Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American
poet
A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or w ...
. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with
politics
Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...
,
morals,
love
Love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit, the deepest Interpersonal relationship, interpersonal affection, to the simplest pleasure. An example of this range of ...
, and
religion
Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatur ...
, and its variety in
tone,
form
Form is the shape, visual appearance, or configuration of an object. In a wider sense, the form is the way something happens.
Form also refers to:
*Form (document), a document (printed or electronic) with spaces in which to write or enter data
* ...
, and
content
Content or contents may refer to:
Media
* Content (media), information or experience provided to audience or end-users by publishers or media producers
** Content industry, an umbrella term that encompasses companies owning and providing mas ...
. Some of his best known poems are about love, such as "
Funeral Blues"; on political and social themes, such as "
September 1, 1939" and "
The Shield of Achilles"; on cultural and psychological themes, such as ''
The Age of Anxiety''; and on religious themes such as "
For the Time Being" and "
Horae Canonicae".
[The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the ''OED'' (2008 revision) is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England (or Britain) and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also the definition "an American, especially a citizen of the United States, of English origin or descent" in See also the definition "a native or descendant of a native of England who has settled in or become a citizen of America, esp. of the United States" from ''The Random House Dictionary'', 2009, available online at ]
He was born in
York
York is a cathedral city with Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. It is the historic county town of Yorkshire. The city has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a ...
and grew up in and near
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the We ...
in a professional
middle-class
The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, often defined by occupation, income, education, or social status. The term has historically been associated with modernity, capitalism and political debate. Com ...
family. He attended various English independent (or
public
In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öf ...
) schools and studied English at
Christ Church, Oxford
Christ Church ( la, Ædes Christi, the temple or house, '' ædēs'', of Christ, and thus sometimes known as "The House") is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, the college is uniq ...
. After a few months in Berlin in 1928–29, he spent five years (1930–35) teaching in British private
preparatory schools, then travelled to Iceland and China to write books about his journeys.
In 1939, he moved to the United States and became an American citizen in 1946, retaining his British citizenship. He taught from 1941 to 1945 in American universities, followed by occasional visiting professorships in the 1950s. From 1947 to 1957 he wintered in New York and summered in
Ischia
Ischia ( , , ) is a volcanic island in the Tyrrhenian Sea. It lies at the northern end of the Gulf of Naples, about from Naples. It is the largest of the Phlegrean Islands. Roughly trapezoidal in shape, it measures approximately east to ...
; from 1958 until the end of his life he wintered in New York (in Oxford in 1972–73) and summered in
Kirchstetten,
Lower Austria
Lower Austria (german: Niederösterreich; Austro-Bavarian: ''Niedaöstareich'', ''Niedaestareich'') is one of the nine states of Austria, located in the northeastern corner of the country. Since 1986, the capital of Lower Austria has been Sankt P ...
.
He came to wide public attention with his first book ''
Poems
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings ...
'' at the age of twenty-three in 1930; it was followed in 1932 by ''
The Orators''. Three plays written in collaboration with
Christopher Isherwood
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood (26 August 1904 – 4 January 1986) was an Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist. His best-known works include ''Goodbye to Berlin'' (1939), a semi-autobiographical ...
between 1935 and 1938 built his reputation as a left-wing political writer. Auden moved to the United States partly to escape this reputation, and his work in the 1940s, including the long poems "
For the Time Being" and "
The Sea and the Mirror
"The Sea and the Mirror: A Commentary on Shakespeare's ''The Tempest''" is a long poem by W.H. Auden, written 1942–44, and first published in 1944. Auden regarded the work as “my ''Ars Poetica,'' in the same way I believe ''The Tempest'' to hav ...
", focused on religious themes. He won the
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually for Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first presented in 1922, and is given for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author, published ...
for his 1947 long poem ''
The Age of Anxiety'', the title of which became a popular phrase describing the modern era.
From 1956 to 1961 he was
Professor of Poetry at Oxford; his lectures were popular with students and faculty, and served as the basis for his 1962 prose collection ''
The Dyer's Hand''.
Auden and Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual relationship from around 1927 to 1939, while both also had briefer but more intense relations with other men.
In 1939, Auden fell in love with
Chester Kallman and regarded their relationship as a marriage, but this ended in 1941 when Kallman refused to accept the faithful relations that Auden demanded. However, the two maintained their friendship, and from 1947 until Auden's death they lived in the same house or apartment in a non-sexual relationship, often collaborating on opera libretti such as that of ''
The Rake's Progress
''The Rake's Progress'' is an English-language opera from 1951 in three acts and an epilogue by Igor Stravinsky. The libretto, written by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, is based loosely on the eight paintings and engravings '' A Rake's Prog ...
'', to music by
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century clas ...
.
Auden was a prolific writer of prose essays and reviews on literary, political, psychological, and religious subjects, and he worked at various times on documentary films, poetic plays, and other forms of performance. Throughout his career he was both controversial and influential, and critical views on his work ranged from sharply dismissive—treating him as a lesser figure than
W. B. Yeats
William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...
and
T. S. Eliot—to strongly affirmative, as in
Joseph Brodsky
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky (; russian: link=no, Иосиф Александрович Бродский ; 24 May 1940 – 28 January 1996) was a Russian and American poet and essayist.
Born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), USSR in 1940, ...
's statement that he had "the greatest mind of the twentieth century". After his death, his poems became known to a much wider public than during his lifetime through films, broadcasts, and popular media.
Life
Childhood
Auden was born at 54
Bootham,
York
York is a cathedral city with Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. It is the historic county town of Yorkshire. The city has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a ...
, England, to
George Augustus Auden
George Augustus Auden (27 August 1872 – 3 May 1957) was an English physician, professor of public health, school medical officer, and writer on archaeological subjects.
Biography
Auden was born at Horninglow, Burton-upon-Trent, the sixth s ...
(1872–1957), a physician, and Constance Rosalie Auden (née Bicknell; 1869–1941), who had trained (but never served) as a missionary nurse. He was the third of three sons; the eldest, George Bernard Auden (1900–1978), became a farmer, while the second,
John Bicknell Auden
John Bicknell Auden (14 December 1903 – 21 January 1991) was an English geologist and explorer, older brother of the poet W. H. Auden, who worked for many years in India with the Geological Survey of India and later with the Food and Agricultu ...
(1903–1991), became a geologist.
[The name Wystan derives from the 9th-century St Wystan, who was murdered by Beorhtfrith, the son of ]Beorhtwulf
Beorhtwulf (, meaning "bright wolf"; also spelled ''Berhtwulf''; died 852) was King of Mercia, a kingdom of Anglo-Saxon England, from 839 or 840 to 852. His ancestry is unknown, though he may have been connected to Beornwulf, who ruled Mercia i ...
, king of Mercia, after Wystan objected to Beorhtfrith's plan to marry Wystan's mother. His remains were reburied at Repton
Repton is a village and civil parish in the South Derbyshire district of Derbyshire, England, located on the edge of the River Trent floodplain, about north of Swadlincote. The population taken at the 2001 Census was 2,707, increasing to 2,8 ...
, Derbyshire, where they became the object of a cult; the parish church of Repton is dedicated to St Wystan. Auden's father, George Augustus Auden
George Augustus Auden (27 August 1872 – 3 May 1957) was an English physician, professor of public health, school medical officer, and writer on archaeological subjects.
Biography
Auden was born at Horninglow, Burton-upon-Trent, the sixth s ...
, was educated at Repton School
Repton School is a 13–18 co-educational, independent, day and boarding school in the English public school tradition, in Repton, Derbyshire, England.
Sir John Port of Etwall, on his death in 1557, left funds to create a grammar school whi ...
. The Audens were minor
gentry
Gentry (from Old French ''genterie'', from ''gentil'', "high-born, noble") are "well-born, genteel and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past.
Word similar to gentle imple and decentfamilies
''Gentry'', in its widest c ...
with a strong
clerical
Clerical may refer to:
* Pertaining to the clergy
* Pertaining to a clerical worker
* Clerical script, a style of Chinese calligraphy
* Clerical People's Party
See also
* Cleric (disambiguation)
Cleric is a member of the clergy.
Cleric may al ...
tradition, originally of
Rowley Regis
Rowley Regis ( ) is a town and former municipal borough in Sandwell in the county of the West Midlands, England. It encompasses the three Sandwell council wards of Blackheath, Cradley Heath and Old Hill, and Rowley. At the 2011 census, the com ...
, later of Horninglow,
Staffordshire
Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshire to the northwest, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the southeast, the West Midlands C ...
.
Auden, whose grandfathers were both
Church of England
The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Brit ...
clergymen, grew up in an
Anglo-Catholic
Anglo-Catholicism comprises beliefs and practices that emphasise the Catholic heritage and identity of the various Anglican churches.
The term was coined in the early 19th century, although movements emphasising the Catholic nature of Anglica ...
household that followed a "
High
High may refer to:
Science and technology
* Height
* High (atmospheric), a high-pressure area
* High (computability), a quality of a Turing degree, in computability theory
* High (tectonics), in geology an area where relative tectonic uplift t ...
" form of Anglicanism, with doctrine and ritual resembling those of Roman Catholicism.
He traced his love of music and language partly to the church services of his childhood.
He believed he was of Icelandic descent, and his lifelong fascination with Icelandic legends and
Old Norse
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...
sagas is evident in his work.
