“More Light! More Light!”

Anthony Hecht 1967

Poet Anthony Hecht may be said to suffer from Weltschmerz, which the American Heritage Dictionary defines as “sadness over the evils of the world .” Hecht served as a soldier during World War II and encountered painful evidence of the atrocities committed at the Nazi death camp at Buchenwald. This experience plays a role in “‘More Light! More Light!” as well as several other poems in Hecht’s Pulitzer Prize-winning volume, The Hard Hours (1967). From title and dedication to poem’s conclusion, “‘More Light! More Light!’” involves a dying man’s plea, a reference to a woman who wrote about the “banality of evil,” and the murders of four individuals whose only guilt was not sharing the same religious beliefs or ethnic backgrounds as their executioners. A central issue of this poem is why Hecht attempts to create poetry out of horrifying incidents. Indeed, cultural critic Theodor Adorno made a famous and oft-quoted statement: “After Auschwitz, no poetry.” Hecht not only defies that directive, but his poetry broaches the subject, the Holocaust, that caused such a disheartened conclusion — that art should not survive atrocity. This disturbing poem may leave readers with the lingering question of why Hecht chose the topics he did. The poet, however, seems to imply that this focus is skewed. Why should the poem, because of its subject matter, be questioned when the actual incidents that prompted it appear to have been, albeit sadly, accepted? Why would anyone tolerate barbarity over art?