ABSTRACT
Jawaharlal Nehru kept a page from his copy of the New Republic on which W.H. Auden announced the close of ‘a low dishonest decade’ and the beginning of the war. Auden’s last stanza read: ‘Defenceless under the night/ Our world in stupor lies/ Yet dotted everywhere/ Ironic points of light/ Flash out wherever the just/ Exchange their messages:/ May I, composed like them/ Of Eros and of dust/ Beleaguered by the same/ Negation and despair/ Show an affirming flame.’1 Feeling increasingly isolated within the Congress’s fragmented unity, and seeking some comfort in his never-to-be-lost love of poetry, a throwback to his days of aesthetic contemplation with his Theosophist tutor, Nehru was more likely to see himself as an ironic point of light than an affirming flame; and in September 1939, ironic points of light were easier to find than affirming flames.
