W.H. AUDEN (1907-1973)

1
W.H. AUDEN (1907-1973)

• "A poet is, before anything else, a person who
  is passionately in love with language."

2
History

• Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York, England, in
  1907. He was the son of a medical officer and a
  nurse. He moved to Birmingham during childhood.
  He attended Oxford from 1925 to 1928, then
  taught, traveled, and moved from faculty to
  faculty of several universities in the United
  States, where he became a naturalized citizen in
  1946 (bedfordstmartins.com).
• As a young man he was influenced by the poetry
  of Thomas Hardy, Robert Frost, William Blake,
  Emily Dickinson, and Old English verse
  (poets.org).

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History (cont)

• Auden is admired for his technical skill and his
  ability to write poems in nearly every imaginable
  verse form. His work is often incorporated into
  popular culture and current events. He had a
  vast range of intellect, influenced an
  extraordinary variety of literatures, art forms,
  social and political theories, and scientific and
  technical information. He had a remarkable wit,
  and often mimicked the writing styles of other
  poets such as Emily Dickinson, W. B. Yeats, and
  Henry James. His poetry frequently recounts,
  literally or metaphorically, a journey or quest,
  and his travels provided rich material for his
  verse (poets.org).

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History (cont)

• He visited Germany, Iceland, and China, served
  in the Spanish Civil War, and in 1939 moved to
  the United States, where he met his lover,
  Chester Kallman, and became an American citizen.
  His own beliefs changed radically between his
  youthful career in England, when he was an ardent
  advocate of socialism and Freudian
  psychoanalysis, and his later phase in America,
  when he focused on Christianity and the theology
  of modern Protestant theologians. A prolific
  writer, Auden was also a noted playwright,
  librettist, editor, and essayist. Generally
  considered the greatest English poet of the
  twentieth century, his work has heavily
  influenced generations of poets on both sides of
  the Atlantic. Auden divided most of the second
  half of his life between residences in New York
  City and Austria. He died in Vienna in 1973
  (poets.org).

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Awards Recognitions

• 1948 Auden won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for
  his
• collection The Age of Anxiety, an expression
  he
• coined to describe the 1930s.
• 1954-1973 Auden served as Chancellor of The
  Academy
• of American Poets.

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Works Published in Audens Lifetime

• Poems
• Poems. S. H. Spender, 1928. Auden's
  privately-printed first book, of which only about
  30 copies were made on a hand-press and given to
  friends of the author.
• Poems. Faber, 1930 2nd edition, 1933. (The
  Random House edition, 1934, includes The Orators
  and The Dance of Death.) Auden's first regularly
  published book.
• The Orators. Faber, 1930 2nd edition 1934 3rd
  edition, 1966 and Random House, 1967.
• On This Island. (British title Look, Stranger!)
  Faber, 1936, and Random House, 1937. The Faber
  edition has been reprinted, 2001.
• Spain. Faber, 1937 (also in Another Time).
• Another Time. Faber and Random House, 1940.
• The Double Man. (British title New Year Letter.)
  Random House and Faber, 1941.
• For the Time Being. Random House, 1944 Faber,
  1945.
• The Collected Poetry of W. H. Auden. Random
  House, 1945 (includes new poems, 1941-44).
• The Age of Anxiety. Random House, 1947 Faber,
  1948.
• Collected Shorter Poems, 1930-1944. Faber, 1950
  (similar to The Collected Poetry, above).
• Nones. Random House, 1951 Faber, 1952.
• The Shield of Achilles. Random House and Faber,
  1955.
• Homage to Clio. Random House and Faber, 1960.
• About the House. Random House, 1965 Faber, 1966.
• Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957. Faber, 1966
  Random House, 1967.
• Collected Longer Poems. Faber, 1968 Random
  House, 1969.
• City Without Walls. Faber, 1969 Random House,
  1970.

