At the beginning of Larry Kramer's play The Normal Heart, there is an excerpt from WH Auden's "September 1" - the note above the stanzas that begin reads "It is the author's express wish that the following excerpt from W. H. Auden's poem be included in all programs along with the copyright acknowledgment of the poem."
In the play, Kramer gets at the kind of repetition of history that appears in "September 1" ("mismanagement and grief/we must suffer them all again"). A conversation between two characters in the play, Ned Weeks and Bruce Niles, reads:
Bruce:...We just feel you can't tell people how to live.
NED. Drop that! Just drop it! The cases are still doubling every six months. Of course we have to tell people how to live. Or else there won't be any people left! Did you ever consider it could get so bad they'll quarantine us or put us in camps?
BRUCE. Oh, they will not.
NED. It's happened before. It's all happened before. History is worth shit. I swear to God I now understand… Is this how so many people just walked into gas chambers?
Kramer has said in interviews that the play was inspired in part by the concentration camps in World War II. In an interview with Parade, he said:
In the play, Kramer gets at the kind of repetition of history that appears in "September 1" ("mismanagement and grief/we must suffer them all again"). A conversation between two characters in the play, Ned Weeks and Bruce Niles, reads:
Bruce:...We just feel you can't tell people how to live.
NED. Drop that! Just drop it! The cases are still doubling every six months. Of course we have to tell people how to live. Or else there won't be any people left! Did you ever consider it could get so bad they'll quarantine us or put us in camps?
BRUCE. Oh, they will not.
NED. It's happened before. It's all happened before. History is worth shit. I swear to God I now understand… Is this how so many people just walked into gas chambers?
Kramer has said in interviews that the play was inspired in part by the concentration camps in World War II. In an interview with Parade, he said:
Interviewer: You’ve said that your visit in 1984 to the site of the Dachau concentration camp in Germany provoked you to write The Normal Heart. Why did you go to Dachau?
Kramer: “Something said to me, ‘Go to Germany. Go look at Dachau.’ I followed my instincts.”
Interviewer: What did you learn at Dachau?
Kramer: “How early it had opened, in March 1933, and we didn’t even know it. It was a lesson for us. So I wrote The Normal Heart. I wanted to get the message out.”
Interviewer: What message?
Kramer: “I’ve always felt that our government has allowed [AIDS victims] to die, literally, and here at Dachau was where the [Nazi] government was doing just that … [with] Jews and gays and gypsies, a lot earlier than anyone knew.”
Interviewer: When you say our government allowed people with AIDS to die, do you mean through indifference or was it a deliberate turning away?
Kramer: “What’s the difference?”
Through this play, Kramer seeks (in part) to spread awareness that will stop history from repeating itself. Maya Angelou, in "On the Pulse of Morning", shares a similar hope, one that differs from the views expressed by Wilfred Owen and Thucydides.
Auden, too, speaks on the repetition of history. In addition to the lines of "September 1" that say "The habit-forming pain/ Mismanagement and grief/We must suffer them all again", Mendelson finds evidence of the repetition of history in one of the deleted stanzas He references the stanza that ends with "Our public impatience can/Delay but may not prevent /The education of man." As a summary of the meaning, Mendelson says (in Early Auden):
"what the poet's voice can do, beside exposing lies, is proclaim that individual acts and lies finally make no difference. History - unnamed here, but identical [to earlier representations of History] in all but name is at work - will settle everything in the end."
So for Auden, the cycles that have occurred since the time of the Ancient Greeks play out again with the rise of Fascism and outbreak of World War II. The quote from Nijinsky's diary implies a repetition from the events of World War I as well. Kramer, through Ned, threatens this kind of repetition, but suggests a possibility of avoiding it. Kramer's play ties into not just the repeated history aspect of "September 1", but the possibilities of the line "all I have is a voice/to undo the folded lie". Kramer wrote THe Normal Heart to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and the LGBTQ+ community - many of his other projects did this as well. He demands that others take a stand as well: in an interview with Parade, he criticizes Elizabeth Taylor and others for not fully using their power to take a stand.
Kramer wants his writing to be political. In an interview with Slant Magazine - "“If you haven't offended somebody you haven't done your job", and in an interview with The Boston Globe, he said: "I have a voice and an opinion, and that’s how you fight back — by getting that voice heard somehow". Perhaps Auden's "All I have is a voice" in September 1 reflects a similar idea.
