Intro
Have some Kleenex at the ready, folks, because this one's a real tear-jerker. Auden's beautiful and moving elegy is both a tribute to Freud's intellectual legacy and a testament to his importance to modern writers. These writers didn't just absorb psychoanalytic ideas through osmosis—though there's no denying that Freudian theory, as it was being popularized by midcentury, was very much in the air.
People like Auden were readers of Freud. Serious readers of him, in fact. Like almost everyone who was anyone in 20th-century European culture.
So "In Memory of Sigmund Freud" is a response to Freud's work, not an attempt to tell the story of his life. There are biographical bits. But these bits are concentrated near the beginning of the poem, which builds toward an impassioned account of the grief felt by the natural and mythical worlds after Freud's passing.
Pretty sweet, if we do say so ourselves.
Quote
[B]ut he would have us remember most of all
to be enthusiastic over the night,
not only for the sense of wonder
it alone has to offer, but also
because it needs our love.
Analysis
That the night "needs our love" means, for Auden, that we should not ignore or deny our dark sides. Or rather, that ignoring our dark sides will inevitably lead to disaster.
In texts like "Thoughts for the Times on War and Death," Freud taught us that there are grave consequences to the denial of our hidden desires. Again, it is only by reckoning with these forces—recognizing them as our own—that we can hope to evolve.
Auden tries to honor this insight, praising the nocturnal world for its wonders but also emphasizing our role as this world's custodians. These lines imply that, without our love, the night strikes back. It turns "wonders" into nightmares, and gives cause for terror rather than awe, hate rather than love.
Somebody get us a blankie. We're scared.