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W. H. Auden (1907-1973) - Wystan Hugh Auden | |
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English-born poet, whose world view developed from youthful rebellion to rediscovered Anglo-Catholicism. In his work Auden reconciled tradition and modernism. Auden is widely considered among the greatest literary figures of the 20th century. "But time is always guilty. Someone must pay for Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York, North Yorkshire, as the son of George Augustus Auden, a distinguished physician, and Rosalie (Bicknell) Auden. Solihull in the West Midlands, where Auden was brought up, remained important to him as a poet. Auden was educated at St. Edmund's Hindhood and then at Gresham's School, Holt, Norfolk. In 1925 he entered Christ Church, Oxford. Auden's studies and writing progressed without much success: he took a disappointing third-class degree in English. And his first collection of poems was rejected by T. S. Eliot at Faber & Faber. At one time in his undergraduate years he planned to become a biologist. From 1928 to 1929 he lived in Berlin, where he took advantage of the sexually liberal atmosphere, and was introduced to the psychological theories of Homer Lane. After returning to England Auden taught at a prep school, in 1930 privately in London, at Larchfield Academy, a boys' school in Helensburgh (Scotland), and at Downs School, Colwall, Herefordshire in 1932-35. He was staff member of GPO film Unit (1935-36), making documentaries such as 'Night Mail' (1935). Music for this film was provided by Benjamin Brittein, with whom Auden collaborated on the song-cycle 'Our Hunting Fathers 'and on the unsuccessful folk-opera 'Paul Bunyan'. In 1936 Auden traveled in Iceland with Louis MacNeice - Auden believed himself to be of Icelandic descent. Auden first gained attention in 1930 when his short verse play called ''Paid on Both Sides'' was published in T. S. Eliot's periodical The Criterion. In the same year appeared Auden's POEMS, his first commercially published book, in which he carefully avoided Yeatsian romantic self-expression - the poems were short, untitled, and slightly cryptic. Auden soon gained fame as a leftist intellectual. He showed interest in Marx and Freud and he wrote passionately on social problems, among others in LOOK, STRANGER! (1936). However, by 1962 he argued that art and politics were best kept apart, stating in his essay 'The Poet and the City' that "All political theories which, like Plato, are based on analogies drawn from artistic fabrication are bound, if put into practice, to turn into tyrannies." Compressed figures of speech, direct statement, and musical effect characterized ON THIS ISLAND (1937) and ANOTHER TIME (1940). In the late 1930s Auden's poems were perhaps less radical politically, suffering and injustice are not rejected as a part of ordinary life. The last works from this decade astonished readers with their light comic tone and domesticity. Auden married in 1935 Thomas Mann's daughter Erika Mann, a lesbian actress and journalist, so that she could get a British passport. They met for the first time on their "wedding day". Of women he once said: "When people are talking they should retire to the kitchen." In 1937 Auden went to Spain as a civilian and gave radio broadcasts to help the Republican forces. These experiences he recorded in SPAIN (1937). However, he did not actively continue his campaign. Like George Orwell and Arthur Koestler, he became disillusioned with the politics of the struggle. In stead of being welcomed as a supporter of the Republican cause he was ignored because he wasn't a member of the Communist Party. In the 1930s Auden collaborated with Christopher Isherwood in several plays, and travelled with him in China in 1938. Sex, according to Isherwood, gave their friendship an extra dimension. In January 1939 they emigrated to America and in 1946 Auden became a US citizen. In the 1940s he turned into a religious thinker under the influence of Kierkegaard and Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), the foremost American Protestant theologian. Auden depicted his conversion to Anglicanism, his mother's faith, in the THE SEA AND THE MIRROR (1944) and FOR THE TIME BEING (1944), in which 'The Sea and the Mirror', subtitled 'A Commentary on Shakespeare's The Tempest', presented a Christian-allegorical reading of Shakespeare's work. The poem can be understood as an allegorical drama, with Prospero representing the conscious ego, Ariel the imagination, and Caliban material needs of fallen creatures. But Auden's original mind leaves much to interpretations - his poems challenge the reader to abandon preconceived expectations. When Statesmen gravely say 'We must be realistic', From 1939 to 1953 Auden taught at various schools and universities. T.S. Eliot believed that Auden's long career as a teacher left too much traces on his work - ''One tires,'' Eliot stated, ''of having things explained and being preached at.'' Auden's pupils remember his heavy smoking, tireless energy, large black Flemish hat, and umbrella he waved. "We called him Uncle Wiz," one student told later. (W.H. Auden: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter, 1981) Auden believed that criticism is live conversation. When he was lecturing in New York in 1946-47 on Shakespeare he discarded his manuscripts after each session. However, Alan Ansen and other members of the audience managed to collect his texts which were published in 2001. Later Ansen became Auden's secretary and friend. During World War II Auden was granted temporary status as Major when he went with the U.S. Army to Germany to report on the psychological effects of bombing on civilians. From 1956 to 1961 he was a professor of poetry at Oxford and from 1954 a member of the American Academy. Auden lived primarly in New York, though he also spent summers in Kirchstetten, Austria. He was a member of the editorial board of Decision magazine (1940-41), Delos magazine (1968), and editor of the Yale Series of Young Poets (1947-62). ABOUT THE HOUSE (1965) represents Auden's mature period, technically playful and intellectually sharp and witty. The poems corresponded to the rooms of Auden's Austrian house, the boundaries of his everyday life. Auden also wrote opera librettos with the American poet Chester Kallman, who was only 18 when Auden fell in love with him, and who lived with him over 20 years. In 1972 Auden left New York and returned to Oxford, living in a cottage provided by Christ Church. He died of a heart-attack after giving a poetry reading in Vienna on September 29, 1973. Auden was buried in nearby Kirchstetten. Kallman died in 1975, penniless, in Athens. 'Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow.' Auden often returned to his early poems and revised them from his later viewpoint as a Christian. He talked of himself as a colonizer of modern verse, when such poets as Marianne Moore or Ezra Pound were explorers. In 'Psychology and Art To-Day,' Auden claimed that art consists in telling parables "from which each according to his immediate and peculiar needs may draw his own conclusions." Sometimes Auden used the parable as a means of speaking about Christianity at a distance, as in the 1954 essay 'Balaam and his Ass.' In 'The Guilty Vicarage' (1949) Auden found in the detective story a Christian parable of existential guilt. Among Auden's single most popular poems is 'Funeral Blues' which was used in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994): "Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone. / Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. / Silence the pianos and with muffled drum / Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. /(...)" For further reading: The Poetry of W.H. Auden by Monroe K. Spears (1963); A Reader's Guide to W.H. Auden by John Fuller (1970); W.H. Auden: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter (1981); W.H. Auden: The Critical Heritage, ed. by John Haffenden (1983); Early Auden by Edward Mendelson (1983); W.H. Auden: The Far Interior, ed. by Alan Bold (1985); Auden's Apologies for Poetry by Lucy McDiarmid (1990); Auden by Richard Davenport-Hines (1995); Later Auden by Edward Mendelson (1999); The Poetry of W.H. Auden by Paul Hendon (2002) - See The Spanish Civil War and writers: Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, Federico García Lorca, etc. - See also: C.D. Lewis Selected works:
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