The Debate on the Constitution

...62, on the Senate, and the crucial continuation of the argument in No...

...The larger and more diverse a regime, Antifederalists reasoned, the more distant and impersonal its government, the more fractional the say enjoyed by any citizen, and the feebler the sense of civic obligation or public spirit...

...In his affectionate memoir of Auden, Oliver Sacks speaks of the deep association of the word "cosy" with the English poet: "The first time I had tea with him-back in 1969--I found the teapot in a teacosy, and my egg in an egg-cosy...

...Hecht' s own poetry is more overtly indebted to the ravaging power of Yeats, Eliot, and Pound...

...The effect of Bailyn's ordering is to separate The FederalistNo...

...Auden Anthony Hecht Harvard University Press, $35,488 pp...

...But where Federalists considered that the requirements of republican consent are satisfied if citizens have a vote, Antifederalists insisted that they have a voice...

...9 from its sequel by fifty-nine pages...

...In The Debate on the Constitution, however, the two essays are separated from each other by George Mason's "Objections," (grouped together with a long list of replies) and by an unrelated essay of"Cato," both of which were also printed on November 22...

...Consequently, Federalists held that a large state is to be preferred for its greater diversity and resources, and because it frees individuals from small political societies--" nurseries of unceasing discord," at best, and at worst, subject to the tyranny of some local faction...

...The Antifederalists began with the proposition that republican liberty requires a public freely obedient to the laws it makes: selfgovernment includes the government of the self, the subordination of private interests and inclinations to the rule of law and the common good...

...Bailyn's position tempts him to slight the fact that The Federalist towers and endures, as George Washington predicted and hoped it would, because, while a tract for the times, it was also self-consciously something more...

...So here we are, wrestling with the old dilemmas...

...Arguing for the quality of the religiously engaged poetry, Hecht gives three chapters to "For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio" (1944), "Nones" (1951), and "The Shield of Achilles" (1955...

...The strongest reflections in The Hidden Law concern Auden's widely misunderstood view of poetry as "frivolous," which come in expected places such as during an extended commentary on "In Memory of 18:17 December 1993 Commonweal...

...Wilson Carey McWUliams and more on enforcement and on the essentially covert politics of administration, part of a system "too mysterious for you to understand and observe...

...The common ground between the poets, which The Hidden Law slowly reveals, is distilled in a fragment from Hecht' s poem, "Peripeteia": I stood in childhood, waiting for things to mend...

...Since the stronger the assent, the more perfect the republicanism of a regime, republican policy aims "to arm persuasion on every side and to render force as little necessary as possible," a goal which points toward a politics rooted in small, deliberative communities...

...Those who have read "Behold the Lilies of the Field" or "The Deodand" know Hecht as a poet of exacting diction and vision, who relentlessly keeps human brutality and pain in view...

...Hecht does not share this vocation to horniness, and part of his book's rewards stem from the dissonance between the poets...

...It is the virtue of The Debate on the Constitution, other quarrels aside, that it provides us with so much of that indispensable civic curriculum...

...Daria Donnelly he Hidden Law is a fascinating study ofW...

...He sets these judgments in counterpoint to Auden's equally scrupulous but different sense of his failures...

...But it's absolutely right...

...And by a similar contrivance, sixty-six pages intervene between The Federalist No...

...Elsewhere, in Faces of the Revolution, Bailyn has argued that The Federalist was less important in the politics of ratification than Americans have been taught to believe...

...For example, The Federalist No...

...10, since all three essays appeared on the same day...

...after tea, Auden, seeing the jacketed tank of Sacks's motorcycle declared, "I like that, it shows you care for the bike...

...Accordingly, Antifederalists predicted that government under the Constitution would depend more THE DEBATE ON THE CONSTITUTION Federalist and Antifederalist Speeches, Articles, and Letters During the Struggle over Ratification Edited by Bernard Bailyn The Library of America, 2 volumes, each $35, 1,214 and 1,175 pp...

...Moreover, as Madison observed, the fragmentary influence of any single group in a large republic means that majorities must be the creations of coalition and compromise...

...By contrast, the more familiar case of the Federalists maintained that republics-like all political societies---exist to protect the liberty and enhance the power of individuals...

