In a lonely field the rain/Lashes an abandoned train,” and the feat is sustained until the last stanza, worth repeating in full:
Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss
Silently and very fast.
(Seamus Heaney cites this stanza enthusiastically in an excellent essay, “Sounding Auden.”) The stress on the first syllable of “Silently” slows down the line, compelling the awe of “very fast.” We are left to contemplate this gorgeous (and slightly ominous) image of arrival, “altogether elsewhere,” and how “the unimportant clerk” and his ilk stand in lamentable contrast to this promise of total freedom.
— Sunil Iyengar
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Hamish McCallum · 13 February 2001
It is a great poem. However, it seem to me that the comparison is between the (effete and corrupt) liberal democracies and other parts of the world, notably the USSR. Also, to someone of Auden’s generation, influenza was not the minor illness we think of today: the 1918 epidemic was horrific, unimaginably destructive.
Hamish McCallum
Gerry Rowe · 30 April 2001
The anachronisms and juxtapositions throughout conjure very economically a rich sense of the diversity of life, time and place to which these lines may apply. And the last verse, with its reminder that there is a greater world of unexplained, coolly indifferent tendencies beyond the confines of the world putatively organised and civilised by man, reverberates true as a fine-tuned bell.
The word ‘cerebrotonic’ interests me. I take it to mean that Cato - a Stoic philosopher I believe - offers the tonic of a mental discipline that might have proven an antidote to moral disintegration (but here turns out to be of little avail). I have never found ‘cerebrotonic’ in any dictionary. Any other views on this?
With thanks to Sunil for an illuminating commentary.
Gerry Rowe
OnwardAndOutward · 11 April 2002
To expand on the comment that influenza has sometimes been more than just a minor irritation— Don’t quote me on this, but if my memory of the Nova episode (Praise PBS!) on the Flu of 1918 serves me correctly, I believe Hamish has made a keen observation: firstly, said flu is considered the worst pandemic ever, killing ~21 M people world-wide, and responsible for more deaths than concussion, shrapnel, bullet, or bayonet. It thrived on the close quarters and unsanitary conditions that trench warfare and troop carriers entailed. Secondly, though the 1918 strain is believed to have been a swine flu, researchers today are more wary of a bird flu epidemic, as such might be even more catastrophic. I’m not sure if this was a concern at the time, but if it was, it would shed some light on Auden’s choice of imagery in the stanza in question. Great site, guys!
Martin DeMello · 21 August 2003
Thank you! You’re absolutely right - I’d also just assumed it was a synonym for ‘brainy’, without even noticing I’d done so.
martin
Christian Gindlesperger · 21 August 2003
In regards to “cerebrotonic”–it just struck me that, for all the times I’ve read this poem, I really have had no idea at all what this word means. Of course, it’s easy to assume that the cognate “cerebral” has something to do with it, so I guess I always assumed it was a synonym for brainy. However, a quick internet search turned up this bit of medical terminolgy, which is probably more exactly what Auden had in mind:
cerebrotonia
Rarely used term for a personality pattern proposed by William H. Sheldon associated with the relatively thin, ectomorphic bodily type and with predominance of intellective processes; characterised by traits of inhibition, restraint, and concealment.
Origin: cerebro-+ G. Tonos, tone
So, I guess I’d propose that “cerebrotonic” described someone exhibiting the symptoms or signs of cerebrotonia (Unfortunately for Cato).
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
–T.S. Elliot, “The Hollow Men”
Brigham Taylor · 29 April 2005
An addendum is the re-vision of the fifth stanza, made up by a feminist character in Alison Lurie’s 1974 novel, The War Between the Tates:
Cleopatra’s lips are kissed
As an ordinary wife
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY LIFE
Underneath her shopping list.
Brigham Taylor
higgen · 26 October 2006
Auden usually has a precise ear for speech patterns and avoiding a false “poetic” phrase.
But I think he faltered in the line:
“Fantastic grow the evening gowns;”
Oh well: I’ll forgive that for the wonderful last stanza!