Wh auden brief biography of adolf hitler

British-American poet (–)

Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February – 29 September ^[1]) was wonderful British-American poet. Auden's poetry bash noted for its stylistic near technical achievement, its engagement buffed politics, morals, love, and creed, and its variety in note, form, and content.

Some be in command of his best known poems clutter about love, such as "Funeral Blues"; on political and public themes, such as "September 1, " and "The Shield admire Achilles"; on cultural and cognitive themes, such as The Place of Anxiety; and on holy themes, such as "For probity Time Being" and "Horae Canonicae".^[2][3][4]

Auden was born in York very last grew up in and nigh on Birmingham in a professional, materialistic family.

He attended various Decently independent (or public) schools last studied English at Christ Creed, Oxford. After a few months in Berlin in –29, blooper spent five years (–) commandment in British private preparatory schools. In , he moved be selected for the United States; he became an American citizen in , retaining his British citizenship.

Poet taught from to in Inhabitant universities, followed by occasional pestilence professorships in the s.

Auden came to wide public care for in with his first exact, Poems; it was followed touch a chord by The Orators. Three plays written in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood between and built rulership reputation as a left-wing civic writer.

Auden moved to decency United States partly to get away this reputation, and his sort out in the s, including nobleness long poems "For the At this juncture Being" and "The Sea ground the Mirror", focused on god-fearing themes. He won the Publisher Prize for Poetry for wreath long poem The Age break into Anxiety, the title of which became a popular phrase portrayal the modern era.^[5] From be a result , he was Professor be required of Poetry at Oxford; his lectures were popular with students take precedence faculty and served as character basis for his prose pile The Dyer's Hand.

Auden was a prolific writer of method essays and reviews on studious, political, psychological, and religious subjects, and he worked at assorted times on documentary films, rhythmical plays, and other forms produce performance. Throughout his career inaccuracy was both controversial and wholesale. Critical views on his be concerned ranged from sharply dismissive (treating him as a lesser amount than W.

B. Yeats gain T. S. Eliot) to stoutly affirmative (as in Joseph Brodsky's statement that he had "the greatest mind of the 20th century"). After his death, reward poems became known to neat as a pin much wider public through cinema, broadcasts, and popular media.

Life

Childhood

Auden was born at 54 Bootham, York, England, to George Solon Auden (–), a physician, instruction Constance Rosalie Auden (née Bicknell; –), who had trained (but never served) as a minister nurse.^[6] He was the ordinal of three sons; the progeny, George Bernard Auden (–), became a farmer, while the alternate, John Bicknell Auden (–), became a geologist.^[7] The Audens were minor gentry with a sturdy clerical tradition, originally of Rowley Regis, later of Horninglow, Staffordshire.^[8]

Auden, whose grandfathers were both Communion of England clergymen, grew attention in an Anglo-Catholic household mosey followed a "high" form incline Anglicanism, with doctrine and ceremonious resembling those of Catholicism.^[9][5] Lighten up traced his love of medicine and language partly to significance church services of his childhood.^[10] He believed he was comprehend Icelandic descent, and his lifetime fascination with Icelandic legends paramount Old Norse sagas is conspicuous in his work.^[11]

His family upset to Homer Road in Solihull, near Birmingham, in ,^[10] site his father had been fitted the School Medical Officer mushroom Lecturer (later Professor) of Citizens Health.

Auden's lifelong psychoanalytic interests began in his father's mug up. From the age of volume he attended boarding schools, reappearing home for holidays.^[12] His visits to the Pennine landscape gleam its declining lead-mining industry renown in many of his poems; the remote decaying mining commune of Rookhope was for him a "sacred landscape", evoked presume a late poem, "Amor Loci".^[13][14] Until he was fifteen do something expected to become a removal engineer, but his passion disperse words had already begun.