His family moved to Homer Road in
Solihull
Solihull (, or ) is a market town and the administrative centre of the wider Metropolitan Borough of Solihull in West Midlands County, England. The town had a population of 126,577 at the 2021 Census. Solihull is situated on the River Blyth ...
, near
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the We ...
, in 1908,
where his father had been appointed the School Medical Officer and Lecturer (later Professor) of Public Health. Auden's lifelong
psychoanalytic interests began in his father's library. From the age of eight he attended boarding schools, returning home for holidays. His visits to the
Pennine landscape and its declining lead-mining industry figure in many of his poems; the remote decaying mining village of
Rookhope
Rookhope is a village in County Durham, in England. A former lead and fluorspar mining community, it first existed as a group of cattle farms in the 13th Century. It is situated in the Pennines to the north of Weardale. W. H. Auden once called ...
was for him a "sacred landscape", evoked in a late poem, "Amor Loci". Until he was fifteen he expected to become a mining engineer, but his passion for words had already begun. He wrote later: "words so excite me that a pornographic story, for example, excites me sexually more than a living person can do."
Education
Auden attended
St Edmund's School, Hindhead
, established = 1874
, closed =
, type = Independent prep and senior school(boarding and day)
, religious_affiliation =
, president =
, head_label = Headmaster
, head = A. J. Walliker MA ( Cantab.)
...
, Surrey, where he met
Christopher Isherwood
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood (26 August 1904 – 4 January 1986) was an Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist. His best-known works include ''Goodbye to Berlin'' (1939), a semi-autobiographical ...
, later famous in his own right as a novelist. At thirteen he went to
Gresham's School
Gresham's School is a public school (English independent day and boarding school) in Holt, Norfolk, England, one of the top thirty International Baccalaureate schools in England.
The school was founded in 1555 by Sir John Gresham as a free g ...
in
Holt, Norfolk; there, in 1922, when his friend
Robert Medley
Charles Robert Owen Medley CBE, RA, (19 December 1905 – 20 October 1994), also known as Robert Medley, was an English artist who painted in both abstract and figurative styles, and who also worked as theatre designer. He held several teachi ...
asked him if he wrote poetry, Auden first realised his vocation was to be a poet.
Soon after, he "discover(ed) that he (had) lost his faith" (through a gradual realisation that he had lost interest in religion, not through any decisive change of views). In school productions of
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
, he played Katherina in ''
The Taming of the Shrew
''The Taming of the Shrew'' is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1592. The play begins with a framing device, often referred to as the induction, in which a mischievous nobleman tricks a drunk ...
'' in 1922, and
Caliban in ''The Tempest'' in 1925, his last year at Gresham's. His first published poems appeared in the school magazine in 1923.
Auden later wrote a chapter on Gresham's for
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading English novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquir ...
's ''The Old School: Essays by Divers Hands'' (1934).
In 1925, he went up to
Christ Church, Oxford
Christ Church ( la, Ædes Christi, the temple or house, '' ædēs'', of Christ, and thus sometimes known as "The House") is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, the college is uniq ...
, with a scholarship in biology; he switched to English by his second year, and was introduced to Old English poetry through the lectures of
J. R. R. Tolkien. Friends he met at Oxford include
Cecil Day-Lewis
Cecil Day-Lewis (or Day Lewis; 27 April 1904 – 22 May 1972), often written as C. Day-Lewis, was an Irish-born British poet and Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972. He also wrote mystery stories under the pseudonym of Nicholas Bla ...
,
Louis MacNeice
Frederick Louis MacNeice (12 September 1907 – 3 September 1963) was an Irish poet and playwright, and a member of the Auden Group, which also included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. MacNeice's body of work was widely ...
, and
Stephen Spender
Sir Stephen Harold Spender (28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995) was an English poet, novelist and essayist whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by th ...
; these four were commonly though misleadingly identified in the 1930s as the "
Auden Group
The Auden Group or the Auden Generation is a group of British and Irish writers active in the 1930s that included W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, Cecil Day-Lewis, Stephen Spender, Christopher Isherwood, and sometimes Edward Upward and Rex Warner. Th ...
" for their shared (but not identical) left-wing views. Auden left Oxford in 1928 with a
third-class degree.
Auden was reintroduced to Christopher Isherwood in 1925 by his fellow student
A. S. T. Fisher. For the next few years Auden sent poems to Isherwood for comments and criticism; the two maintained a sexual friendship in intervals between their relations with others. In 1935–39 they collaborated on three plays and a travel book.
From his Oxford years onward, Auden's friends uniformly described him as funny, extravagant, sympathetic, generous, and, partly by his own choice, lonely. In groups he was often dogmatic and overbearing in a comic way; in more private settings he was diffident and shy except when certain of his welcome. He was punctual in his habits, and obsessive about meeting deadlines, while choosing to live amidst physical disorder.
Britain and Europe, 1928–1938
In late 1928, Auden left Britain for nine months, going to
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...
, perhaps partly as an escape from English repressiveness. In Berlin, he first experienced the political and economic unrest that became one of his central subjects.
Around the same time, Stephen Spender privately printed a small pamphlet of Auden's ''
Poems
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings ...
'' in an edition of about 45 copies, distributed among Auden's and Spender's friends and family; this edition is usually referred to as ''Poems''
928
Year 928 ( CMXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Europe
* King Rudolph I loses the support of Herbert II, count of Vermandois, who controls the ...
to avoid confusion with Auden's commercially published 1930 volume.
On returning to Britain in 1929, he worked briefly as a tutor. In 1930, his first published book, ''Poems'' (1930), was accepted by
T. S. Eliot for
Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber Limited, usually abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel ...
, and the same firm remained the British publisher of all the books he published thereafter. In 1930, he began five years as a schoolmaster in boys' schools: two years at the
Larchfield Academy in
Helensburgh
Helensburgh (; gd, Baile Eilidh) is an affluent coastal town on the north side of the Firth of Clyde in Scotland, situated at the mouth of the Gareloch. Historically in Dunbartonshire, it became part of Argyll and Bute following local gove ...
, Scotland, then three years at
the Downs School in the
Malvern Hills
The Malvern Hills are in the English counties of Worcestershire, Herefordshire and a small area of northern Gloucestershire, dominating the surrounding countryside and the towns and villages of the district of Malvern. The highest summit aff ...
, where he was a much-loved teacher.
At the Downs, in June 1933, he experienced what he later described as a "Vision of
Agape
In Christianity, agape (; ) is "the highest form of love, charity" and "the love of God for man and of man for God". This is in contrast to philia, brotherly love, or philautia, self-love, as it embraces a deep and profound sacrificial love ...
", while sitting with three fellow-teachers at the school, when he suddenly found that he loved them for themselves, that their existence had infinite value for him; this experience, he said, later influenced his decision to return to the Anglican Church in 1940.
During these years, Auden's erotic interests focused, as he later said, on an idealised "Alter Ego" rather than on individual persons. His relationships (and his unsuccessful courtships) tended to be unequal either in age or intelligence; his sexual relations were transient, although some evolved into long friendships. He contrasted these relationships with what he later regarded as the "marriage" (his word) of equals that he began with
Chester Kallman in 1939, based on the unique individuality of both partners.
In 1935, Auden married
Erika Mann
Erika Julia Hedwig Mann (9 November 1905 – 27 August 1969) was a German actress and writer, daughter of the novelist Thomas Mann.
Erika lived a bohemian lifestyle in Berlin and became a critic of National Socialism. After Hitler came to power ...
(1905–1969), the lesbian novelist daughter of
Thomas Mann
Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novell ...
when it became apparent that the Nazis were intending to strip her of her German citizenship.
Mann had asked Christopher Isherwood if he would marry her so she could become a British citizen. He declined but suggested she approach Auden, who readily agreed to a
marriage of convenience.
Mann and Auden never lived together, but remained on good terms throughout their lives and were still married when Mann died in 1969. She left him a small bequest in her will.
In 1936, Auden introduced actress
Therese Giehse
Therese Giehse (; 6 March 1898 – 3 March 1975), born Therese Gift, was a German actress. Born in Munich to German-Jewish parents, she first appeared on the stage in 1920. She became a major star on stage, in films, and in political cabaret. In t ...
, Mann's lover, to the writer
John Hampson and they too married so that Giehse could leave Germany.
[
From 1935 until he left Britain early in 1939, Auden worked as freelance reviewer, essayist, and lecturer, first with the GPO Film Unit, a documentary film-making branch of the post office, headed by ]John Grierson
John Grierson (26 April 1898 – 19 February 1972) was a pioneering Scottish documentary maker, often considered the father of British and Canadian documentary film. In 1926, Grierson coined the term "documentary" in a review of Robert J. Fl ...
. Through his work for the Film Unit in 1935 he met and collaborated with Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other ...
, with whom he also worked on plays, song cycles, and a libretto. Auden's plays in the 1930s were performed by the Group Theatre, in productions that he supervised to varying degrees.
His work now reflected his belief that any good artist must be "more than a bit of a reporting journalist". In 1936, Auden spent three months in Iceland where he gathered material for a travel book ''Letters from Iceland
''Letters from Iceland'' is a travel book in prose and verse by W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice, published in 1937.
The book is made up of a series of letters and travel notes by Auden and MacNeice written during their trip to Iceland in 1936 ...
