Louis MacNeice was born on September 12, 1907, in Belfast, Ireland to parents originally from Connemara in the West of Ireland. In 1909 they moved to Carrickfergus due to the appointment of MacNeice’s father as rector for the Anglican Church in the town. His father later became a Bishop. At the age of ten he was sent to school in Dorset. MacNeice went on to study classics at Oxford, becoming a close friend and poetic contemporary of W.H. Auden. He majored in classics and philosophy. In 1930, he married Giovanna Ezra and accepted a post as classics lecturer at the University of Birmingham, a position he held until 1936, when he went on to teach Greek at Bedford College for Women, University of London. He earned his living as a university lecturer in Classics. The second world war found him in the United States - not an escaper or refugee, but an invited guest-lecturer in English at Cornell, because by 1939 he was indeed a famous poet, prolific, sought after for poems and opinions. He came back to England in 1941 and joined the BBC, where he spent more than 20 years in the legendary radio features department as writer/producer. Some of his best-known plays, including 'Christopher Columbus' (1944), and 'The Dark Tower' (1946), were originally written for radio and later published.
Despite his association with young British poets Stephen Spender, W. H. Auden, writer Christopher Isherwood, and other left-wing poets, MacNeice was as mistrustful of political programs as he was of philosophical systems. He was never a member of the Communist Party or any other political groups, and he was quite candid about the ambiguities of his political attitudes. "My sympathies are Left," he wrote. "But not in my heart or my guts." Although he chose to live most of his adult life in London, MacNeice frequently returned to the landscapes of his childhood. His poetry is characterised by its familiar, sometimes humorous tone and its integration of contemporary ideas and images. In August of 1963, on location with a unit of the BBC, he went down in a mineshaft. The 'cold' he caught was not diagnosed as pneumonia until too late. He died a month after at 55 years old. He died on September 3, 1963, just before the publication of his last book of poems, The Burning Perch. Ironically, Louis MacNeice was born in the month of September (1907) and died in September.
About the Poem
Traditionally, a book carved into a gravestone signified the Book of Life, awaiting review by the Heavenly Critic. MacNeice pays poetry and the written word a splendid compliment. When the world is no longer “framed in words,” when the best eyes and ears of the past are no longer consulted, when we presume to confront the world in all our arrogant solitude, what remains? A weirdly mutated world of “wingless birds.” Without words, grass is no longer “green” but something less. “If you read books of lasting value, you ought to study what you read, and if you study, you ought to take notes. And if you take notes, you owe it to yourself to assemble them into some sort of coherent commentary. What is the point of studious reading if not to evaluate critically what you read, assimilating the good while rejecting the bad? The forming of the mind is the name of the game. This won't occur from passive reading, but only by an active engagement with the material. The best way to do this is by writing up your own take on it.
The poem “To Posterity” by LouisMacNeice was first published in the volume “Visitations” in 1957. The meaning of the title of the poem “To Posterity” means, next generation. The poem is addressed not only to the generation of the speaker but also to ours. Now books are in their death bed situations, and some books have already gone to their graveyards. The speaker conveys to us the importance of reading good books and he also conveys his anxiety to a generation without reading and without books. MacNeice,
focuses on those matters which trouble us a lot, like the advent of the new medias and technology. Books the age-old friend of mankind has already bid goodbye to us. The coming of television and the internet has immersed us in a new world, forgetting our age-old friend the books. Now it’s the era of e books. So, studying literary works, we are the ones to analyse the importance of books in each one of our lives. In the present era library have vanished and if it does exist it is like an old monument. The new generation have already forgotten the importance of books and they have also forgotten the habit of reading which makes them intelligent brave and also provides us the courage to face life rather than running away from the harsh realities of life.
In 1957 MacNeice wrote the short poem To Posterity. A poem strangely professes our diminished world. This poem was written in the middle of 20th century, where the new medias were lightening the world or human minds like a star. During this time people were very much aware of the death bed situation of books, our age-old companion. As soon as the new medias and culture of globalisation took control of humanity, books and the reading habits went straight away to their graveyards. Here the poet foresees an era where e books and e library will dominate the world, we now live in. The poet ponders upon the questions like, the greenness of the grass and the blueness of the sky. So, he refers a world without books to that of a wingless bird. He concludes the poem with a lot many questions which the mere future will be able to answer.
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