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22 November, 2019 by Dave Bonta - 2 Comments - Posted in Videopoems

This 2016 film co-directed by Stephan Bookas and Tristan Dawes moved me to tears. That's how effective, and affecting, I found this juxtaposition of W. H. Auden's poem ( text here) about Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany-read by a man identified only as Noah, a refugee and former child soldier from Uganda-with excellent documentary footage of contemporary refugees. Here's the official synopsis from Bookas' website:

Set to the verses of W.H. Auden's 1939 poem, the multi-award winning "Refugee Blues" charts a day in 'the jungle', the refugee camp outside Calais. More intimate and unlike much of what has been seen in the mass media, this documentary poem counterpoints the camp's harsh reality of frequent clashes with the French riot police with its inhabitants' longing for a better future.

On Vimeo, Bookas includes a mini essay about the making of the film, which I found illuminating in its suggestion of how documentary poetry can differ from journalism. This was something I'd been thinking about because I recently attended a reading and slideshow from another documentary poetry project, which was a collaboration between a poet and a photojournalist: Julia Spicher Kasdorf and Steven Rubin's Shale Play: Poems and Photographs from the Fracking Fields. Technically, Auden's poem by itself would not be considered an example of documentary poetry, but as a filmpoem Refugee Blues certainly would qualify, in my opinion. Anyway, I hope Mr. Bookas won't mind my quoting a sizable chunk of his post:

We didn't set out to make a film at first - that idea came later - we just packed a car full of blankets, clothes, food and other items and went, not fully knowing what to expect. But of course, being filmmakers, we also brought along our cameras - to see if we might have the opportunity to document, to capture, to find the human story in all the chaos that was so ubiquitous in the media at the time.

Soon after our arrival, we found the people living at the refugee camp to be very warm and welcoming, as long as we assured them we weren't news-gathering journalists.

We didn't film anything to begin with and just walked around, introduced ourselves as documentary filmmakers and listened to people and their stories. Every single one of them was unique and heartbreaking.

Following these discussions, we asked if it would be alright to take out our cameras and start filming. For the most part the answer was a resounding yes.

We spent the following days exploring the camp and talking to people, discussing the situation and the political climate and spending time with them, being invited for coffee and food and allowed to film elements of their daily lives. This turned out to be the calm before the storm, as things culminated in a clash between the camp's inhabitants and the French riot police on the road leading to the ferry terminal, symbolic for the plight of the refugees and their struggle against institutional powers they are unable to defend themselves against. [...]

Of course, our film can't possibly even begin to try and unravel all the lives and personal fates entangled within this crisis. But in some small way, and for us especially, it has given this tragedy a face that's less abstract, more relatable, more human.

Read the full post (including complete credits).

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22 November, 2019 by Dave Bonta - 2 Comments - Posted in Videopoems This 2016 film co-directed by Stephan Bookas and Tristan Dawes moved me to tears. That's how effective, and affecting, I found this juxtaposition of W. H.

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WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN AND THE 'COMMITTED WRITERS'

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WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN AND THE 'COMMITTED WRITERS'

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Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.
‎
Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you'll find it there:
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.
‎
In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
Every spring it blossoms anew;
Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that.
‎
The consul banged the table and said:
‎'If you've got no passport, you're officially dead';
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.
‎
Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go today, my dear, but where shall we go today?
‎
Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said:
‎'If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread';
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.
‎
Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
It was Hitler over Europe, saying: 'They must die';
We were in his mind, my dear, we were in his mind.
‎
Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews.
‎
Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.
‎
Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.
‎
Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
A thousand windows and a thousand doors;
Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.
‎
Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.‎

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By Anna A.

Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said:
‘If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread’
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

As for me, I shall say that the sixth stanza had definitely struck my attention, as it contains the main message of the poem, that is to say, that Jews are doomed to be eternal refugees, to be in a non-stop trial, since Hitler’s words had already spread worldwide.

Analysing the few lines of the stanza, we read that the poetic voice managed to take part into a public meeting, yet the words he hears are extremely direct and they fully comprehend that those cold words ("If we let them in they will steal our daily bread") are addressed to them.

Indeed, it really looks as if anywhere  wherever they go, Jews are followed  persecuted by an unfair doom which forces them in their condition of exiles; we must not forget that the poetic voice engulfs in fact all the voices of the refugees that in that particular period looked as if they were affected, therefore dangerous. We read that people fear them as their image was of some unreliable and unworthy people to beware of.