But James Miller, in an article titled "Auden's September 1", suggests that Auden has more reservations about the power of art . Miller says that Auden uses "September 1" to "both encode and explore the theme of homoeroticism" (115) through the allusion to Nijinsky and Diaghilev, and says that the poem serves as "a means of critiquing the power of art in an authoritarian and homophobic society" (115). He says that in the stanza that references Nijinsky (the same one from which Kramer takes the title The Normal Heart) is an "instance in which Auden exposes the current perhaps milder fascism" (117). Miller says that "some speculate that Nijinsky’s madness was brought on by Diagilev’s impossible demands of him as a dancer, as an artist" (117) and that:
"this kind of "relentless pursuit of art is easier to understand as a form of fascism....The theme of dictatorship, weaved throughout the poem, is also strengthened with the example of Diagilev, an auteur, whose instruments or works were human beings. Auden’s choice of this particular dancer and his patron also show a kind of self-reflexivity in the poem. Auden, as an artist, a transmitter of culture, might fear becoming too prescriptive in “September 1, 1939.” Mentioning Nijinsky and Diagilev could be an acknowledgement of the dangerous consequences of art’s power to prescribe, its inherent danger of becoming a kind of master narrative. Art, viewed as a master narrative, is the quest for the perfect form, the mastering of a medium with the aim of expression....Nijinsky’s madness could be pivotal in Auden’s understanding of the dangerous and pernicious nature of any aesthetic pushed too far. Auden, perhaps because he was an artist, recognized the danger of tyrannizing ideologies more poignantly in the tragedy of an artist than in the case of Hitler’s fascism." (118)
So while Miller says that Auden's poem reveals a "postmodernist tendency of constructing works to communicate with marginalized individuals" (117), something similar to what Kramer does, he suggests a different interpretation of Auden's meaning than others have found. Miller suggets that there is not evidence of the unlimited power of the poet's voice here, but rather an embedded warning about the lengths to which art would go, which, if believed, reveals a major difference between this poem and Kramer's works.
Mendelson reveals another difference, in "Revision and Power". He says that Auden later changed his mind about the role poetry should have in politics. Auden rejected "September 1" and "Spain" "because he distrusted their power to convince his readers that he and they were on the right side in the great struggles of the age, that they were "the just" who exchanged messages through "ironic points of light."" (105). He says that Auden "renounced any theories of poetry that assume that a poem works by compelling a response in its reader" (105).
The Normal Heart mentions Auden by name once. Shortly after the lines quoted above, Ned says to Bruce:
"I belong to a culture that includes Proust, Henry James, Tchaikovsky, Cole Porter, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Christopher Marlowe, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, Byron, E.M. Forster, Lorca, Auden, Francis Bacon, James Baldwin, Harry Stack Sullivan, John Maynard Keynes, Dag Hammarskjold… These are not invisible men. Poor Bruce. Poor frightened Bruce. Once upon a time you wanted to be a soldier. Bruce, did you know that an openly gay Englishman was as responsible as any man for winning the Second World War? His name was Alan Turing and he cracked the Germans' Enigma code so the Allies knew in advance what the Nazis were going to do — and when the war was over he committed suicide he was so hounded for being gay. Why don't they teach any of this in the schools? If they did, maybe he wouldn't have killed himself and maybe you wouldn't be so terrified of who you are."
Kramer: “Something said to me, ‘Go to Germany. Go look at Dachau.’ I followed my instincts.”
Interviewer: What did you learn at Dachau?
Kramer: “How early it had opened, in March 1933, and we didn’t even know it. It was a lesson for us. So I wrote The Normal Heart. I wanted to get the message out.”
Interviewer: What message?
Kramer: “I’ve always felt that our government has allowed [AIDS victims] to die, literally, and here at Dachau was where the [Nazi] government was doing just that … [with] Jews and gays and gypsies, a lot earlier than anyone knew.”
Interviewer: When you say our government allowed people with AIDS to die, do you mean through indifference or was it a deliberate turning away?
Kramer: “What’s the difference?”
Through this play, Kramer seeks (in part) to spread awareness that will stop history from repeating itself. Maya Angelou, in "On the Pulse of Morning", shares a similar hope, one that differs from the views expressed by Wilfred Owen and Thucydides.
Auden, too, speaks on the repetition of history. In addition to the lines of "September 1" that say "The habit-forming pain/ Mismanagement and grief/We must suffer them all again", Mendelson finds evidence of the repetition of history in one of the deleted stanzas He references the stanza that ends with "Our public impatience can/Delay but may not prevent /The education of man." As a summary of the meaning, Mendelson says (in Early Auden):
"what the poet's voice can do, beside exposing lies, is proclaim that individual acts and lies finally make no difference. History - unnamed here, but identical [to earlier representations of History] in all but name is at work - will settle everything in the end."
