Abstract

Many of the poems of Louis MacNeice display a knowledge of the philosophical theories he studied during his undergraduate years in Oxford. In his ‘Variation on Heraclitus’ and in several other poems, MacNeice alludes to the ‘doctrine of flux’ Plato attributed to the Greek thinker Heraclitus of Ephesus. In ‘Plurality’, his most extended exploration of the conflict between the life-affirming doctrine of flux and a life-suppressing monism, MacNeice embraces the reality of change and rejects the monism he credits to the philosopher Parmenides of Elea: ‘World is not like that, world is full of blind/ Gulfs across the flat, jags against the mind/ Swollen or diminished according to the dice/ Foaming, never finished, never the same twice.’ Although his understanding of the teachings of Heraclitus and Parmenides was controversial, it provided MacNeice with a framework within which to reflect on the conditions essential to living a free and productive life.