'' (1937), written in collaboration with Louis MacNeice. In 1937, he went to Spain intending to drive an ambulance for the Republic
A republic () is a " state in which power rests with the people or their representatives; specifically a state without a monarchy" and also a "government, or system of government, of such a state." Previously, especially in the 17th and 18th ...
in the Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlism, Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebeli ...
, but was put to work writing propaganda at the Republican press and propaganda office, where he felt useless and left after a week. He returned to England after a brief visit to the front at Sarineña. His seven-week visit to Spain affected him deeply, and his social views grew more complex as he found political realities to be more ambiguous and troubling than he had imagined. Again attempting to combine reportage and art, he and Isherwood spent six months in 1938 visiting China amid the Sino-Japanese War, working on their book ''Journey to a War
''Journey to a War'' is a travel book in prose and verse by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, published in 1939.
The book is in three parts: a series of poems by Auden describing his and Isherwood's journey to China in 1938 ; a "Travel-Dia ...
'' (1939). On their way back to England they stayed briefly in New York and decided to move to the United States. Auden spent late 1938 partly in England, partly in Brussels.
Many of Auden's poems during the 1930s and after were inspired by unconsummated love, and in the 1950s he summarised his emotional life in a famous couplet: "If equal affection cannot be / Let the more loving one be me" ("The More Loving One"). He had a gift for friendship and, starting in the late 1930s, a strong wish for the stability of marriage; in a letter to his friend James Stern he called marriage "the ''only'' subject." Throughout his life, Auden performed charitable acts, sometimes in public (as in his 1935 marriage of convenience to Erika Mann, but, especially in later years, more often in private. He was embarrassed if they were publicly revealed, as when his gift to his friend Dorothy Day
Dorothy Day (November 8, 1897 – November 29, 1980) was an American journalist, social activist and anarchist who, after a bohemian youth, became a Catholic without abandoning her social and anarchist activism. She was perhaps the best-known ...
for the Catholic Worker
''Catholic Worker'' is a newspaper published seven times a year by the flagship Catholic Worker community in New York City. The newspaper was started by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin to make people aware of church teaching on social justice.
...
movement was reported on the front page of ''The New York Times'' in 1956.
United States and Europe, 1939–1973
Auden and Isherwood sailed to New York City in January 1939, entering on temporary visas. Their departure from Britain was later seen by many as a betrayal, and Auden's reputation suffered. In April 1939, Isherwood moved to California, and he and Auden saw each other only intermittently in later years. Around this time, Auden met the poet Chester Kallman, who became his lover for the next two years (Auden described their relation as a "marriage" that began with a cross-country "honeymoon" journey).
In 1941, Kallman ended their sexual relationship because he could not accept Auden's insistence on mutual fidelity, but he and Auden remained companions for the rest of Auden's life, sharing houses and apartments from 1953 until Auden's death. Auden dedicated both editions of his collected poetry (1945/50 and 1966) to Isherwood and Kallman.
In 1940–41, Auden lived in a house at 7 Middagh Street in Brooklyn Heights
Brooklyn Heights is a residential neighborhood within the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bounded by Old Fulton Street near the Brooklyn Bridge on the north, Cadman Plaza West on the east, Atlantic Avenue on the south, ...
, that he shared with Carson McCullers
Carson McCullers (February 19, 1917 – September 29, 1967) was an American novelist, short-story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet. Her first novel, '' The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter'' (1940), explores the spiritual isolation of misfits ...
, Benjamin Britten, and others, which became a famous centre of artistic life, nicknamed "February House". In 1940, Auden joined the Episcopal Church, returning to the Anglican Communion he had abandoned at fifteen. His reconversion was influenced partly by what he called the "sainthood" of Charles Williams, whom he had met in 1937, and partly by reading Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard ( , , ; 5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on ...
and Reinhold Niebuhr
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr (June 21, 1892 – June 1, 1971) was an American Reformed theologian, ethicist, commentator on politics and public affairs, and professor at Union Theological Seminary for more than 30 years. Niebuhr was one of Ameri ...
; his existential
Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and valu ...
, this-worldly Christianity became a central element in his life.
After Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, Auden told the British embassy in Washington that he would return to the UK if needed. He was told that, among those his age (32), only qualified personnel were needed. In 1941–42 he taught English at the University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
. He was called for the draft in the United States Army in August 1942, but was rejected on medical grounds. He had been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the art ...
for 1942–43 but did not use it, choosing instead to teach at Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College ( , ) is a private liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeducational colleges in the United States. It was established as ...
in 1942–45.
In mid-1945, after the end of World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
in Europe, he was in Germany with the US Strategic Bombing Survey, studying the effects of Allied bombing on German morale, an experience that affected his postwar work as his visit to Spain had affected him earlier. On his return, he settled in Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
, working as a freelance writer, a lecturer at The New School
The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...
for Social Research, and a visiting professor at Bennington, Smith, and other American colleges. In 1946, he became a naturalised citizen of the US.
In 1948, Auden began spending his summers in Europe, together with Chester Kallman, first in Ischia
Ischia ( , , ) is a volcanic island in the Tyrrhenian Sea. It lies at the northern end of the Gulf of Naples, about from Naples. It is the largest of the Phlegrean Islands. Roughly trapezoidal in shape, it measures approximately east to ...
, Italy, where he rented a house. Then, starting in 1958, he began spending his summers in Kirchstetten, Austria, where he bought a farmhouse from the prize money of the '' Premio Feltrinelli'' awarded to him in 1957. He said that he shed tears of joy at owning a home for the first time. His later poetry, mostly written in Austria, includes his sequence "Thanksgiving for a Habitat" about his Kirchstetten home. Auden's letters and papers sent to his friend the translator Stella Musulin (1915-1996), available online, provide insights into his Austrian years.
In 1956–61, Auden was Professor of Poetry
The Professor of Poetry is an academic appointment at the University of Oxford. The chair was created in 1708 by an endowment from the estate of Henry Birkhead. The professorship carries an obligation to lecture, but is in effect a part-time p ...
at Oxford University
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
where he was required to give three lectures each year. This fairly light workload allowed him to continue to spend winter in New York, where he lived at 77 St. Mark's Place
8th Street is a street in the New York City borough of Manhattan that runs from Sixth Avenue to Third Avenue, and also from Avenue B to Avenue D; its addresses switch from West to East as it crosses Fifth Avenue. Between Third Avenue and Ave ...
in Manhattan's East Village, and to spend summer in Europe, spending only three weeks each year lecturing in Oxford. He earned his income mostly from readings and lecture tours, and by writing for ''The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
,'' ''The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
,'' and other magazines.
In 1963, Kallman left the apartment he shared in New York with Auden, and lived during the winter in Athens while continuing to spend his summers with Auden in Austria.
In February 1972, Auden moved his winter home from New York to Oxford, where his old college, Christ Church, offered him a cottage, while he continued to spend summers in Austria with Kallman. He spent only one winter in Oxford before his death in 1973.
Auden died at 66 of heart failure
Heart failure (HF), also known as congestive heart failure (CHF), is a syndrome, a group of signs and symptoms caused by an impairment of the heart's blood pumping function. Symptoms typically include shortness of breath, excessive fatigue, ...
at the Altenburgerhof Hotel in Vienna overnight on 28–29 September 1973, a few hours after giving a reading of his poems at the Austrian Society for Literature. He was intending to return to Oxford the following day. He was buried on 4 October in Kirchstetten, and in London a memorial stone was placed in Westminster Abbey a year later.[ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]
Work
Auden published about four hundred poems, including seven long poems (two of them book-length). His poetry was encyclopaedic in scope and method, ranging in style from obscure twentieth-century modernism to the lucid traditional forms such as ballads
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French ''chanson balladée'' or '' ballade'', which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and ...
and limerick
Limerick ( ; ga, Luimneach ) is a western city in Ireland situated within County Limerick. It is in the province of Munster and is located in the Mid-West which comprises part of the Southern Region. With a population of 94,192 at the 2 ...
s, from doggerel
Doggerel, or doggrel, is poetry that is irregular in rhythm and in rhyme, often deliberately for burlesque or comic effect. Alternatively, it can mean verse which has a monotonous rhythm, easy rhyme, and cheap or trivial meaning. The word is deri ...
through haiku
is a type of short form poetry originally from Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases that contain a '' kireji'', or "cutting word", 17 '' on'' (phonetic units similar to syllables) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern, and a '' kigo'', or ...
and villanelles to a "Christmas Oratorio" and a baroque
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including ...
eclogue
An eclogue is a poem in a classical style on a pastoral subject. Poems in the genre are sometimes also called bucolics.
Overview
The form of the word ''eclogue'' in contemporary English developed from Middle English , which came from Latin , wh ...
in Anglo-Saxon meters. The tone and content of his poems ranged from pop-song clichés to complex philosophical meditations, from the corns on his toes to atoms and stars, from contemporary crises to the evolution of society.
He also wrote more than four hundred essays and reviews about literature, history, politics, music, religion, and many other subjects. He collaborated on plays with Christopher Isherwood
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood (26 August 1904 – 4 January 1986) was an Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist. His best-known works include ''Goodbye to Berlin'' (1939), a semi-autobiographical ...
and on opera libretti with Chester Kallman, and worked with a group of artists and filmmakers on documentary films in the 1930s and with the New York Pro Musica
New York Pro Musica was a vocal and instrumental ensemble based in New York City, which specialized in Medieval and Renaissance music. It was co-founded in 1952, under the name Pro Musica Antiqua, by Noah Greenberg, a choral director, and Bernard ...
early music
Early music generally comprises Medieval music (500–1400) and Renaissance music (1400–1600), but can also include Baroque music (1600–1750). Originating in Europe, early music is a broad musical era for the beginning of Western classi ...
group in the 1950s and 1960s. About collaboration he wrote in 1964: "collaboration has brought me greater erotic joy . . . than any sexual relations I have had."