Nowadays, the situation is not that different, I mean we still discriminate: sure the people we fear are not Jews, or at least not the majority, yet we tend to avoid black people, for instance. It seems illogical that in America, probably the country less affected by Hitler's ideas, nowadays black people need to remind the others that they actually have their same Rights, since it looks different. We read and hear about white police officers who keep killing or pulling out their rage on black people... isn't this phenomenon generally called racism?

I can't properly express my deepest disappointment thinking about these current events. Yet, a century ago, a man called Wystan Hugh Auden was capable of reporting the story of millions of people of all centuries.

Anna A.

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Refugee Blues: the denied possibility to sing in freedom

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Refugee Blues: the denied possibility to sing in freedom

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By Vittoria Colpi
Reading this extremely thought-provoking poem was for me a completely pervasive experience.

Going through the various stanzas of the text, in fact, I felt both an inexplicable pleasure in its perfect and careful composition, and a stinging pain in the chest. This contradictory feeling, in my opinion, is what makes the message of this poem so powerful and capable to go straight to the hearth of the reader.

The poet W.H. Auden wrote this text in 1939, in the middle of World War II, when the only way to salvation for the millions of German Jews persecuted by the Nazism was to escape. In this poem the author’s aim is to show the extreme difficulty and almost the impossibility for those people to leave this hellish country.

Among these poignant twelve stanzas, my favourite one is undoubtedly the 10th:

Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees:

They had no politicians and sang at their ease:

They weren’t the human race, my dear, they weren’t the human race.

Here Auden, in four meaningful verses, encloses the essence of the Second world War. If the goal of World War I was basically to expand German borders by conquering territories, here the desire is enhanced and much more cruel : to annihilate the Jewish “race”. Even if we didn't know the poet’s nationality and position in the War, from these few lines we could perfectly understand his judgment on it. If the birds in the wood can sing at their ease undisturbed, men are unable. Why? Auden says because “they have no politicians”, they are not subordinate to tyrannical dictators, therefore they can live in freedom.             This represents, evidently, a potent denunciation of the devilish man in power. Furthermore, in this stanza also emerges the deep despair and total distrust in the human race emerge, and the writer’s hopeless attitude towards the future and a possible improvement.

In 2021, although World War II is over and the events of the past have taught us a lot, in some parts of the world the men who hold power seem to have retained the same spirit as the politicians described in “Refugee Blues”, symptom that some men can’t sing yet.

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By Sofia M.

W.H. Auden wrote this poem in 1939,  and  he will publish it in the collection ‘Another Time’ in 1940: the choice of writing on a modified blues in my opinion is very interesting because it gives the idea of ​​a rhythmicity and a repetition of the text and music that emphasise and harshly denounce the racist actions that have always been part of Humanity.

Since I discovered that this poem was written on the basis of a blues song, I immediately thought of Colonialism that began about two centuries earlier , and this made me reflect a lot because from this typically European theme of the persecution of the Jews I am sadly connected both to the past of what happened in the States and to the present that we live every day directly in the western part of the world and indirectly in the rest of the world.

For this reason, I choose the sixth stanza:

‘Came to a public meeting: the speaker got up and said: ‘if we let them in, they will steal our daily bread’: he was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.’

In my view, in these three lines we can see different aspects of persecution and racism that have always been part of the human activity of conquest: as we can read in the previous lines, these Jews and refugees cannot enter European countries such as Germany, France or England since they do not have valid documents or passports, and therefore do not have the right to move freely and with this excuse the officers do not let them enter and therefore do not give them a safe place to live at best as every Human Being deserves.

However in the following lines, we see that unfortunately the fundamental problem is not so much the fact that they do not have passports, as that national organizations do not want to let them in because of prejudices that are typical of superficial and racist people.

The idea that refugees can steal one's daily bread and, speaking in more modern terms, jobs, is an idea that has haunted us for centuries and that makes us particularly skeptical and backward regarding the integration of foreign  people in our society: this is a very current thought with which unfortunately we have to deal with nowadays, because these problems - which Auden dealt with almost 100 years ago - are still strongly rooted in the society of the 21st century and are still the cause of conflicts that we citizens do not see or we pretend not to see, but unfortunately these actions still exist.

