If I Could Tell You

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1940

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Historical Context: World War II

Auden wrote “If I Could Tell You” in 1940, a time of great uncertainty and suffering for millions of people in Europe and throughout the world. At the time of the poem’s composition, World War II had already begun, with Britain and its allies declaring war on Nazi Germany in September 1939 after Adolf Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia (now known as the Czech Republic and Slovakia) and Poland. The war would last for six years, concluding with the surrender of Japan—one of the allies of Nazi Germany—in September 1945.

World War II was unprecedented in terms of both the scale of the conflict and the number of victims, both military and civilian. Estimates vary, but experts agree that tens of millions of people died, including several million victims of the Holocaust—a genocide committed against Jewish people and other groups of people labeled “undesirable” by the Nazi regime. The war was also notable for its brutality against civilian populations, with deliberate aerial bombings of cities well behind enemy lines, such as witnessed during the London Blitz from 1940-1941. The war also remains notorious for the USA’s use of atomic bombs against the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, which led to the immediate deaths of over 200,000 civilians.

While Auden composed “If I Could Tell You” from the relative safety of the United States (which was still neutral at the time), he was well aware of the terrible events taking place back in Europe and, in particular, his homeland, England. Auden witnessed for himself the rise of fascism in Europe and the violence of the Spanish Civil War during his travels in the late 1930s. With this historical backdrop in mind, the wistfulness and uncertainty of “If I Could Tell You” are all the more evident, as Auden composed the poem under the shadow of a conflict that was rapidly escalating into a truly global war.

Literary Context: Modernism

Auden developed as a poet during the prime of a literary movement later known as Modernism. While the exact timeline of the movement is still a matter of academic debate, most scholars agree that the movement began in the late-19th century and began to fade sometime after the end of World War II.

English Modernism broke away from many of the dominant conventions of Victorian literature, which became somewhat stagnant with imperial jingoism and conservative sentimentality over the course of the 19th century. With the rise of Modernism, both poets and prose writers began to undertake ambitious experiments with literary forms, including the use of the “stream-of-consciousness” narrative technique in novels like James Joyce’s Ulysses. In poetry, some of the defining characteristics of Modernism include the use of avant-garde literary forms (such as unconventional rhyme schemes or typography), moral ambiguity and complexity, and the occasional radical approach to social and political ideas.

As a young man, Auden grew close to fellow writers such as Stephen Spender and Christopher Isherwood while still a student at Oxford University. However, his greatest contact with Modernism came in the form of T. S. Eliot, famous for his poem The Waste Land (1922). Eliot was one of the editors of poetry at Faber & Faber when Auden published his first commercial collection with the publisher in 1930—a business relationship that would last for all of Auden’s literary career. Although his choice of poetic forms and subject matter would vary widely over the course of his life, Auden consistently embodied the Modernist spirit in his use of intricate and innovative poetic forms and in his enduring interest in grappling with the major social and political issues of his day.