Tourbillions of Rage
Rough Notes on Auden’s “For the Time Being”
Like last year, I was trying to finish a big post before Christmas but realized I wouldn’t finish in time. So in the spirit of my new commitment to being less precious about this dumb newsletter, I’m publishing a rough excerpt from that larger post. The subject is Auden’s would-be oratorio, “For the Time Being,” which was never fully set to music but stands on its own as a poem — and a very good one!
Merry Christmas, et al. See y’all next year.
... But maybe the strangest thing is that Auden’s Christmas oratorio is not, by popular standards, very Christmas-y. The poem begins:
Darkness and snow descend; The clock on the mantelpiece Has nothing to recommend, Nor does the face in the glass Appear nobler than our own As darkness and snow descend On all personality.
With a few exceptions, the tone doesn’t get much lighter. The nativity scene, usually sweet and sentimental, is subdued and dreamlike. Mary is already anxious about the future of her child. The wise men seem distant and cerebral. The shepherds are grumps. All the congregants’ hopes, fears, and philosophic prayers are centered on the child, who of course remains silent.
I want to stay with the opening Advent section, though, and examine a line that’s always stuck out to me. Really, a single word: tourbillions. What is a tourbillion? Does anyone know? Would it help if I used it in a stanza?
Winter completes an age With its thorough levelling; Heaven’s tourbillions of rage Abolish the watchman’s tower And delete the cedar grove. As winter completes an age, The eyes huddle like cattle, doubt Seeps into the pores and power Ebbs from the heavy signet ring; The prophet’s lantern is out And gone the boundary stone, Cold the heart and cold the stove, Ice condenses on the bone: Winter completes an age.
Without looking it up yet, we can probably deduce that whatever a tourbillion is, it’s not good. We can also say that while tourbillion is a difficult word, even a showy word, it seems to be a deliberate one. All the surrounding words are simple. Does Auden want to trip us up on tourbillion? Did he choose a showy word on purpose? I think so. (And isn’t that what poets do? Choose words?) Say it out loud: tourbillion. Note how your mouth moves, inward and outward, puckering over tour and widening over billion. What other words does it sound like? I’m thinking of turbine, turmoil, tumult. Tourbillion is a good word because it’s suggestive. It encourages some educated guesswork: feeling senses before reason makes sense.
But let’s look it up. The pre-installed New Oxford American Dictionary on my laptop offers up no results. The first result on Google redirects the search to a Wikipedia entry for tourbillons, sans a final i, though an alternative spelling does include the final i. Here’s a definition:
In horology...an addition to the mechanics of a watch escapement to increase accuracy.
Obviously this isn’t the definition we’re looking for, but it does resonate with the poem’s larger treatment of time — i.e., chronological versus kairotic — so we’ll call it a happy discovery. Here’s what a tourbillon looks like.
Turning to my trusty but cumbersome print edition of the American Heritage Dictionary, I find two primary definitions that seem to work better:
a. A whirlwind.
b. A vortex, as of a whirlwind or whirlpool.
Alan Jacobs confirms the latter in the poem’s endnotes. In this case, we can see how “heaven’s tourbillions of rage” continues Auden’s depiction of the cruel winter weather that begins the poem, except now in addition to darkness and snow, some sort of catastrophic windstorm has wiped out the landscape.
That’s a literal description of events — but whirlwind is rarely used literally. I’ve never heard a meteorologist forecasting afternoon whirlwinds, much less tourbillions, because both terms are fundamentally poetic. God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind. Moses endures a similar experience on Sinai. The way Auden describes winter’s “thorough levelling” calls to mind Isaiah: “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.” Handel treats this verse as cause for joy in Messiah, but the prophesying of earthquakes complicates things, and Isaiah is forced to admit some misgivings. “But who may abide the day of his coming?”
Moving on to tourbillion’s etymology, the American Heritage offers additional clues.
[Middle English turbilloun, from Old French torbeillon, ultimately from Latin turbō, from Greek turbē, noise, confusion; see TURBID.]
Tourbillions are loud. Later on in the poem, Auden has another memorable turn of phrase in describing a night out at the fairgrounds as a “boisterous preposter.” “For the Time Being” is concerned with noise, whether from humans, nature, or machines. (Auden was writing from New York at the same time the Nazis were dropping bombs on his native England.) But the poem is more concerned with the absence of noise — what happens, for instance, in the wake of the whirlwind.
That is why we despair; that is why we would welcome The nursery bogey or the winecellar ghost, why even The violent howling of winter and war has become Like a juke-box tune that we dare not stop. We are afraid Of pain but more afraid of silence; for no nightmare Of hostile objects could be as terrible as this Void. This is the Abomination. This is the wrath of God.
The second listed definition of tourbillion is interesting.
A skyrocket that has a spiral flight.
When I pull up Webster’s 1919 Unabridged Dictionary, I find another version of the above — and no mention of whirlwind at all.
An ornamental firework which turns round, when in the air, so as to form a scroll of fire.
Now we’re onto something. Used in this sense, a tourbillion is not just a type of firework, and therefore noisy, but a type of firework that culminates in a fiery scroll, emblazoned against the sky. Could “heaven’s tourbillions of rage” include a lightning storm? Auden doesn’t specify, but it’s worth considering. Is there a more universally awe-inspiring image than lightning? Pressing further, is there any source of wonder and fear more common than the sky? The sky is the place to look for answers — or if answers won’t be disclosed, a sign. Will it rain today? Is Mercury in retrograde? Are we in God’s favor, or are we under God’s judgment? And where is God, anyway? Has anyone see him recently?
If we look at all, we look up.
Historically speaking, though, up is not always the best place to look, and signs tend to appear when we least expect them.
For instance, around five hundred years before the central action of the poem, the Babylonian King Belshazzar was in the middle of a raucous party when ...