...Both poets are deeply attracted to the discipline of self-denial, the laws of form, and the idea of anonymous heroism, all of which are related to their more central commitment to creating a "harmless" poetry...

...Yet Hecht admires Auden more, because where the modernists' nostalgic desire for order drove them to various mythologies and ideologies, Auden stayed with the age, taking up and partially abandoning each of several ways of ordering human experience, including Marxism, Freudianism, and Anglican Christianity...

...I have never seen a bike with a bike-cosy before...

...Even in a rigidly chronological scheme, these selections could have been printed after The Federalist No...

...Interests and pragmatic calculations, as always, shaped much of the conflict-most obviously, in the framers' accommodation with slavery, that violation of natural rights--but the participants also knew they were playing on a bigger stage, arguing over futures and redefining the very terms of political speech...

...A POET'S POET THE HIDDEN LAW The Poetry of W.H...

...Still, there is a caveat: the selections from The Federalist are presented in a strictly chronological relation to other writings, sometimes in a way that almost willfully fragments their argument...

...They saw, with tolerable clarity, the possibilities and limitations of public life under the Constitution and their disputes shadow our present discontents...

...Reducing the possibility of oppression, the mediocrity of such politics encourages limited and short-term political commitments, and develops citizens who are "circumspect," the wary guardians of their private rights and interests...

...A useful discipline, perhaps...

...Like the best statements on both sides of the ratification debate, The Federalist speaks to the theoretical foundations of the laws, telling us something fundamental about ourselves...

...Hecht is immensely sympathetic to the seriousness of Auden's intellectual and emotional commitments and the skepticism that kept him searching...

...10, which appeared a day later, on November 22...

...Looking at the big picture, both sides were on target...

...Hecht gives special attention to Auden's spirituality, and rejects, as prejudices against religion, the common critical judgment that Auden's early work is superior to all that followed, and that the poet descended from political engagement into quietism...

...Auden's poetry also gives sustained attention'to the confusions of "The Age of Anxiety" (the title of his famous "baroque eclogue," a portion of which first appeared in this magazine) and to the hideous carnage erupting from what he called, in his poem "September 1, 1939," "a low dishonest decade...

...But unlike Hecht, Auden's vision is tempered by his anxiety-ridden desire for safety and domesticity, as in "A Walk after Dark," a late poem contemplating death: It's cosier thinking of night As more an Old People's Home Than a shed for a faultless machine, That the red pre-Cambrian light Is gone like Imperial Rome Or myself at seventeen...

...Some collections of Antifederalist writings have recently become generally available, but for the most part, Americans have heard the ratification controversy only through The Federalist, if at all, The Debate on the Constitution, an extensive collection of primary sources selected by Bernard Bailyn, offers a more full-throated version of the argument, including important supporters of the Constitution-like James Wilson, John Stevens ("Americanus"), and Noah Webster--who are often ignored in favor of The Federalist, as well as a wide range of voices on the Antifederalist side...

...Both the Federalist champions of the Constitution and their Antifederalist opponents saw themselves as advocates of republican, broadly democratic government...

...One that might lead To solitary, self-denying work That issues in something harmless, like a poem, Governed by laws that stand for other laws, Both of which aim, through kindred disciplines, At the soul's knowledge and habiliment...

...This is a sensible corrective, but Bailyn's editing seems a little too eager to reinforce the point, since even on a generous reading, the text of The Federalist is in danger of being lost amid so much context...

...9, printed November 21, 1787, emphasizes the Union as a barrier against "faction and insurrection," and is obviously closely tied to Madison' s well-known treatment of the problem of Commonweal 17 December 1993:17faction in The Federalist No...

...As an irritable and demanding admirer, Hecht does not shirk from pointing out where Auden is too tough or too easy on himself and his poetry...

...All in all, these volumes capture a good deal of the clamor and confusion of politics, and the fervor of a contest for titanic stakes...

...The announced aim of The Debate on the Constitution is to present the Founders in an "embattled journalistic context," up to their armpits in praxis, so while the order of the selections is basically chronological, Bailyn often departs from that arrangement to sharpen the exchanges or to clarify a position...

...H. Auden, not simply because Anthony Hecht interprets Auden's poetry with enormous intelligence and attention, but also because his temperament is at odds with his subject...