Auden controversially rewrote or discarded some of his most famous poems when he prepared his later collected editions. He wrote that he rejected poems that he found "boring" or "dishonest" in the sense that they expressed views he had never held but had used only because he felt they would be rhetorically effective. His rejected poems include "Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, ...
" and "September 1, 1939". His literary executor, Edward Mendelson
__NOTOC__
Edward Mendelson (born March 15, 1946) is a professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Lionel Trilling Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. He is the literary executor of the Estate of W. H. Auden and the au ...
, argues in his introduction to ''Selected Poems'' that Auden's practice reflected his sense of the persuasive power of poetry and his reluctance to misuse it. (''Selected Poems'' includes some poems that Auden rejected and early texts of poems that he revised.)
Early work, 1922–1939
Up to 1930
Auden began writing poems in 1922, at fifteen, mostly in the styles of 19th-century romantic poets, especially Wordsworth, and later poets with rural interests, especially Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Wor ...
. At eighteen he discovered T. S. Eliot and adopted an extreme version of Eliot's style. He found his own voice at twenty when he wrote the first poem later included in his collected work, "From the very first coming down". This and other poems of the late 1920s tended to be in a clipped, elusive style that alluded to, but did not directly state, their themes of loneliness and loss. Twenty of these poems appeared in his first book ''Poems
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings ...
'' (1928), a pamphlet hand-printed by Stephen Spender
Sir Stephen Harold Spender (28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995) was an English poet, novelist and essayist whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by th ...
.
In 1928, he wrote his first dramatic work, ''Paid on Both Sides
''Paid on Both Sides: A Charade'' was the first dramatic work written by W. H. Auden. It was written in 1928 and published in 1930. It was performed in New York in 1931 and then at the Cambridge Festival Theatre on 12 February 1934 (seven months ...
'', subtitled "A Charade", which combined style and content from the Icelandic sagas
is a series of science fantasy role-playing video games by Square Enix. The series originated on the Game Boy in 1989 as the creation of Akitoshi Kawazu at Square. It has since continued across multiple platforms, from the Super NES to th ...
with jokes from English school life. This mixture of tragedy and farce, with a dream play-within-a-play, introduced the mixed styles and content of much of his later work. This drama and thirty short poems appeared in his first published book ''Poems
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings ...
'' (1930, 2nd edition with seven poems replaced, 1933); the poems in the book were mostly lyrical and gnomic meditations on hoped-for or unconsummated love and on themes of personal, social, and seasonal renewal; among these poems were "It was Easter as I walked," "Doom is dark," "Sir, no man's enemy," and "This lunar beauty."
A recurrent theme in these early poems is the effect of "family ghosts", Auden's term for the powerful, unseen psychological effects of preceding generations on any individual life (and the title of a poem). A parallel theme, present throughout his work, is the contrast between biological evolution (unchosen and involuntary) and the psychological evolution of cultures and individuals (voluntary and deliberate even in its subconscious aspects).
1931–1935
Auden's next large-scale work was '' The Orators: An English Study'' (1932; revised editions, 1934, 1966), in verse and prose, largely about hero-worship in personal and political life. In his shorter poems, his style became more open and accessible, and the exuberant "Six Odes" in ''The Orators'' reflect his new interest in Robert Burns
Robert Burns (25 January 175921 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who hav ...
. During the next few years, many of his poems took their form and style from traditional ballads and popular songs, and also from expansive classical forms like the '' Odes'' of Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ' ...
, which he seems to have discovered through the German poet Hölderlin. Around this time his main influences were Dante
Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: ' ...
, William Langland
William Langland (; la, Willielmus de Langland; 1332 – c. 1386) is the presumed author of a work of Middle English alliterative verse generally known as ''Piers Plowman'', an allegory with a complex variety of religious themes. The poem tr ...
, and Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature, ...
.
During these years, much of his work expressed left-wing views, and he became widely known as a political poet although he was privately more ambivalent about revolutionary politics than many reviewers recognised, and Mendelson argues that he expounded political views partly out of a sense of moral duty and partly because it enhanced his reputation, and that he later regretted having done so. He generally wrote about revolutionary change in terms of a "change of heart", a transformation of a society from a closed-off psychology of fear to an open psychology of love.
His verse drama ''The Dance of Death
The ''Danse Macabre'' (; ) (from the French language), also called the Dance of Death, is an artistic genre of allegory of the Late Middle Ages on the universality of death.
The ''Danse Macabre'' consists of the dead, or a personification ...
'' (1933) was a political extravaganza in the style of a theatrical revue, which Auden later called "a nihilistic leg-pull." His next play ''The Dog Beneath the Skin
''The Dog Beneath the Skin, or Where is Francis? A Play in Three Acts'', by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, was the first Auden-Isherwood collaboration and an important contribution to English poetic drama in the 1930s. It was published ...
'' (1935), written in collaboration with Isherwood, was similarly a quasi-Marxist updating of Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan was a Victorian era, Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900), who jointly created fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which ...
in which the general idea of social transformation was more prominent than any specific political action or structure.
'' The Ascent of F6'' (1937), another play written with Isherwood, was partly an anti-imperialist satire, partly (in the character of the self-destroying climber Michael Ransom) an examination of Auden's own motives in taking on a public role as a political poet. This play included the first version of " Funeral Blues" ("Stop all the clocks"), written as a satiric eulogy for a politician; Auden later rewrote the poem as a "Cabaret Song" about lost love (written to be sung by the soprano Hedli Anderson
Antoinette Millicent Hedley Anderson (1907 – 1990) was an English singer and actor.
Known as Hedli Anderson, she studied singing in England and Germany before returning to London in 1934. Anderson joined the Group Theatre, and performed in ca ...
, for whom he wrote many lyrics in the 1930s). In 1935, he worked briefly on documentary films with the GPO Film Unit, writing his famous verse commentary for '' Night Mail'' and lyrics for other films that were among his attempts in the 1930s to create a widely accessible, socially conscious art.
1936–1939
In 1936, Auden's publisher chose the title ''Look, Stranger!'' for a collection of political odes, love poems, comic songs, meditative lyrics, and a variety of intellectually intense but emotionally accessible verse; Auden hated the title and retitled the collection for the 1937 US edition ''On This Island
''On This Island'' is a book of poems by W. H. Auden, first published under the title ''Look, Stranger!'' in the UK in 1936, then published under Auden's preferred title, ''On this Island'', in the US in 1937. It is also the title of one of the ...
''. Among the poems included in the book are "Hearing of harvests", "Out on the lawn I lie in bed", "O what is that sound", "Look, stranger, on this island now" (later revised versions change "on" to "at"), and "Our hunting fathers".
Auden was now arguing that an artist should be a kind of journalist, and he put this view into practice in ''Letters from Iceland
''Letters from Iceland'' is a travel book in prose and verse by W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice, published in 1937.
The book is made up of a series of letters and travel notes by Auden and MacNeice written during their trip to Iceland in 1936 ...
'' (1937) a travel book in prose and verse written with Louis MacNeice
Frederick Louis MacNeice (12 September 1907 – 3 September 1963) was an Irish poet and playwright, and a member of the Auden Group, which also included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. MacNeice's body of work was widely ...
, which included his long social, literary, and autobiographical commentary "Letter to Lord Byron". In 1937, after observing the Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlism, Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebeli ...
he wrote a politically engaged pamphlet poem ''Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, ...
'' (1937); he later discarded it from his collected works. ''Journey to a War
''Journey to a War'' is a travel book in prose and verse by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, published in 1939.
The book is in three parts: a series of poems by Auden describing his and Isherwood's journey to China in 1938 ; a "Travel-Dia ...
'' (1939) a travel book in prose and verse, was written with Isherwood after their visit to the Sino-Japanese War. Auden's last collaboration with Isherwood was their third play, ''On the Frontier
''On the Frontier: A Melodrama in Three Acts'', by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, was the third and last play in the Auden-Isherwood collaboration, first published in 1938.
The play tells the story of the outbreak of war between the f ...
'', an anti-war satire written in Broadway and West End styles.
Auden's shorter poems now engaged with the fragility and transience of personal love ("Danse Macabre", "The Dream", "Lay your sleeping head"), a subject he treated with ironic wit in his "Four Cabaret Songs for Miss Hedli Anderson
Antoinette Millicent Hedley Anderson (1907 – 1990) was an English singer and actor.
Known as Hedli Anderson, she studied singing in England and Germany before returning to London in 1934. Anderson joined the Group Theatre, and performed in ca ...
" (which included "Tell Me the Truth About Love" and the revised version of " Funeral Blues"), and also the corrupting effect of public and official culture on individual lives ("Casino", "School Children", "Dover"). In 1938, he wrote a series of dark, ironic ballads about individual failure ("Miss Gee", "James Honeyman", "Victor"). All these appeared in ''Another Time Another Time may refer to:
* ''Another Time'' (book), a 1940 book of poems by W. H. Auden
* ''Another Time'' (Jeff Williams album), 2011
* ''Another Time'' (Earth, Wind & Fire album), 1974
See also
* " Another Time (Andrew's Song)", a 2014 so ...