So for Auden, the cycles that have occurred since the time of the Ancient Greeks play out again with the rise of Fascism and outbreak of World War II. The quote from Nijinsky's diary implies a repetition from the events of World War I as well. Kramer, through Ned, threatens this kind of repetition, but suggests a possibility of avoiding it. Kramer's play ties into not just the repeated history aspect of "September 1", but the possibilities of the line "all I have is a voice/to undo the folded lie". Kramer wrote THe Normal Heart to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and the LGBTQ+ community - many of his other projects did this as well. He demands that others take a stand as well: in an interview with Parade, he criticizes Elizabeth Taylor and others for not fully using their power to take a stand.
Kramer wants his writing to be political. In an interview with Slant Magazine - "“If you haven't offended somebody you haven't done your job", and in an interview with The Boston Globe, he said: "I have a voice and an opinion, and that’s how you fight back — by getting that voice heard somehow". Perhaps Auden's "All I have is a voice" in September 1 reflects a similar idea.
But James Miller, in an article titled "Auden's September 1", suggests that Auden has more reservations about the power of art . Miller says that Auden uses "September 1" to "both encode and explore the theme of homoeroticism" (115) through the allusion to Nijinsky and Diaghilev, and says that the poem serves as "a means of critiquing the power of art in an authoritarian and homophobic society" (115). He says that in the stanza that references Nijinsky (the same one from which Kramer takes the title The Normal Heart) is an "instance in which Auden exposes the current perhaps milder fascism" (117). Miller says that "some speculate that Nijinsky’s madness was brought on by Diagilev’s impossible demands of him as a dancer, as an artist" (117) and that:
"this kind of "relentless pursuit of art is easier to understand as a form of fascism....The theme of dictatorship, weaved throughout the poem, is also strengthened with the example of Diagilev, an auteur, whose instruments or works were human beings. Auden’s choice of this particular dancer and his patron also show a kind of self-reflexivity in the poem. Auden, as an artist, a transmitter of culture, might fear becoming too prescriptive in “September 1, 1939.” Mentioning Nijinsky and Diagilev could be an acknowledgement of the dangerous consequences of art’s power to prescribe, its inherent danger of becoming a kind of master narrative. Art, viewed as a master narrative, is the quest for the perfect form, the mastering of a medium with the aim of expression....Nijinsky’s madness could be pivotal in Auden’s understanding of the dangerous and pernicious nature of any aesthetic pushed too far. Auden, perhaps because he was an artist, recognized the danger of tyrannizing ideologies more poignantly in the tragedy of an artist than in the case of Hitler’s fascism." (118)
So while Miller says that Auden's poem reveals a "postmodernist tendency of constructing works to communicate with marginalized individuals" (117), something similar to what Kramer does, he suggests a different interpretation of Auden's meaning than others have found. Miller suggets that there is not evidence of the unlimited power of the poet's voice here, but rather an embedded warning about the lengths to which art would go, which, if believed, reveals a major difference between this poem and Kramer's works.
Mendelson reveals another difference, in "Revision and Power". He says that Auden later changed his mind about the role poetry should have in politics. Auden rejected "September 1" and "Spain" "because he distrusted their power to convince his readers that he and they were on the right side in the great struggles of the age, that they were "the just" who exchanged messages through "ironic points of light."" (105). He says that Auden "renounced any theories of poetry that assume that a poem works by compelling a response in its reader" (105).
The Normal Heart mentions Auden by name once. Shortly after the lines quoted above, Ned says to Bruce:
"I belong to a culture that includes Proust, Henry James, Tchaikovsky, Cole Porter, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Christopher Marlowe, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, Byron, E.M. Forster, Lorca, Auden, Francis Bacon, James Baldwin, Harry Stack Sullivan, John Maynard Keynes, Dag Hammarskjold… These are not invisible men. Poor Bruce. Poor frightened Bruce. Once upon a time you wanted to be a soldier. Bruce, did you know that an openly gay Englishman was as responsible as any man for winning the Second World War? His name was Alan Turing and he cracked the Germans' Enigma code so the Allies knew in advance what the Nazis were going to do — and when the war was over he committed suicide he was so hounded for being gay. Why don't they teach any of this in the schools? If they did, maybe he wouldn't have killed himself and maybe you wouldn't be so terrified of who you are."