The saddest thing is that politics politicians and national security do not protect these people, but most of Italian politicians - in the country where I have the right to vote - are based on racism and the rooted idea of ​​race rather than Humanity; as a young Italian citizen, I firmly believe that as long as society offers these rusty and immovable integration fees arrears. there will be no improvement - neither from the point of view of refugee people looking for a new country to start a new life, nor from the point of view of those who welcome them - since it will remain a country with a strictly conservative and elderly society which will slowly disappear, because it will find itself behind the times...

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Exclusion: a problematic tendency to fight through Awareness and Language. 

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Exclusion: a problematic tendency to fight through Awareness and Language. 

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By Margherita.

Born from a superior God or the product of natural evolution, Human Beings possess feet to move and brains to dream of their own landing-places.

Hence, “Freedom of Movement” becomes one of those natural and - above all - inalienable Rights, we do normally define as “Human Rights”.

Moreover, also our Italian Constitution presents the “Article 10” which is definitely paramount as it regulates the condition of foreigners, their Rights and duties, in Italy.

However, what happens if our freedom to move and reach foreign soils is limited by the hostility of another fellow Human? Controversial, isn’t it?

Thus, a colossal discrepancy between an inviolable Right and the real application is shaped by undemocratic tendencies, which are precisely the subject dealt by W.H Auden in “Refugee Blues”.

“Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said:
‎'If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread';
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me”.

Composed in 1940 following a tradition layout, “Refugee Blues” is a poignant piece of poetry by the English author W.H Auden, whose impressive commitment during the rise of Nazism and the Spanish Civil War profoundly flabbergasted me.

Why is the poem so worthwhile? Since it is massively contemporary, as History teaches us that an insane Hitler will be always out there to persecute ‘intruders’ if we only blindly and indifferently permit it.

Consequently, “Refugee Blues” stands as a precious reminder to us all, in order to escape destructive Propaganda thanks to Awareness .

Especially analysing the sixth stanza, the most impactful one to me, Migration and Exclusion become themes which are also current issues in our ‘developed’ society... A modern community where people pretend to be open-minded, but they are actually influenced by critical stereotypes towards the ‘others’, the personal pronoun ‘they’ Auden uses in his lines.

Us and them, them and us: both Human, but bearers of antithetical positions, as privileged or underprivileged.

It is enough to reflect on Italy’s skepticism towards foreigners and migrants. How many of them are asked: “Where do you come from?” or “You speak Italian fluently!” just because their somatic features differ from the typical Italian ones? They could be second or third generation migrants who had integrated step by step. However, many of us are still affected by the idea of the White Privilege.

Thus, it seems to me that lots of us do not understand how destructive exclusive language can be, simply as these Humans have never experienced it.

To conclude, not only do I believe we should all learn to use an attentive and accurate language in our daily life. But we should also get in touch with the ones who ‘could STEAL our bread’, just to understand that they are Humans who need empathy and their own Rights, as well as us.

"Non servono prediche contro razzismo, intolleranza e xenofobia, ma esperienze e progetti positivi ed una cultura della convivenza. Più abbiamo a che fare gli uni con gli altri, meglio ci comprenderemo.”. From “Tentativo di decalogo per la convivenza inter-etnica” by A. Langer.

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Indifference throughout History: always a Current Issue 

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Indifference throughout History: always a Current Issue 

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By Marta L.

To begin with, Wystan Hugh Auden was undoubtedly a genius: at the same time, he was able to be Man and Humanity, Singularity and Synthesis, Individual and Multitude.

In his deeply thought-provoking poem “Refugee Blues”, this visionary writer depicts the abominable condition of Jewish people in Europe overwhelmed by Hitler’s fury. Not only does W. H. Auden make a connection to historical and contemporary issues, but he also conveys the colossal pattern of oppression, fear, and isolation of that time.

The twelve stanzas of this illuminating poem are incredibly touching and the intentional pauses created by the peculiar use of punctuation enable the reader to perceive the physical as well as mental condition in which Jewish people had to deal with.

Had I to choose one stanza in particular, I would firmly quote the sixth one, which particularly grabbed my attention.

“Came to a public meeting: the speaker got up and said:
‘If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread’:
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

Four keywords spring to mind: ignorance, indifference, selfishness, current issue, awareness.

My reflection begins with the word ignorance since I strongly believe that the lack of knowledge is one of the main causes of antisemitism, racism and Islamophobia.

In the case of frail people, diversity scares, but we can remedy  overcome this fear by learning that this diversity is actually a source of wealth.