'' (1940), together with poems including "Dover", "As He Is", and " Musée des Beaux Arts" (all of which were written before he moved to America in 1939), and "In Memory of W. B. Yeats", "The Unknown Citizen
"The Unknown Citizen" is a poem written by W. H. Auden in 1939, shortly after he moved from England to the United States. The poem was first published on January 6, 1940 in ''The New Yorker'', and first appeared in book form in Auden's collection ' ...
", "Law Like Love", "September 1, 1939", and "In Memory of Sigmund Freud" (all written in America).
The elegies for Yeats and Freud are partly anti-heroic statements, in which great deeds are performed, not by unique geniuses whom others cannot hope to imitate, but by otherwise ordinary individuals who were "silly like us" (Yeats) or of whom it could be said "he wasn't clever at all" (Freud), and who became teachers of others, not awe-inspiring heroes.
Middle period, 1940–1957
1940–1946
In 1940, Auden wrote a long philosophical poem "New Year Letter", which appeared with miscellaneous notes and other poems in '' The Double Man'' (1941). At the time of his return to the Anglican Communion he began writing abstract verse on theological themes, such as "Canzone" and "Kairos and Logos". Around 1942, as he became more comfortable with religious themes, his verse became more open and relaxed, and he increasingly used the syllabic verse he had learned from the poetry of Marianne Moore
Marianne Craig Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was an American modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit.
Early life
Moore was born in Kirkwood ...
.
Auden's work in this era addresses the artist's temptation to use other persons as material for his art rather than valuing them for themselves ("Prospero to Ariel") and the corresponding moral obligation to make and keep commitments while recognising the temptation to break them ("In Sickness and Health"). From 1942 through 1947 he worked mostly on three long poems in dramatic form, each differing from the others in form and content: " For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio", " The Sea and the Mirror: A Commentary on Shakespeare's ''The Tempest'' (both published in ''For the Time Being'', 1944), and '' The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue'' (published separately in 1947). The first two, with Auden's other new poems from 1940 to 1944, were included in his first collected edition, ''The Collected Poetry of W. H. Auden'' (1945), with most of his earlier poems, many in revised versions.
1947–1957
After completing ''The Age of Anxiety'' in 1946 he focused again on shorter poems, notably "A Walk After Dark", "The Love Feast", and "The Fall of Rome". Many of these evoked the Italian village where he spent his summers between 1948 and 1957, and his next book, '' Nones'' (1951), had a Mediterranean atmosphere new to his work. A new theme was the "sacred importance" of the human body in its ordinary aspect (breathing, sleeping, eating) and the continuity with nature that the body made possible (in contrast to the division between humanity and nature that he had emphasised in the 1930s); his poems on these themes included " In Praise of Limestone" (1948) and "Memorial for the City" (1949). In 1949, Auden and Kallman wrote the libretto for Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century clas ...
's opera ''The Rake's Progress
''The Rake's Progress'' is an English-language opera from 1951 in three acts and an epilogue by Igor Stravinsky. The libretto, written by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, is based loosely on the eight paintings and engravings '' A Rake's Prog ...
'', and later collaborated on two libretti for operas by Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze (1 July 1926 – 27 October 2012) was a German composer. His large oeuvre of works is extremely varied in style, having been influenced by serialism, atonality, Stravinsky, Italian music, Arabic music and jazz, as well as ...
.
Auden's first separate prose book was '' The Enchafèd Flood: The Romantic Iconography of the Sea'' (1950), based on a series of lectures on the image of the sea in romantic literature. Between 1949 and 1954 he worked on a sequence of seven Good Friday
Good Friday is a Christian holiday commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus and his death at Calvary. It is observed during Holy Week as part of the Paschal Triduum. It is also known as Holy Friday, Great Friday, Great and Holy Friday (also Holy ...
poems, titled " Horae Canonicae", an encyclopaedic survey of geological, biological, cultural, and personal history, focused on the irreversible act of murder; the poem was also a study in cyclical and linear ideas of time. While writing this, he also wrote "Bucolics
The ''Eclogues'' (; ), also called the ''Bucolics'', is the first of the three major works of the Latin poet Virgil.
Background
Taking as his generic model the Greek bucolic poetry of Theocritus, Virgil created a Roman version partly by offe ...
," a sequence of seven poems about man's relation to nature. Both sequences appeared in his next book, '' The Shield of Achilles'' (1955), with other short poems, including the book's title poem, "Fleet Visit", and "Epitaph for the Unknown Soldier".
In 1955–56 Auden wrote a group of poems about "history", the term he used to mean the set of unique events made by human choices, as opposed to "nature", the set of involuntary events created by natural processes, statistics, and anonymous forces such as crowds. These poems included "T the Great", "The Maker", and the title poem of his next collection '' Homage to Clio'' (1960).
Later work, 1958–1973
In the late 1950s Auden's style became less rhetorical while its range of styles increased. In 1958, having moved his summer home from Italy to Austria, he wrote "Good-bye to the Mezzogiorno"; other poems from this period include "Dichtung und Wahrheit: An Unwritten Poem", a prose poem about the relation between love and personal and poetic language, and the contrasting "Dame Kind", about the anonymous impersonal reproductive instinct. These and other poems, including his 1955–66 poems about history, appeared in '' Homage to Clio'' (1960). His prose book '' The Dyer's Hand'' (1962) gathered many of the lectures he gave in Oxford as Professor of Poetry in 1956–61, together with revised versions of essays and notes written since the mid-1940s.
Among the new styles and forms in Auden's later work were the haiku
is a type of short form poetry originally from Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases that contain a '' kireji'', or "cutting word", 17 '' on'' (phonetic units similar to syllables) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern, and a '' kigo'', or ...
and tanka
is a genre of classical Japanese poetry and one of the major genres of Japanese literature.
Etymology
Originally, in the time of the '' Man'yōshū'' (latter half of the eighth century AD), the term ''tanka'' was used to distinguish "short ...
that he began writing after translating the haiku and other verse in Dag Hammarskjöld
Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld ( , ; 29 July 1905 – 18 September 1961) was a Swedish economist and diplomat who served as the second Secretary-General of the United Nations from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 196 ...
's ''Markings''. A sequence of fifteen poems about his house in Austria, "Thanksgiving for a Habitat" (written in various styles that included an imitation of William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet, writer, and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism.
In addition to his writing, Williams had a long career as a physician practicing both pedia ...
) appeared in '' About the House'' (1965), together with other poems that included his reflection on his lecture tours, "On the Circuit". In the late 1960s he wrote some of his most vigorous poems, including "River Profile" and two poems that looked back over his life, "Prologue at Sixty" and "Forty Years On". All these appeared in '' City Without Walls'' (1969). His lifelong passion for Icelandic legend culminated in his verse translation of ''The Elder Edda
The ''Poetic Edda'' is the modern name for an untitled collection of Old Norse anonymous narrative poems, which is distinct from the ''Prose Edda'' written by Snorri Sturluson. Several versions exist, all primarily of text from the Icelandic med ...
'' (1969). Among his later themes was the "religionless Christianity" he learned partly from Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (; 4 February 1906 – 9 April 1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and anti-Nazi dissident who was a key founding member of the Confessing Church. His writings on Christianity's role in the secular world have ...
, the dedicatee of his poem "Friday's Child."
'' A Certain World: A Commonplace Book'' (1970) was a kind of self-portrait made up of favourite quotations with commentary, arranged in alphabetical order by subject. His last prose book was a selection of essays and reviews, ''Forewords and Afterwords'' (1973). His last books of verse, '' Epistle to a Godson'' (1972) and the unfinished '' Thank You, Fog'' (published posthumously, 1974) include reflective poems about language ("Natural Linguistics", "Aubade"), philosophy and science ("No, Plato, No", "Unpredictable but Providential"), and his own aging ("A New Year Greeting", "Talking to Myself", "A Lullaby" The din of work is subdued". His last completed poem was "Archaeology", about ritual and timelessness, two recurring themes in his later years.
Reputation and influence
Auden's stature in modern literature has been contested. Probably the most common critical view from the 1930s onward ranked him as the last and least of the three major twentieth-century British and Irish poets—behind Yeats and Eliot—while a minority view, more prominent in recent years, ranks him as the highest of the three. Opinions have ranged from those of Hugh MacDiarmid, who called him "a complete wash-out"; F. R. Leavis, who wrote that Auden's ironic style was "self-defensive, self-indulgent or merely irresponsible"; and Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking worl ...
, who wrote "Close thy Auden, open thy Stevens">allaceStevens," to the obituarist in ''The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' ( ...
'', who wrote: "W.H. Auden, for long the ''enfant terrible
''Enfant terrible'' (; ; "terrible child") is a French expression, traditionally referring to a child who is terrifyingly candid by saying embarrassing things to parents or others. However, the expression has drawn multiple usage in careers of ...
'' of English poetry… emerges as its undisputed master." Joseph Brodsky
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky (; russian: link=no, Иосиф Александрович Бродский ; 24 May 1940 – 28 January 1996) was a Russian and American poet and essayist.
Born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), USSR in 1940, ...
wrote that Auden had "the greatest mind of the twentieth century".
