While the concluding refrain of John Cornford’s poem “Full Moon at Tierra” compels to “Raise the red flag triumphantly / For Communism and for liberty” and in the process has the appearance of being taken verbatim from either Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto, or a pre-revolutionary address by Lenin, the graceful distinction of how Cornford prefaces this rallying cry serves to make most other communist poetry sound positively didactic. “Here, too, our freedom’s swaying on the scales. / O understand before it’s too late / Freedom was never held without a fight. / Freedom is an easily spoken word” is verse that, estranged from its topical material, could almost pertain to literature of any ideological position that claims to place a premium on liberty and the rights of human beings. In some ways the poem has the distinct feeling of an anthem. Either that, or a poem written in honor of a lover.
Those poets who rose to prominence during the height of acceptance of communist ideology, between the world wars, had bore witness to astonishing technological triumphs as well as horrors that would not have been believed possible just a few decades earlier. The result of this maddening progression of both the best and the worst that humanity was capable was the production of poetry that was far more cynical and pessimistic than anything previously written. It was a trumpeting beacon to the great majority of the populace who had been mesmerized by the progress, but who at the same time found it necessary to repress the potential for evil that this technology promised. In the middle of sounding the clarion there proved not nearly enough time to dedicate to traditional subjects for poetry like love of other people. Romance was considered a luxury by many communist poets of the 1930s; instead they chose to transform their passion into writing poetry that railed against what they (rightly and before anyone else) saw as the dark storms of fascism approaching from Europe. For that reason, Cornford’s “Full Moon at Tierza” is unquestionably propaganda, but it is just as much a profoundly romantic poem that sets the stage for much of the poetry to come during the 1930s. Abandoning the didactic tone that Virginia Woolf would famously lionize as the defining voice of so much of the poetry of that decade, Cornford, Auden and the other great poets of the era allude to quite specific historical events like Seventh Congress and the Spanish civil war, but not in an overly propagandistic and inartistic manner. The poets learned the vital importance of balancing the directness and boldness of their ideological message with vivacious metaphors and similes, topping the package with a generous sprinkling of passion and sincerity.
The imagery in “Full Moon at Tierza” is the effort of a poet who isn’t content to simply record his point of view, but who treasures those beliefs the way someone else might express adoration of another human being. Cornford’s Communist beliefs are based on the fact that he was activist as well as poet, meaning he had knowledge gained first-hand about the true horrors of fascism. If the poems of some of the other communist writers of this era often have the tenor of being spoken down to by an elitist, Cornford’s poems typically feel like one member of the working class engaging in an intensely emotional conversation about the actual potential for achieving equality. Like a clergyman or a public relations specialist, Cornford succeeds in merging the greater ideological message complete with its expected didactic qualities with a far more subtle personal message of conviction.