In the past, the strong cultural identity of the Jewish people as well as their diverse habits and customs increased  emphasised even more the suspicions and the accusations towards them.

Focusing on the term indifference, I would like to quote a phrase taken from the captivating novel “La Memoria rende liberi” written by the Italian Holocaust survivor Liliana Segre:

“Da anni, ogni volta che mi sento chiedere: «Come è potuto accadere tutto questo?», rispondo con una sola parola, sempre la stessa.

Indifferenza.

Tutto comincia da quella parola. Gli orrori di ieri, di oggi e di domani fioriscono all’ombra di quella parola. […]

La chiave per comprendere le ragioni del male è racchiusa in quelle cinque sillabe, perché quando credi che una cosa non ti tocchi, non ti riguardi, allora non c’è limite all’orrore.”.

Had someone got up and replied to the speaker who said ‘If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread’, it would have been a first step toward the fight against antisemitism.

However, taking Italian people as an example, there was no relevant opposition, neither at a popular level nor from the institutions, who left Jewish people to their destiny.

As Elie Wiesel, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor, stated:

“Action is the only remedy to indifference: the most insidious danger of all”.

The word indifference is strictly connected to the issue of selfishness: I have my “daily bread”, I do not care if you are not as lucky as us.

But the real problem which is often neglected is the fact that we do not decide in which age to live, just as we do not decide the country, the nation where to be born. And so, why do we wage war? Why do we strive for supremacy? Why should we “Take up the White Man’s burden”?

Nowadays ignorance, indifference and selfishness lead us to a problematic current issue that concerns all of us: migration. 1,209 migrant fatalities recorded worldwide in 2021. 1,209 lives.

Nevertheless, we just pretend like it doesn’t happen. Our pretext consists in  of the impossibility of accepting them since they “steal our daily bread”, they steal our work, they steal our resources.

But the question is: how can we accept this atrocious situation?

Until we will keep burying our head in the sand, and turn a blind eye on this issue, we will be just as who didn’t react to the extermination of the Jews.

Now it is the moment  turn of awareness. This type of knowledge concerns every Human Being: we should treasure our past, learn from our faults, and build our future on solid foundations of tolerance, collaboration, cooperation and equality. Undoubtedly, the first step toward change is 'awareness'.

By Marta L.

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Between denied Freedom and Resignation: an endless Story of Migration

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Between denied Freedom and Resignation: an endless Story of Migration

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By Alessia

How many times do we say that Literature is evergreen and it is always a step ahead in the problems of nowadays life?

Sometimes I wish it weren't wasn’t.

Poet and writer W.H. Auden wrote the heartbreaking poem “Refugee Blues” in 1939. However, as soon as we read the poem nowadays, it seems so actual that the words “German Jews” assume immediately the shape of whatever ethnic group many people are accustomed to see as “thiefs of our daily bread”.

What struck me the most about the poem is, indeed, its never-ended timeless relevance. In particular, the 4th stanza is absolutely appalling in its timelessness.

"The consul banged the table and said:
‎'If you've got no passport, you're officially dead';
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive."

Auden deals with the situation of the German Jew Refugees  who can’t withdraw from Germany in order to reach salvation because they have no passports and therefore they are inevitably condemned to persecution, as we can infer from the last stanza.

Nowadays, something very similar is happening. Despite the article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), every nation can decide for itself which policy to adopt in terms of migration. One of the fundamental conditions to legally migrate is having a regular passport.

Now, we must bear in mind that in many States such as some regions of in Africa or of the Middle East (for example some remote zones of Pakistan, as we can read in the biographical novel of Enaiatollah Akbari “Nel mare ci sono i coccodrilli” - Fabio Geda, 2010) people neither don’t have an identity card nor other documents. If we add that those regions are often controlled by terrorist groups, the possibilities to legitimately escape are below zero. Eventually, if you manage to withdraw and reach a more democratic country, you have to ask for political asylum in order to stay there. Nevertheless, you can receive asylum only if that State recognizes a situation of war in your motherland. Often, either this is not recognized, or the bureaucratic procedure takes years and years.

The contrast between “official” and “unofficial” is paradoxical: without passports, Refugees are “officially” dead, though they are still alive in bodies and they still suffer.

The “Resignation Syndrome” occurring in Sweden (and not only) since the 1990s is the real and unbearable transposition of what Auden wrote.

