Originally a satirical poem in "The Ascent of F6" (1936) by W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood.
Rewritten as a cabaret song for soprano Hedli Anderson.
Removed final three stanzas, added new ones.
Set to music by Benjamin Britten, transformed into a personal lament.
Published in the 1938 anthology "Poems of Today" as "Stop All the Clocks, Cut Off the Telephone."
Titled "Funeral Blues" in Auden's 1940 collection "Another Time."
Gained modern popularity through "Four Weddings and a Funeral" (1994).
Structure and Style
16 lines long, four stanzas of quatrains with rhyming couplets (AABB).
Use of plain, simple diction with mainly one-syllable words.
Predominantly iambic meter with variations.
Lines range from 9 to 12 syllables.
Use of substitutions, creating an irregular spoken rhythm.
Themes and Mood
Transformation from public mourning to personal grief.
The use of imperatives to express control amidst chaos.
Shift from literal to metaphorical language:
Literal demands to stop time and noise.
Metaphoric expressions of despair in third stanza.
Literal interpretation of metaphorical concepts in fourth stanza.
Detailed Stanza Analysis
Stanza 1
Orders to stop all clocks, cut telephones, and silence dogs.
Emphasis on silence before the funeral procession.
Use of trochaic substitution for commanding tone.
Stanza 2
Desire for public acknowledgment of the deceased's importance.
Aeroplanes writing messages in the sky.
Public signs of mourning in the community.
Stanza 3
Speaker's personal grief and disorientation.
Metaphors of direction and time lost with the deceased.
Use of antithesis and anaphora to convey total influence of the deceased.
Caesura highlights the finality of lost love.
Stanza 4
Nihilistic view of the world post-loss.
Stars, sun, and moon as symbols of romance now unwanted.
Dismantling of the universe imagery, indicating existential change.
Final bleak certainty of future desolation.
Literary Devices
Extensive use of plosives for bitterness and grief.
Anaphoric use of the first-person pronoun "my."
Caesura and enjambment to emphasize emotional shifts.
Cultural Context
"Blues" in the title refers to the musical genre, emphasizing expression of melancholy.
Reflects societal views on mourning and importance of the deceased.
Conclusion
"Funeral Blues" is a nuanced exploration of grief, employing various literary techniques to convey the speaker's devastation and existential crisis in the face of a loved one's death.
Additional Resources
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