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A short class with Sarah and her students. The other ways are under More.
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Let us begin with a date. 'Refugee Blues' was written in 1939. What was happening in Europe then?
The Second World War was about to begin. Germany invaded Poland in September 1939.
Yes, and the poem belongs to the months before that, when Jewish families were already fleeing Germany and Austria. Auden himself had just moved from England to America.
So he was writing from a safe distance. Why would he care so much?
He had lived in Berlin, visited Spain during its civil war and watched fascism spread across Europe. In 1935 he married Erika Mann so that she could have a British passport. For him a passport was a matter of life and death.
Then the poem is more than a sad story. It is also a protest.
Why couldn't the refugees simply go to another country?
Every border needed papers: a passport, a visa and often a sponsor who promised to pay for you. In July 1938 delegates from 32 countries met at Évian to discuss the problem.
Did they solve it?
Mostly they offered sympathy. Only the Dominican Republic offered to take a significant number of refugees.
So the consul and the committee in the poem are real offices.
They are. Think of them as the poem's way of showing the paper wall between a person and safety.
Then a polite refusal is as cruel as an angry one.
Why might a poet choose a song form like the blues for a political disaster?
Songs are easy to remember and everybody understands them.
And the blues is about sorrow, so the form already sounds like a complaint.
Good. In those years Auden often borrowed the shapes of popular songs. The repeating closing lines give the poem a weary beat that makes the horror feel starker.
So the music is gentle but the content is brutal.
That contrast is worth a mark in any answer about tone.
the poem was written in 1939, in the months before the Second World War began, when Nazi persecution had turned many Jews into refugees.
the Nuremberg Laws, the annexation of Austria and Kristallnacht drove hundreds of thousands to flee, but most countries limited entry.
passports, visas, quotas and sponsors decided who could cross a border, and the poem's consul and committee stand for this system.
he lived in Berlin, saw fascism rise, and in 1935 married Erika Mann to help her gain a British passport.
Auden used the blues and ballad traditions of popular song so that a political protest could sound like a plain-spoken lament.
Linking context to text: when you reach the consul in the fourth stanza, remember that in 1938-39 a visa from a consul was often the only door out of Europe, so his refusal is not one clerk's bad mood but a sentence passed by a whole system.
Using dates in an answer: a strong answer notes that the poem followed the Évian Conference of July 1938 and Kristallnacht of November 1938 by only a few months, which is why it is bitter about the democracies as well as the Nazis.
Describing form with context: the poem's repeating closing lines echo the blues tradition, so it sounds like a sorrowful song at the very time when the refugees' own voices were being ignored.
Thirty-five, the laws were made; thirty-eight, the doors were barred; thirty-nine, the blues were played for the people the world discarded.
Picture a family queueing at a consulate where every desk sends them to another desk. Hours pass, stamps are checked, and at the end they are told to wait for another year. Outside, the street is full of people walking freely. That is the paper wall: it cannot be seen, but it stops people more surely than a fence.
Nobody Answered Évian's Knock - Nuremberg (1935), Anschluss (March 1938), Évian (July 1938), Kristallnacht (November 1938).
H.O.M.E. - History of persecution, Officials such as the consul and committee, Mood of the public, Expression through the blues form.
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When was 'Refugee Blues' written?
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What was the Évian Conference?
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What happened on Kristallnacht?
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Why did Auden marry Erika Mann in 1935?
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What does 'blues' suggest in the title?
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A person forced to leave their country by persecution, war or violence, and unable to return safely.
Protection that a country gives to a refugee who has fled danger elsewhere.
Someone whom no country recognises as its citizen, so that no state is responsible for protecting them.
An official posted by one country in a city of another, who looks after its citizens and decides on visas.
Hostility toward, or discrimination against, Jewish people.
The night of 9-10 November 1938, when Jewish homes, shops and synagogues were attacked across Germany and Austria; the name means Night of Broken Glass.
The July 1938 meeting of 32 countries in France that failed to agree on a plan to receive Jewish refugees.
A song form from African American communities in the American South, known for repeated lines and a sorrowful mood, whose manner Auden borrowed.
W. H. Auden wrote 'Refugee Blues' in 1939, when Jewish families fleeing Nazi Germany and Austria were finding that most countries would not let them in. Knowing the history of passports, consuls, quotas and relief committees turns each stanza from a sad story into a pointed political protest.
