Understanding W. H. Auden’s “Stop All the Clocks”
The iconic opening line, ‘Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,’ has earned its place among the most celebrated opening lines in English poetry. It stands shoulder to shoulder with phrases like Wordsworth’s ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’, Keats’s ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever’, Blake’s ‘Tyger! Tyger! burning bright’, and Shakespeare’s ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ The poem that begins with these memorable words is W. H. Auden’s ‘Stop All the Clocks’. However, this is not its official title; it is often referred to as ‘Funeral Blues’, which is also not technically correct. The poem is formally known as ‘Twelve Songs XI’, though that designation lacks the punch of its more popular names.
A Misunderstood Masterpiece
‘Stop All the Clocks’ is so widely recognized and universally interpreted that it is often misunderstood. The common misconception lies in its origins: it began not as a solemn elegy, but as a satirical commentary on the melodramatic music of the 1930s and the grandiosity of public obituaries. Remarkably, this poem, typically perceived as a serious meditation on loss, was initially crafted as a piece of burlesque aimed at poking fun at the blues lyrics of the era. Auden penned this early version for a play he was co-writing with Christopher Isherwood, The Ascent of F6 (1936), which was ironically marketed as a ‘tragedy’.
Even in its first reimagining, the poem retained an element of satire. In 1938, Auden removed one stanza from the original mock-serious song, and it was included in the libretto of a cabaret for which the music was composed by Benjamin Britten, a frequent collaborator. Ultimately, the poem reached its familiar form in Another Time, Auden’s 1940 poetry collection, widely regarded as his most accomplished volume, encompassing many of his classic works from the latter half of the 1930s.
A Resurgence in Popularity
Following Auden’s death in 1973, ‘Stop All the Clocks’ found new life and resonated with a fresh audience. This revival occurred well after the poem had been inscribed on a sculpture commemorating the tragic deaths of football fans in the Heysel Stadium disaster of 1985. At this point, ‘Funeral Blues’ had solidified its reputation as a genuinely mournful piece.
While many credit the film Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) for popularizing Auden’s work, it was this earlier memorialization that marked a significant shift in its perception. The film, with its witty script by Richard Curtis and notable British cast, certainly contributed to the poem’s renewed fame, but the earlier event had already established its somber tone.
Excessive Grief and Its Expression
At its core, ‘Funeral Blues’ is a poignant elegy mourning the loss of a loved one. The speaker’s grief is portrayed as all-consuming, to the extent that they wish not only to disconnect the telephone to avoid distractions but also to halt the passage of time itself. The exaggerated nature of such requests—like stopping clocks and silencing the external world—raises questions about the authenticity of their sorrow. After all, who truly stops all the clocks in response to a personal tragedy, aside from perhaps Miss Havisham?
Moreover, the speaker’s demands to extinguish the stars and drain the oceans are hyperbolic expressions of despair rather than rational reactions to loss. Even the notion of traffic policemen wearing black gloves as a public acknowledgment of grief borders on the absurd, shifting the sorrow from a personal realm to the impersonal, professional world of law enforcement—hardly the most romantic or poetic of settings.
The Extremes of Emotion
Interestingly, the final stanza, in which the poet speaks of extinguishing the stars and pouring away the oceans, was penned after Auden had decided to detach the initial stanzas from their burlesque origins. This raises a compelling question: were the lines in the first half of the poem genuinely moving, or do the latter lines unintentionally veer into parody despite their serious context? This exploration does not diminish the poem’s emotional weight; rather, it highlights the fine line between sincere expression and excessive dramatization.
Ultimately, Auden’s ‘Stop All the Clocks’ captures the profound depths of grief, illustrating how an elegy must often explore the extremes of emotion to convey the true magnitude of loss. In the throes of severe sorrow, it can indeed feel as if all aspects of life lose meaning without that one person who made existence worthwhile.