This deeply depressive and dissociative syndrome affects only the sons and daughters - children and teenagers - of the asylum-seekers who are waiting for their residence permit in the refugee accomodations for years.

Children and young teenagers fall into an apathetic state, sleeping all day long for years. They neither eat nor respond to any physical stimulus, as to flee completely from their insufferable situation.

All of them had witnessed a traumatic experience of migration (all came from the ex URSS, ex Yugoslavia and especially Syria ), persecution or war.

In the case of a young  12-year-old girl who has been affected by “Resignation Syndrome” for 2 years, her situation started to get better after her family received the residence permit.

A similar syndrome was reported also in Nazi concentration camps.

How many times do we close our eyes in order not to see the harsh reality of these people?
How many times do prejudices overrule us?
Literature must teach and prevent people from making the same old miserable mistakes.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-41748485

By Alessia

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By Maria Teresa

The poem “Refugee Blues” by Wystan Hugh Auden has the power of leaving a strong impact on the people who read it. It contains a very deep message but also warning on the condition of jews during World War II.

The stanzas which really moved me and made my stomach twist are probably the eighth and tenth one, since they are deeply connected from the point of view of the meaning/message.

In a nutshell, the idea expressed in the stanzas is that animals such as dogs and cats are treated more humanely than Jews.

World War II and Nazi Germany are subjects that interest me a lot, which I am very passionate about and aware of, but the dreadful and powerful words through which the author explains the inhumane condition of the Jewish people succeeded to make my skin shiver from the horror.

The author accentuates the fact that while the cat of the eighth stanza is welcomed inside a warm house and the bird of the tenth stanza is free to fly in the sky, the Jews are kept in cages, starved and forced to forget  their identities of Human Beings. The fact that mere people, men, women and children, could be referred to AS simple living THINGS (neither human, nor animals) shocked me deeply. I can say after reading this poem that the author achieved his goal of wanting to raising awareness on this extremely hard-to-handle topic.

By putting our reality in contrast with the one of the Jews during World War II, we learn a very important lesson, which is to never, not even to a small extent, ever commit those horrific, inhumane, degrading acts of emancipation, murder and disrespect again.

It is paramount to remember that by doing those shameful actions, the Nazi not only degraded the Jews’ identity and culture, but also themselves.

Maria Teresa

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By Sara C.

“Refugee Blues”is an extremely thought-provoking and deeply moving composition which deals with the condition of Jewish refugees, who had to escape from Nazi Germany during the World War II.

Each stanza conveys an aspect of their life in the new countries, characterised by discrimination and exclusion.

If I had to choose only one stanza, although each one is captivating , I would certainly choose the eighth one, since I found it extremely heartbreaking and emblematic of the condition of migrants in general... considering that the issue of displacement  of masses of people to another country, where they are discriminated, is still an enormous issue nowadays.

Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren’t German Jews, my dear, they weren’t German Jews.

Refugees’ condition in the new country is so awful that they are considered less worth than animals, even if they all are Human creatures and they all deserve to be well treated. In opposition to the homeless refugees, animals are welcomed in houses and they are free to move, they have access to nourishment and to a long list  of goods things which are not taken for granted by migrants.  Not only are animals treated better than those people, but they also seem to have a dignity which has been taken away from refugees. As a matter of fact, the last line of this stanza is destabilising because it makes you empathise (as far as possible) with these poor  people, German Jews, who felt totally excluded by the society, where every other living creature seems to live in  a better condition than theirs.

This stanza, and the whole poem in general, made me put in the shoes of these innocent people, whose only fault was to be born as Jews during Nazi regime.

What makes me feel even more depressed is thinking that this situation is not very far from what migrants are still living nowadays.

Personally, I think that each Human Being deserves to be totally free to move from one country to another and feel as she/he is at home, without being treated as they were less important than animals: we all have a dignity which should never be undermined!
Sara C.

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By Caterina

The observation and the attention for the natural environment have always been present in human minds, since ancient times.
Peculiarly present in literature, this topic is often dealt with in order to create parallelisms between feelings, sensations, emotions and natural events (I’m referring to authors such as Pascoli, Montale and Baudelaire).

In this regard, it is common to consider the birds as free and lighthearted animals. This happens due to the fact that they have wings, they can move wherever they want and almost touch the sky.

In the period of time when this poem was written - 1939 -  the topic of freedom and thoughtlessness was notably felt: for this reason, the comparison is between birds and people.