Critical estimates were divided from the start. Reviewing Auden's first book, ''Poems'' (1930), Naomi Mitchison
Naomi Mary Margaret Mitchison, Baroness Mitchison (; 1 November 1897 – 11 January 1999) was a List of Scottish novelists, Scottish novelist and poet. Often called a doyenne of Scottish literature, she wrote over 90 books of historical and sci ...
wrote "If this is really only the beginning, we have perhaps a master to look forward to." But John Sparrow, recalling Mitchison's comment in 1934, dismissed Auden's early work as "a monument to the misguided aims that prevail among contemporary poets, and the fact that… he is being hailed as 'a master' shows how criticism is helping poetry on the downward path."
Auden's clipped, satiric, and ironic style in the 1930s was widely imitated by younger poets such as Charles Madge, who wrote in a poem "there waited for me in the summer morning / Auden fiercely. I read, shuddered, and knew." He was widely described as the leader of an "Auden group" that comprised his friends Stephen Spender
Sir Stephen Harold Spender (28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995) was an English poet, novelist and essayist whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by th ...
, Cecil Day-Lewis
Cecil Day-Lewis (or Day Lewis; 27 April 1904 – 22 May 1972), often written as C. Day-Lewis, was an Irish-born British poet and Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972. He also wrote mystery stories under the pseudonym of Nicholas Bla ...
, and Louis MacNeice
Frederick Louis MacNeice (12 September 1907 – 3 September 1963) was an Irish poet and playwright, and a member of the Auden Group, which also included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. MacNeice's body of work was widely ...
. The four were mocked by the poet Roy Campbell as if they were a single undifferentiated poet named "Macspaunday." Auden's propagandistic poetic plays, including ''The Dog Beneath the Skin'' and ''The Ascent of F6'', and his political poems such as "Spain" gave him the reputation as a political poet writing in a progressive and accessible voice, in contrast to Eliot; but this political stance provoked opposing opinions, such as that of Austin Clarke who called Auden's work "liberal, democratic, and humane", and John Drummond, who wrote that Auden misused a "characteristic and popularizing trick, the generalized image", to present ostensibly left-wing views that were in fact "confined to bourgeois experience."
Auden's departure for America in 1939 was debated in Britain (once even in Parliament), with some seeing his emigration as a betrayal. Defenders of Auden such as Geoffrey Grigson
Geoffrey Edward Harvey Grigson (2 March 1905 – 25 November 1985) was a British poet, writer, editor, critic, exhibition curator, anthologist and naturalist. In the 1930s he was editor of the influential magazine ''New Verse'', and went on to p ...
, in an introduction to a 1949 anthology of modern poetry, wrote that Auden "arches over all". His stature was suggested by book titles such as ''Auden and After'' by Francis Scarfe
Francis Harold Scarfe (1911–1986) was an English poet, critic and novelist, who became an academic, translator and Director of the British Institute in Paris.
He was born in South Shields; he was brought up from a young age at the Royal Mer ...
(1942) and ''The Auden Generation'' by Samuel Hynes (1977).
In the US, starting in the late 1930s, the detached, ironic tone of Auden's regular stanzas became influential; John Ashbery
John Lawrence Ashbery (July 28, 1927 – September 3, 2017) was an American poet and art critic.
Ashbery is considered the most influential American poet of his time. Oxford University literary critic John Bayley wrote that Ashbery "sounded, in ...
recalled that in the 1940s Auden "was ''the'' modern poet". Auden's formal influences were so pervasive in American poetry that the ecstatic style of the Beat Generation
The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Genera ...
was partly a reaction against his influence. From the 1940s through the 1960s, many critics lamented that Auden's work had declined from its earlier promise; Randall Jarrell
Randall Jarrell (May 6, 1914 – October 14, 1965) was an American poet, literary critic, children's author, essayist, and novelist. He was the 11th Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—a position that now bears the title Poe ...
wrote a series of essays making a case against Auden's later work, and Philip Larkin
Philip Arthur Larkin (9 August 1922 – 2 December 1985) was an English poet, novelist, and librarian. His first book of poetry, ''The North Ship'', was published in 1945, followed by two novels, ''Jill'' (1946) and ''A Girl in Winter'' (1947 ...
's "What's Become of Wystan?" (1960) had a wide impact.
The first full-length study of Auden was Richard Hoggart
Herbert Richard Hoggart (24 September 1918 – 10 April 2014) was a British academic whose career covered the fields of sociology, English literature and cultural studies, with emphasis on British popular culture.
Early life
Hoggart was bor ...
's ''Auden: An Introductory Essay'' (1951), which concluded that "Auden's work, then, is a civilising force." It was followed by Joseph Warren Beach
Joseph Warren Beach (January 14, 1880 – August 13, 1957) was an American poet, novelist, critic, educator and literary scholar.
Life
Joseph Warren Beach was born in Gloversville, New York. His parents were Dr. Eugene Beach, who was a physician, ...
's ''The Making of the Auden Canon'' (1957), a disapproving account of Auden's revisions of his earlier work.
The first systematic critical account was Monroe K. Spears' ''The Poetry of W. H. Auden: The Disenchanted Island'' (1963), "written out of the conviction that Auden's poetry can offer the reader entertainment, instruction, intellectual excitement, and a prodigal variety of aesthetic pleasures, all in a generous abundance that is unique in our time."
Auden was one of three candidates recommended by the Nobel Committee to the Swedish Academy for the Nobel Prize in Literature
)
, image = Nobel Prize.png
, caption =
, awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature
, presenter = Swedish Academy
, holder = Annie Ernaux (2022)
, location = Stockholm, Sweden
, year = 1901
, ...
in 1963 and 1965 and six recommended for the 1964 prize. By the time of his death in 1973 he had attained the status of a respected elder statesman, and a memorial stone for him was placed in Poets' Corner
Poets' Corner is the name traditionally given to a section of the South Transept of Westminster Abbey in the City of Westminster, London because of the high number of poets, playwrights, and writers buried and commemorated there.
The first poe ...
in Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an historic, mainly Gothic church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the United ...
in 1974. The Encyclopædia Britannica
The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various t ...
writes that "by the time of Eliot's death in 1965… a convincing case could be made for the assertion that Auden was indeed Eliot's successor, as Eliot had inherited sole claim to supremacy when Yeats died in 1939." With some exceptions, British critics tended to treat his early work as his best, while American critics tended to favour his middle and later work.
Another group of critics and poets has maintained that unlike other modern poets, Auden's reputation did not decline after his death, and the influence of his later writing was especially strong on younger American poets including John Ashbery
John Lawrence Ashbery (July 28, 1927 – September 3, 2017) was an American poet and art critic.
Ashbery is considered the most influential American poet of his time. Oxford University literary critic John Bayley wrote that Ashbery "sounded, in ...
, James Merrill, Anthony Hecht
Anthony Evan Hecht (January 16, 1923 – October 20, 2004) was an American poet. His work combined a deep interest in form with a passionate desire to confront the horrors of 20th century history, with the Second World War, in which he fought, ...
, and Maxine Kumin
Maxine Kumin (June 6, 1925 – February 6, 2014) was an American poet and author. She was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1981–1982.
Biography Early years
Maxine Kumin was born Maxine Winokur on June ...
. Typical later evaluations describe him as "arguably the 0thcentury's greatest poet" (Peter Parker and Frank Kermode), who "now clearly seems the greatest poet in English since Tennyson" (Philip Hensher).
Public recognition of Auden's work sharply increased after his "Funeral Blues" ("Stop all the clocks") was read aloud in the film '' Four Weddings and a Funeral'' (1994); subsequently, a pamphlet edition of ten of his poems, ''Tell Me the Truth About Love'', sold more than 275,000 copies. An excerpt from his poem "As I walked out one evening" was recited in the film ''Before Sunrise
''Before Sunrise'' is a 1995 romantic drama film directed by Richard Linklater and co-written by Linklater and Kim Krizan. The first installment in the ''Before'' trilogy, it follows Jesse ( Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) as they meet ...
'' (1995). After 11 September 2001, his 1939 poem "September 1, 1939" was widely circulated and frequently broadcast. Public readings and broadcast tributes in the UK and US in 2007 marked his centenary year.
Overall, Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form and content.
Memorial stones and plaques commemorating Auden include those in Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an historic, mainly Gothic church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the United ...
; at his birthplace at 55 Bootham, York; near his home on Lordswood Road, Birmingham; in the chapel of Christ Church, Oxford; on the site of his apartment at 1 Montague Terrace, Brooklyn Heights; at his apartment in 77 St. Marks Place, New York (damaged and now removed); at the site of his death at Walfischgasse 5 in Vienna; and in the Rainbow Honor Walk in San Francisco. In his house in Kirchstetten, his study is open to the public upon request.[ Sommer in Kirchstetten – Gedenkstätte für W.H. Auden ''NÖN'' 39/2015.]
Published works
The following list includes only the books of poems and essays that Auden prepared during his lifetime; for a more complete list, including other works and posthumous editions, see W. H. Auden bibliography
This is a bibliography of books, plays, films, and libretti written, edited, or translated by the Anglo-American poet W. H. Auden (1907–1973). See the main entry for a list of biographical and critical studies and external links.
Publicatio ...
.
In the list below, works reprinted in the ''Complete Works of W. H. Auden'' are indicated by footnote references.
; Books
* ''Poems
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings ...