'Refugee Blues' belongs to the uneasy months before the Second World War. By then the Nazi regime had stripped Jews of their rights, the annexation of Austria and the Kristallnacht attacks had driven tens of thousands more to seek escape, and the Évian Conference of July 1938 had shown that the democracies were not ready to open their doors. Auden, an English-born poet who had just left for the United States, borrowed the sorrowful, repeating shape of the blues to give these refugees a voice. Read against this background, the consul, the committee and the public rally in the poem are not inventions but the everyday machinery of rejection that real refugees met.
Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York on 21 February 1907 and died in Vienna in September 1973. In the 1930s he became the leading voice of a generation of English poets who believed that poetry must face politics. He spent several months in Berlin in 1928-29, visited Spain during its Civil War in 1937, and travelled through China in 1938 with the novelist Christopher Isherwood. In 1935 he entered a marriage of convenience with Erika Mann, the daughter of the German novelist Thomas Mann, which gave her British citizenship at a time when the Nazis were moving to take away her German one. In January 1939 Auden and Isherwood sailed to New York, and Auden became an American citizen in 1946. 'Refugee Blues' was written in 1939, the year of this move and the year the war began. So the poem comes from a writer who had seen what a passport could mean to a person.
After Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, Jews were pushed out of public life, one law at a time. The Nuremberg Laws of September 1935 took away their rights as German citizens and banned marriage between Jews and non-Jews. In March 1938 Germany annexed Austria, and Jews in Vienna were suddenly exposed to the same measures. In October 1938 the passports of Jews in Germany were stamped with a large red letter J, so that any border official could tell at a glance who they were. On the night of 9-10 November 1938, known as Kristallnacht, synagogues were burned and Jewish shops were smashed across Germany and Austria; at least 91 Jews were killed and about 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Hundreds of thousands of Jews left Germany and Austria in the 1930s, usually after surrendering most of their property.
Leaving was only half the problem; being admitted somewhere else was the other half. In July 1938 delegates from 32 countries met at Évian in France at the initiative of the American President Franklin D. Roosevelt to discuss the refugee crisis. Most delegates expressed sympathy, but almost none offered to change their immigration rules. Only the Dominican Republic offered to take a significant number. Countries asked for visas, sponsors and proof of money, and fixed yearly quotas that were soon full. Britain did admit about 10,000 mostly Jewish children through the Kindertransport between December 1938 and September 1939, but their parents usually had to stay behind. In May-June 1939 the ship St. Louis, carrying more than 900 Jewish passengers, was refused landing in Cuba and then in the United States and had to return to Europe. Auden's poem answers this indifference. It is aimed at the democracies as much as at the dictator.
Four ordinary parts of the 1930s world appear in the poem and it helps to know what each one meant. A passport was the document that proved who you were and which state would protect you; without a valid one no border could be crossed lawfully. A consul was an official of one country posted in a city of another, who decided on visas and helped the citizens of his own state. A relief committee was a charity or volunteer body that tried to find sponsors and money for refugees but could not alter the quotas. A public rally was a place where speakers, in an age of high unemployment after the Great Depression, could win applause by warning that newcomers would take jobs and homes. The poem leads its speaker through all four.
The blues grew from the songs of African American communities in the American South in the late nineteenth century. It is known for plain words, repeated lines and a mood of sorrow, and the phrase 'having the blues' means feeling low. Through the later 1930s Auden returned again and again to blues, ballads and other popular song forms, because they let a poet speak to ordinary listeners and not only to a few specialists. 'Refugee Blues' also borrows from the ballad, the old form in which a story of ordinary people is told in short stanzas and simple language. The poem was later set to music in an abbreviated form by the composer Elisabeth Lutyens in 1942.
Remember three points when you read the poem. First, the speaker is a refugee, not Auden himself. Second, the poem never names a country or a city, so it speaks for every refugee in every place. Third, its tone is quiet and matter-of-fact, which is why the history matters: the reader must supply the horror that the speaker does not shout. The same questions are alive today. The United Nations Refugee Convention of 1951 defines a refugee as someone with a well-founded fear of persecution, and the right to seek asylum is written into Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). The poem reminds us how much was at stake before those promises existed.