Moreover,  the topic of policy is brought up, which represents a sore point during the first half of the 20th Century .

Personally, I have always had a thing for strong words and powerful sentences, hence this last “defiance” enormously struck me. In fact, the poetic voice in few and concise words resume the reality that he is forced to live, and which actually affected the entire world AT THE time:

“They weren’t the human race, my dear, they weren’t the human race”.

The element of singing is in my opinion has a STRONG power: it evokes the ‘puissance de la parole’, namely the power of words and voice.

In this case, the singing stays also for well-being and peace, to which the writer aspires.

CATERINA

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By Marina

The poem “Refugee Blues” gives an idea of anguish and fear. It deals with the feelings of German Jews, who are persecuted by Nazis.

It is an extremely current topic. Luckily Jews aren’t haunted anymore, like they were back during World War II, but refugees are still around the world even nowadays.

“Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
It was Hitler over Europe, saying: 'They must die';
We were in his mind, my dear, we were in his mind.”

I think that the seventh stanza of the poem is truly captivating. The sound of the thunder strikes fear just like Hitler’s voice does. Not only does the verb ‘must’ suggest the obligation, but it also leaks the hatred felt by the man. We can infer that thanks to this we can perceive the deep hate towards Jews, here, thanks to the author's poetic voice and style.

In my opinion, another particular feature of this stanza is the contrast between the second and the third lines. As Hitler speaks, we can perceive an extreme negativity. On the contrary, when the poetic voice says ‘we were in his mind’, a different tone is used, as if Jews felt worthy of the politician’s thoughts.

It is hard to believe that one man managed to influence the thought of so many people across Europe.

My fear, which perhaps is what many other people fear, is that something like the persecution of Jews could happen again. In my opinion, it is something awful, just like the problem of immigration.

In fact, not only is the poem about the topic of persecution, but it also deals with the issue of migration, which is still an issue even nowadays.

Unluckily most of migrants are still treated worse than animals.

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Inhuman Humanity: the paradox of the adjective “Human” and what Humanity really is...

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Inhuman Humanity: the paradox of the adjective “Human” and what Humanity really is...

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By  Mattia P.

“Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.”

This stanza, taken from W. H. Auden’s poem entitled “Refugee Blues”, according to my opinion, is the most striking of the entire work. It summarizes the whole message the author wants to convey. This is the most thought-provoking stanza because it shows a paradox: Auden is talking about animals, he opens our eyes and makes us see that they are often more “civilized” than Human Beings.

These birds,  even though they are less intelligent than Humans, they have more of the basic rights every individual should be entitled to own. They are free to move, free to sing, no one is controlling them for what they are doing, which even now  - after almost a century from WW2 - is not a condition everyone is living in.

Are we really human or are these animals more civilized than us? This is the implied question I can hear in my brain while reading the stanza. Auden is questioning our pretence to be more intelligent than every other creature of this world.

Quoting Tool’s song “Right in Two”:

“Silly monkeys, give them thumbs, they make a club and beat their brother down” ...

Of course, “monkey” is being used as a synonym for “Human Being”: singer Maynard James Keenan tries to convey a message very close to Auden’s. Hhowever, Tool’s song gives a negative connotation to the animal itself, where Auden sees the animal almost as an example and a trole model.

In conclusion, I would say that not only we should save nature, but also learn from it. Today more and more people are obliged to see their Right to Freedom - of movement, expression, assembly - denied: from oppressed populations in Africa to women physically and mentally abused by their own husbands all over the world.... The progress, often idolised almost as a divinity, is a double faced coin that has a horrible hidden side...

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By Francesca

Refugee Blues is an extremely thought provoking poem by W.H. Auden that deals with the condition of the Jews refugees in the 1930s.

Although the whole poem shattered my heart, I think that the first stanza reflects the situation of the refugees that were unwelcomed, unwanted and despised by their compatriots and by the people from other countries:

Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.

This stanza describes the hypocrisy of foreign countries since they are able to house refugees, but they simply don’t want to: in fact, the speaker poetic voice mentions a city where "ten million" people could find a place to live, however it there seems to be no place for the exiled.

The first stanza deals also with the fear of living this terrifying condition of loneliness and cruelty: Jews had been slaughtered and wanted by their own motherland, in addition they could not feel safe in any country since other people would accuse them of stealing their daily bread... As a result, they are trapped in perpetual fear and isolation.