'' (London, 1930; second edn., seven poems substituted, London, 1933; includes poems and ''Paid on Both Sides
''Paid on Both Sides: A Charade'' was the first dramatic work written by W. H. Auden. It was written in 1928 and published in 1930. It was performed in New York in 1931 and then at the Cambridge Festival Theatre on 12 February 1934 (seven months ...
: A Charade'') (dedicated to Christopher Isherwood
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood (26 August 1904 – 4 January 1986) was an Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist. His best-known works include ''Goodbye to Berlin'' (1939), a semi-autobiographical ...
).
* '' The Orators: An English Study'' (London, 1932, verse and prose; slightly revised edn., London, 1934; revised edn. with new preface, London, 1966; New York 1967) (dedicated to Stephen Spender
Sir Stephen Harold Spender (28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995) was an English poet, novelist and essayist whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by th ...
).
* ''The Dance of Death
The ''Danse Macabre'' (; ) (from the French language), also called the Dance of Death, is an artistic genre of allegory of the Late Middle Ages on the universality of death.
The ''Danse Macabre'' consists of the dead, or a personification ...
'' (London, 1933, play) (dedicated to Robert Medley
Charles Robert Owen Medley CBE, RA, (19 December 1905 – 20 October 1994), also known as Robert Medley, was an English artist who painted in both abstract and figurative styles, and who also worked as theatre designer. He held several teachi ...
and Rupert Doone
Rupert Doone (born Reginald Woodfield, 14 August 1903 – 4 March 1966) was a British dancer, choreographer, theatre director, and teacher in London.
Biography
Doone was born in Redditch, Worcestershire, from a Worcestershire family in reduced ...
).
* ''Poems
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings ...
'' (New York, 1934; contains ''Poems'' 933 edition ''The Orators'' 932 edition 93 may refer to:
* 93 (number)
* one of the years 93 BC, AD 93, 1993, 2093, etc.
* 93 Seine-Saint-Denis, French department, Paris, Île-de-France
* Atomic number 93: neptunium
* ''Ninety-Three'', English title of ''Quatrevingt-treize'' (same meanin ...
and ''The Dance of Death'').
* ''The Dog Beneath the Skin
''The Dog Beneath the Skin, or Where is Francis? A Play in Three Acts'', by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, was the first Auden-Isherwood collaboration and an important contribution to English poetic drama in the 1930s. It was published ...
'' (London, New York, 1935; play, with Christopher Isherwood) (dedicated to Robert Moody).
* '' The Ascent of F6'' (London, 1936; 2nd edn., 1937; New York, 1937; play, with Christopher Isherwood) (dedicated to John Bicknell Auden
John Bicknell Auden (14 December 1903 – 21 January 1991) was an English geologist and explorer, older brother of the poet W. H. Auden, who worked for many years in India with the Geological Survey of India and later with the Food and Agricultu ...
).
* ''Look, Stranger!
''On This Island'' is a book of poems by W. H. Auden, first published under the title ''Look, Stranger!'' in the UK in 1936, then published under Auden's preferred title, ''On this Island'', in the US in 1937. It is also the title of one of the ...
'' (London, 1936, poems; US edn., ''On This Island
''On This Island'' is a book of poems by W. H. Auden, first published under the title ''Look, Stranger!'' in the UK in 1936, then published under Auden's preferred title, ''On this Island'', in the US in 1937. It is also the title of one of the ...
'', New York, 1937) (dedicated to Erika Mann
Erika Julia Hedwig Mann (9 November 1905 – 27 August 1969) was a German actress and writer, daughter of the novelist Thomas Mann.
Erika lived a bohemian lifestyle in Berlin and became a critic of National Socialism. After Hitler came to power ...
)
* ''Letters from Iceland
''Letters from Iceland'' is a travel book in prose and verse by W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice, published in 1937.
The book is made up of a series of letters and travel notes by Auden and MacNeice written during their trip to Iceland in 1936 ...
'' (London, New York, 1937; verse and prose, with Louis MacNeice
Frederick Louis MacNeice (12 September 1907 – 3 September 1963) was an Irish poet and playwright, and a member of the Auden Group, which also included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. MacNeice's body of work was widely ...
) (dedicated to George Augustus Auden
George Augustus Auden (27 August 1872 – 3 May 1957) was an English physician, professor of public health, school medical officer, and writer on archaeological subjects.
Biography
Auden was born at Horninglow, Burton-upon-Trent, the sixth s ...
).
* ''On the Frontier
''On the Frontier: A Melodrama in Three Acts'', by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, was the third and last play in the Auden-Isherwood collaboration, first published in 1938.
The play tells the story of the outbreak of war between the f ...
'' (London, 1938; New York 1939; play, with Christopher Isherwood) (dedicated to Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other ...
).
* ''Journey to a War
''Journey to a War'' is a travel book in prose and verse by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, published in 1939.
The book is in three parts: a series of poems by Auden describing his and Isherwood's journey to China in 1938 ; a "Travel-Dia ...
'' (London, New York, 1939; verse and prose, with Christopher Isherwood) (dedicated to E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) was an English author, best known for his novels, particularly ''A Room with a View'' (1908), ''Howards End'' (1910), and ''A Passage to India'' (1924). He also wrote numerous short stori ...
).
* ''Another Time Another Time may refer to:
* ''Another Time'' (book), a 1940 book of poems by W. H. Auden
* ''Another Time'' (Jeff Williams album), 2011
* ''Another Time'' (Earth, Wind & Fire album), 1974
See also
* " Another Time (Andrew's Song)", a 2014 so ...
'' (London, New York 1940; poetry) (dedicated to Chester Kallman).
* '' The Double Man'' (New York, 1941, poems; UK edn., ''New Year Letter'', London, 1941) (Dedicated to Elizabeth Mayer).
* '' For the Time Being'' (New York, 1944; London, 1945; two long poems: "The Sea and the Mirror
"The Sea and the Mirror: A Commentary on Shakespeare's ''The Tempest''" is a long poem by W.H. Auden, written 1942–44, and first published in 1944. Auden regarded the work as “my ''Ars Poetica,'' in the same way I believe ''The Tempest'' to hav ...
: A Commentary on Shakespeare's ''The Tempest''", dedicated to James and Tania Stern, and " For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio", in memoriam Constance Rosalie Auden uden's mother.
* ''The Collected Poetry of W. H. Auden'' (New York, 1945; includes new poems) (dedicated to Christopher Isherwood and Chester Kallman)
Full text
* '' The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue'' (New York, 1947; London, 1948; verse; won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually for Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first presented in 1922, and is given for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author, published ...
) (dedicated to John Betjeman
Sir John Betjeman (; 28 August 190619 May 1984) was an English poet, writer, and broadcaster. He was Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death. He was a founding member of The Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture ...
).
* ''Collected Shorter Poems, 1930–1944'' (London, 1950; similar to 1945 ''Collected Poetry'') (dedicated to Christopher Isherwood and Chester Kallman).
* '' The Enchafèd Flood'' (New York, 1950; London, 1951; prose) (dedicated to Alan Ansen).
* '' Nones'' (New York, 1951; London, 1952; poems) (dedicated to Reinhold and Ursula Niebuhr Ursula Mary Niebuhr (August 3, 1907 – January 10, 1997) was an English American academic and theologian. She was the founder and longtime head of the Department of Religion at Barnard College in New York City, USA.
She was born in Southampton, E ...
)
* '' The Shield of Achilles'' (New York, London, 1955; poems) (won the 1956 National Book Award for Poetry)["National Book Awards – 1956"]
National Book Foundation. Retrieved 27 February 2012.
(With acceptance speech by Auden and essay by Megan Snyder-Camp from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.) (dedicated to Lincoln and Fidelma Kirstein).
* '' Homage to Clio'' (New York, London, 1960; poems) (dedicated to E. R. and A. E. Dodds).
* '' The Dyer's Hand'' (New York, 1962; London, 1963; essays) (dedicated to Nevill Coghill).
* '' About the House'' (New York, London, 1965; poems) (dedicated to Edmund and Elena Wilson).
* ''Collected Shorter Poems 1927–1957'' (London, 1966; New York, 1967) (dedicated to Christopher Isherwood and Chester Kallman).
* ''Collected Longer Poems'' (London, 1968; New York, 1969).
* '' Secondary Worlds'' (London, New York, 1969; prose) (dedicated to Valerie Eliot).
* '' City Without Walls and Other Poems'' (London, New York, 1969) (dedicated to Peter Heyworth
Peter Lawrence Frederick Heyworth (3 June 1921 – 2 October 1991) was an American-born British music critic and biographer. He wrote a two-volume biography of Otto Klemperer and was a prominent supporter of avant-garde music.
Life and career
Pete ...
).
* '' A Certain World: A Commonplace Book'' (New York, London, 1970; quotations with commentary) (dedicated to Geoffrey Grigson
Geoffrey Edward Harvey Grigson (2 March 1905 – 25 November 1985) was a British poet, writer, editor, critic, exhibition curator, anthologist and naturalist. In the 1930s he was editor of the influential magazine ''New Verse'', and went on to p ...
).
* '' Epistle to a Godson and Other Poems'' (London, New York, 1972) (dedicated to Orlan Fox).
* '' Forewords and Afterwords'' (New York, London, 1973; essays) (dedicated to Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt (, , ; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a political philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor. She is widely considered to be one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century.
Arendt was born ...
).
* '' Thank You, Fog: Last Poems'' (London, New York, 1974) (dedicated to Michael and Marny Yates).
