Moral Affects through “Wind” and “Bone”: Reading W. H. Auden’s “Refugee Blues”

“Refugee Blues,” a poem written on the eve of WWII by W. H. Auden, addresses the serious Jewish refugee problems by evoking in its reader the intense effects of poignancy, apprehension, and compassion. The author would argue that the enduring artistic and humanistic values lie in its moral affects accomplished through artistic manipulations of its “wind” (form and style) and “bone” (moral theme). Driven by his moral conscience, Auden attempted to use his art to affect the public in order to call for a change in refugee policy by asylum countries. This affect-driven thematic-cum-stylistic reading aims to reveal the important and complex relationship between Auden’s larger social-moral concern and the minutiae of the work’s sensuous forms, such as genre, diction, repetition, sound devices, syntax, and figures. A prime example of early Auden’s canon, “Refugee Blues” witnesses Auden’s deliberate effort in exercising the rhetorical power of poetry to save civilisation in the historical as well as literary context.