I believe that this stanza and this poem are able to describe the condition of all-time refugees due to the fact that nothing has changed since the 1930s.

Nowadays, a lot of people abhor who left his or her own country in order to escape from misery, war and exploitation since they feel menaced by those who are considered as invaders and criminals.

Auden denounced the same hypocrisy we are currently living in: for instance, as far as asylum seekers and migrants are concerned, someone suggests to ‘help them in their own countries’, but they are unaware of the fact that we have destroyed, exploited, impoverished those countries.

The indifference and blind hate that Human Beings can feel towards the others is unexplicable: people prefer to see other Humans drown in the Mediterranean or build a wall to stop them instead of helping them, and this scares me a lot.

It seems to me that someone is not learning from mistakes, therefore history is doomed to repeat itself.

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By Sara P.

Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go today, my dear, but where shall we go today?

I chose this stanza because I believe it is the most impactful and tragical one in W.H. Auden's 1939 poem.

When I was reading this poem, I pictured in my head a group of refugees on a geographical map. They had started their journey from a place called home, and from then they have been travelling everywhere, without ever finding a place to settle down and build a new life. When I came to this stanza, I felt distressed. With just three lines, the author conveys the heart-breaking feeling of a rejected refugee. Jews refugees just wanted a place where they could live in peace and other men, the citizens of those nations denied them this opportunity for meaningless  useless reasons.

I think the last line especially, expresses at the best this pitiful desolation of a refugee that doesn’t know where to go, because he has no longer a place in the world.

As soon as I read this stanza, I immediately thought of a piece of news I have read a couple of days ago (here’s the link: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/04/denmark-hundreds-of-refugees-must-not-be-illegally-forced-back-to-syrian-warzone/ ). Compared to the poetry Auden's poem, the context is different, but extremely similar.

On one hand we have Jewish refugees, who are trying to escape from Hitler’s madness. On the other hand, we have Syrians refugees, that are escaping from a country destroyed by the civil war. Still with this different background, the reaction of the nations they asked asylum to is the same: they don’t want them. They refuse to let them live their life there. It is absurd to think that this poem could be read right now and still be this much contemporary.

Nowadays, we have a document that sets out the fundamental and inalienable Human Rights, but still there are violations in every part of the world.

We have made the first step writing this document, but in the future we must be more engaged, if we want really to change the world something.

Sara P.

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By Lucrezia D.

“Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
A thousand windows and a thousand doors;
Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.”

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Reading the extremely thought provoking poem “Refugee blues” written by W.H. Auden, my attention was particularly captured by the eleventh stanza.

The author describes a huge building which contains an enormous number of rooms that reminded me of the Italian so called “case popolari”.

Nowadays this constructions  these buildings are often destined to immigrant people too: the aspect which surprised me the most is the fact that in the poem no one of the rooms is meant to host a refugee. Consequently, the two situations are completely the opposite.

Secondly, this peculiar image made me think about the concept of “Home” from a material point of view. A permanent home is one of the fundamental needs of Human Beings. There are many people who consciously choose to live without a roof over their heads. On the contrary the author describes a situation where people did not have this possibility to choose.

That being said, I would deduce that the issue which concerns the possibility of choosing is a timeless topic. I assume that it is truly depressing to realize.

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By Marta I.

The consul banged the table and said:
‎'If you've got no passport, you're officially dead';
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.

'Refugee Blues', the poem published in 1939 by W.H Auden, is one of the most poignant and beautifully heart-breaking pieces of British Literature of all times.
This stanza in particular is in my opinion the MOST striking one: the refugee is referring to the fact that, after they have escaped to the USA, they still are not able to integrate, since they are treated as illegals and marginalized.

How absurd is it that a person without a simple piece of paper will be considered less than a Human Being by the society? And even deprived of his/her Rights? It just feels incredibly wrong.

Actually, what touched me the deepest is not only thinking about the many horrible things these poor people had been through, but also knowing that it still happens today.

Everyday the question of migration is everywhere on TV and in newspapers, so much so that we are almost getting used to the unconceivable number of deaths per year for this injustice.

Not surprisingly, we often tend to forget that they actually are human lives: children, women and men with a history, ambitions and dreams that should be just as valuable as anyone else's.

Back then, entire ethnic groups were discriminated, abused and pointed as evil - or even criminal - exactly like nowadays, as if the same old story is repeating itself.

So the unanswerable question is:

Will all this ever finish for good ?