It is a strange situation because the so-called patient is learning to recite a poem that she has already written (or at least that nobody else has), and already knows; the past, Auden intimates, is a poem we have written but never got quite right; or, the past is a poem we tend to forget, one we learn to recite but where we falter, where we can’t remember or get it wrong, or disclose our history to ourselves; or at least the bit of our history that has made the future so difficult … Freud reveals, in Auden’s view, that the past is a poem that we keep failing to remember; and that we need those poetry lessons called psychoanalysis to learn to recite the poem, and to see where we falter. It is an extraordinary and wonderful idea that our personal pasts are a poem that we have to learn to recite.
Adam Phillips, In Writing, pg 21-22
He wasn't clever at all: he merely told
the unhappy Present to recite the Past
like a poetry lesson till sooner
or later it faltered at the line where
long ago the accusations had begun,
and suddenly knew by whom it had been judged,
how rich life had been and how silly,
and was life-forgiven and more humble,
able to approach the Future as a friend
without a wardrobe of excuses, without
a set mask of rectitude or an
embarrassing over-familiar gesture.
In Memory of Sigmund Freud
- W. H. Auden 1907 – 1973
Mark Carrigan 