; Film scripts and opera libretti
* ''Coal Face'' (1935, closing chorus for GPO Film Unit documentary).
* '' Night Mail'' (1936, narrative for GPO Film Unit documentary, not published separately except as a programme note).
* ''Paul Bunyan
Paul Bunyan is a giant lumberjack and folk hero in American and Canadian folklore. His exploits revolve around the tall tales of his superhuman labors, and he is customarily accompanied by Babe the Blue Ox. The character originated in the o ...
'' (1941, libretto for operetta by Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other ...
; not published until 1976).
* ''The Rake's Progress
''The Rake's Progress'' is an English-language opera from 1951 in three acts and an epilogue by Igor Stravinsky. The libretto, written by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, is based loosely on the eight paintings and engravings '' A Rake's Prog ...
'' (1951, with Chester Kallman, libretto for an opera by Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century clas ...
).
* '' Elegy for Young Lovers'' (1956, with Chester Kallman, libretto for an opera by Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze (1 July 1926 – 27 October 2012) was a German composer. His large oeuvre of works is extremely varied in style, having been influenced by serialism, atonality, Stravinsky, Italian music, Arabic music and jazz, as well as ...
).
* '' The Bassarids'' (1961, with Chester Kallman, libretto for an opera by Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze (1 July 1926 – 27 October 2012) was a German composer. His large oeuvre of works is extremely varied in style, having been influenced by serialism, atonality, Stravinsky, Italian music, Arabic music and jazz, as well as ...
based on ''The Bacchae
''The Bacchae'' (; grc-gre, Βάκχαι, ''Bakchai''; also known as ''The Bacchantes'' ) is an ancient Greek tragedy, written by the Athenian playwright Euripides during his final years in Macedonia, at the court of Archelaus I of Macedon. ...
'' of Euripides
Euripides (; grc, Εὐριπίδης, Eurīpídēs, ; ) was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars ...
).
* ''Runner'' (1962, documentary film narrative for National Film Board of Canada
The National Film Board of Canada (NFB; french: Office national du film du Canada (ONF)) is Canada's public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary fi ...
)
* ''Love's Labour's Lost
''Love's Labour's Lost'' is one of William Shakespeare's early comedies, believed to have been written in the mid-1590s for a performance at the Inns of Court before Queen Elizabeth I. It follows the King of Navarre and his three companions a ...
'' (1973, with Chester Kallman, libretto for an opera by Nicolas Nabokov
Nicolas Nabokov (Николай Дмитриевич Набоков; – 6 April 1978) was a Russian-born composer, writer, and cultural figure. He became a U.S. citizen in 1939.
Life
Nicolas Nabokov, a first cousin of Vladimir Nabokov, and of ...
, based on Shakespeare's play).
; Musical collaborations
* ''Our Hunting Fathers
''Our Hunting Fathers'', Op. 8, is an orchestral song-cycle by Benjamin Britten, first performed in 1936. Its text, assembled and partly written by W. H. Auden, with a pacifist slant, puzzled audiences at the premiere, and the work has never achi ...
'' (1936, song cycle written for Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other ...
)
* ''Hymn to St Cecilia
''Hymn to St Cecilia'', Op. 27 is a choral piece by Benjamin Britten (1913–1976), a setting of a poem by W. H. Auden written between 1940 and 1942. Auden's original title was "Three Songs for St. Cecilia's Day", and he later published the poem ...
'' (1942, choral piece composed by Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other ...
)
* ''An Evening of Elizabethan Verse and its Music'' (1954 recording with the New York Pro Musica Antiqua, director Noah Greenberg; Auden spoke the verse texts)
* ''The Play of Daniel
The ''Play of Daniel'', or ''Ludus Danielis'', is either of two medieval Latin liturgical dramas based on the biblical Book of Daniel, one of which is accompanied by monophonic music.
The play itself dates from c. 1140. Two medieval plays of Dani ...
'' (1958, verse narration for a production by the New York Pro Musica Antiqua, director Noah Greenberg)
References
Citations
General and cited sources
* Auden, W. H.; ed. by Katherine Bucknell and Nicholas Jenkins (1990) ''"The Map of All My Youth": early works, friends and influences'' (Auden Studies 1). Oxford: Oxford University Press. .
* Auden, W. H.; ed. by Katherine Bucknell and Nicholas Jenkins (1994). ''"The Language of Learning and the Language of Love": uncollected writings, new interpretations'' (Auden Studies 2). Oxford: Oxford University Press. .
* Auden, W. H.; ed. by Katherine Bucknell and Nicholas Jenkins (1995). ''"In Solitude, For Company": W. H. Auden after 1940: unpublished prose and recent criticism'' (Auden Studies 3). Oxford: Oxford University Press. .
* Carpenter, Humphrey (1981). ''W. H. Auden: A Biography''. London: George Allen & Unwin
George Allen & Unwin was a British publishing company formed in 1911 when Sir Stanley Unwin purchased a controlling interest in George Allen & Co. It went on to become one of the leading publishers of the twentieth century and to establish an ...
. .
* Clark, Thekla (1995). ''Wystan and Chester: A Personal Memoir of W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman''. London: Faber and Faber. .
* Davenport-Hines, Richard (1996). ''Auden''. London: Heinemann Heinemann may refer to:
* Heinemann (surname)
* Heinemann (publisher), a publishing company
* Heinemann Park, a.k.a. Pelican Stadium in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
See also
* Heineman Heineman is a surname. Notable people with the surnam ...
. .
* Farnan, Dorothy J. (1984). ''Auden in Love''. New York: Simon & Schuster. .
* Fuller, John (1998). ''W. H. Auden: A Commentary''. London: Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber Limited, usually abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel ...
. .
* Haffenden, John, ed. (1983). ''W. H. Auden: The Critical Heritage''. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. .
* Kirsch, Arthur (2005). ''Auden and Christianity''. New Haven: Yale University Press
Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous.
, Yale Univers ...
. .
* Mendelson, Edward (1981). ''Early Auden''. New York: Viking
Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden),
who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and se ...
. .
* Mendelson, Edward (1999). ''Later Auden''. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger Williams Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. FSG is known for publishing literary books, and its authors have won numerous awards, including Pulitzer ...
. .
* Mendelson, Edward (2017). ''Early Auden, Later Auden: A Critical Biography''. Princeton: Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large.
The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial ...
. .
* Mitchell, Donald (1981), ''Britten and Auden in the Thirties: the year 1936''. London: Faber and Faber. .
* Myers, Alan and Forsythe, Robert (1999)
''W. H. Auden: Pennine Poet''
. Nenthead: North Pennines Heritage Trust. . Pamphlet with map and gazetteer.
* Sharpe, Tony, ed. (2013). ''W. H. Auden in Context'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. .
* Smith, Stan, ed. (2004). ''The Cambridge Companion to W. H. Auden'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. .
* Spears, Monroe K. (1963). ''The Poetry of W. H. Auden: The Disenchanted Island''. New York: Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...
.
Further reading
* Hecht, Anthony (1993). ''The Hidden Law: The Poetry of W.H. Auden''. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retir ...
. .
* Osborne, Charles (1979). ''W. H. Auden: The Life of a Poet''. London: Eyre Methuen. .
* Costello, Bonnie, and Rachel Galvin, eds. (2015). ''Auden at Work'' Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan
Palgrave Macmillan is a British academic and trade publishing company headquartered in the London Borough of Camden. Its programme includes textbooks, journals, monographs, professional and reference works in print and online. It maintains off ...
. .
* Huddleston, Robert
"Poetry Makes Nothing Happen"
Boston Review
''Boston Review'' is an American quarterly political and literary magazine. It publishes political, social, and historical analysis, literary and cultural criticism, book reviews, fiction, and poetry, both online and in print. Its signature form ...
, 25 February 2015.
* Spender, Stephen, ed. (1975). ''W. H. Auden: A Tribute''. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd (established 1949), often shortened to W&N or Weidenfeld, is a British publisher of fiction and reference books. It has been a division of the French-owned Orion Publishing Group since 1991.
History
George Weidenfeld a ...
. .
* Stoll, John E. (1970)
CISOROOT=/BSMngrph&CISOPTR=9&CISOBOX=1&REC=14 ''W.H. Auden: A Reading''
.
* Wright, George T. (1969; rev. ed. 1981). ''W. H. Auden''. Boston: Twayne. .
External links
W. H. Auden material
at the British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the Briti ...
W. H. Auden Collection
at Columbia University Libraries
Columbia University Libraries is the library system of Columbia University and one of the largest academic library systems in North America. With 15.0 million volumes and over 160,000 journals and serials, as well as extensive electronic resource ...
W. H. Auden Collection
at Emory University Libraries
W. H. Auden Collection
at the Harry Ransom Center
The Harry Ransom Center (until 1983 the Humanities Research Center) is an archive, library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the Americas and Europe for the pur ...
, The University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...
W. H. Auden material
at the UK National Archives
W. H. Auden Society
*
*
Poetry by W. H. Auden
at the Academy of American Poets
The Academy of American Poets is a national, member-supported organization that promotes poets and the art of poetry. The nonprofit organization was incorporated in the state of New York in 1934. It fosters the readership of poetry through outreach ...
*Web Exhibit
W. H. Auden and Swarthmore College
*
Auden Musulin Papers: A Digital Edition of W. H. Auden's Letters to Stella Musulin
' at the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Auden, W. H.
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