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Works Published in Audens Lifetime (Cont)

• Plays
• The Dance of Death. Faber, 1933.
• The Dog Beneath the Skin. With Christopher
  Isherwood. Faber and Random House, 1935.
• The Ascent of F6.  With Christopher Isherwood.
  Faber, 1936 2nd edition 1936 American edition
  Random House, 1936.
• On the Frontier. With Christopher Isherwood.
  Faber, 1938 Random House, 1939.
• Opera Libretti
• Paul Bunyan. Music by Benjamin Britten. 1941.
• The Rake's Progress. With Chester Kallman. Music
  by Igor Stravinsky. 1951.
• Elegy for Young Lovers. With Chester Kallman.
  Music by Hans Werner Henze. 1961.
• The Bassarids. With Chester Kallman. Music by
  Hans Werner Henze. 1966.
• Auden and Kallman also translated Mozart's The
  Magic Flute (1956) and Don Giovanni (1961), and
  Goldoni's Arcifanfaro, King of Fools, as set by
  Dittersdorf (1962).
• Travel Books in Prose and Verse
• Letters From Iceland. With Louis MacNeice. Faber
  and Random House, 1937 2nd edition Faber, 1967,
  and Random House, 1969.
• Journey to a War. With Christopher Isherwood.
  Faber and Random House, 1939 2nd edition Faber,
  1973.

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Works Published in Audens Lifetime (Cont)

• Prose
• The Prolific and the Devourer. (Written in 1939.)
  Ecco Press, 1993.
• The Enchafèd Flood. Random House, 1950 Faber,
  1951.
• The Dyer's Hand. Random House, 1962 Faber, 1963.
• Secondary Worlds. Faber and Random House, 1969.
• A Certain World A Commonplace Book. Viking and
  Faber, 1970.
• Forewords and Afterwords. Random House and Faber,
  1973.
• Lectures on Shakespeare, reconstructed and edited
  by Arthur Kirsch. Princeton University Press and
  Faber, 2001.

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Audens Poetry

• Lullaby
• Lay Your Sleeping head, my love,
• Human on my faithless arm
• Time and fevers burn away
• Individual beauty from
• Thoughtful children, and the grave
• Proves the child ephemeral
• But in my arms till break of day
• Let the living creature lie,
• Mortal, guilty, but to me
• The entirely beautiful.
• Soul and body have no bounds
• To lovers as they lie upon
• Her tolerant enchanted slope
• In their ordinary swoon,
• Grave the vision Venus sends
• Of supernatural sympathy,

• Certainty, fidelity
• On the stroke of midnight pass
• Like vibrations of a bell
• And fashionable madmen raise
• Their pedantic boring cry
• Every farthing of the cost.
• All the dreaded cards foretell.
• Shall be paid, but from this night
• ot a whisper, not a thought.
• Not a kiss nor look be lost.
• Beauty, midnight, vision dies
• Let the winds of dawn that blow
• Softly round your dreaming head
• Such a day of welcome show
• Eye and knocking heart may bless,
• Find our mortal world enough
• Noons of dryness find you fed
• By the involuntary powers,

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Audens Poetry

• Epitaph on a Tyrant
• Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
• And the poetry he invented was easy to
  understand
• He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
• And was greatly interested in armies and fleets
• When he laughed, respectable senators burst with
  laughter,
• And when he cried the little children died in the
  streets.

• Stop All The Clocks
• Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
• Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
• Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
• Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
• Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
• Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
• Put crepe bows round the white necks of the
  public doves,
• Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton
  gloves.
• He was my North, my South, my East and West,
• My working week and my Sunday rest,
• My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song
• I thought that love would last for ever I was
  wrong.
• The stars are not wanted now put out every one
• Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun
• Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
• For nothing now can ever come to any good.

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Auden Links

• http//www.audensociety.org/
• http//www.poets.org/
• http//www.randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/auden/

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Works Cited

• http//www.poets.org
• http//www.bedfordstmartins.com/litlinks/poetry/au
  den.htm
• http//www.audensociety.org