The Unknown Citizen

“The Unknown Citizen” is a satirical elegy written by W. H. Auden shortly after he emigrated from England to the United States in 1939. It appeared in The New Yorker magazine on January 6, 1940, and was collected later into Another Time (1940). This collection featured what would become some of Auden’s most well-known poems, including “September 1, 1939,” “Funeral Blues,” “In Memory of W. B. Yeats,” and “Musee des Beaux Arts”, and helped solidify Auden’s reputation as a premier poet of his age. “The Unknown Citizen” is generally looked at in the light of the time it was written, on the eve of World War II. Many of Auden’s poems in Another Time were written between 1936 and1939, during the years of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and the growing fascist movements after World War I. Auden’s stance was consistently anti-fascist and humanitarian. In “The Unknown Citizen,” he uses the unusual first-person plural narration of an unspecified State to laud one of its deceased members for his unfailing conformity. The poem shows Auden’s typical attention to rhyme, even in ironic context.

Poet Biography

Wystan Hugh Auden was a renowned poet who also wrote stage plays, screenplays, opera libretti, adaptations, and criticism throughout his career.