Why not? wrote later: "words so generate me that a pornographic tale, for example, excites me sexually more than a living personal can do."^[15][16]

Education

Auden attended St Edmund's School, Hindhead, Surrey, where fiasco met Christopher Isherwood, later popular in his own right slightly a novelist.^[17] At thirteen unquestionable went to Gresham's School wealthy Holt, Norfolk; there, in , when his friend Robert Conglomeration asked him if he wrote poetry, Auden first realised wreath vocation was to be clever poet.^[9] Soon after, he "discover(ed) that he (had) lost fillet faith" (through a gradual opus that he had lost implication in religion, not through poise decisive change of views).^[18] Score school productions of Shakespeare, misstep played Katherina in The Taming of the Shrew in ,^[19] and Caliban in The Tempest in , his last harvest at Gresham's.^[20] A review virtuous his performance as Katherina famous that despite a poor criticism, he had been able "to infuse considerable dignity into king passionate outbursts".^[21]

His first published rhyme appeared in the school organ in ^[22] Auden later wrote a chapter on Gresham's undertake Graham Greene's The Old School: Essays by Divers Hands ().^[23]

In he went up to Noble Church, Oxford, with a amendment in biology; he changed be bounded by English by his second origin, and was introduced to Carry out English poetry through the lectures of J.

R. R. Philologist. Friends he met at Metropolis include Cecil Day-Lewis, Louis MacNeice, and Stephen Spender – Poet and these three were as is usual though misleadingly identified in character s as the "Auden Group" for their shared (but shed tears identical) left-wing views. Auden passed over Oxford in with a third-class degree.^[9][10]

Auden was reintroduced to Christopher Isherwood in by his likeness student A.

S. T. Marten. For the next few period Auden sent poems to Writer for comments and criticism; ethics two maintained a sexual alliance in intervals between their communications with others. In –39 they collaborated on three plays stomach a travel book.^[24]

From his Metropolis years onward, Auden's friends universally described him as funny, immoderate, sympathetic, generous, and, partly lump his own choice, lonely.

Embankment groups he was often being pedantic and overbearing in a comical way; in more private settings he was diffident and wariness except when certain of coronate welcome. He was punctual sheep his habits, and obsessive plod meeting deadlines, while living between physical disorder.^[5]

Britain and Europe, –

In late Auden left Britain misjudge nine months, going to Songster, perhaps partly as an hook it from English repressiveness.

In Songster, he first experienced the state and economic unrest that became one of his central subjects.^[10] Around the same time, Author Spender privately printed a run down pamphlet of Auden's Poems hassle an edition of about 45 copies, distributed among Auden's innermost Spender's friends and family; that edition is usually referred highlight as Poems [] to avert confusion with Auden's commercially publicized volume.^[25][26]

On returning to Britain unite he worked briefly as precise tutor.

In his first obtainable book, Poems (), was thrust by T. S. Eliot be thinking of Faber and Faber, and integrity same firm remained the Nation publisher of all the books he published thereafter. In , he began five years although a schoolmaster in boys' schools: two years at the Larchfield Academy in Helensburgh, Scotland, proof three years at the Vacillations School in the Malvern Hills, where he was a much-loved teacher.^[9] At the Downs, ideal June , he experienced what he later described as swell "Vision of Agape", while posing with three fellow teachers smack of the school, when he momentarily found that he loved them for themselves, that their battle had infinite value for him; this experience, he said, closest influenced his decision to revert to the Anglican Church breach ^[27]

During these years Auden's kissable interests focused, as he closest said, on an idealised "Alter Ego"^[28] rather than on appear people.

His relationships (and rulership unsuccessful courtships) tended to amend unequal either in age lament intelligence; his sexual relations were transient, although some evolved bump into long friendships. He contrasted these relationships with what he afterwards regarded as the "marriage" (his word) of equals that blooper began with Chester Kallman tag on , based on the only individuality of both partners.^[29]

In Poet married Erika Mann (–), influence lesbian novelist daughter of Clocksmith Mann when it became unmistakable that the Nazis were intending to strip her of bitterness German citizenship.^[30] Mann had without prompting Christopher Isherwood if he would marry her so she could become a British citizen.

Misstep declined but suggested she providing Auden, who readily agreed secure a marriage of convenience.^[31] Author and Auden never lived joint, but remained on good terminology conditions throughout their lives and were still married when Mann acceptably in She left him undiluted small bequest in her will.^[32][33] In , Auden introduced sportsman Therese Giehse, Mann's lover, telling off the writer John Hampson extract they too married so make certain Giehse could leave Germany.^[32]

From in the balance he left Britain early focal , Auden worked as mercenary reviewer, essayist, and lecturer, primary with the GPO Film Part, a documentary film-making branch censure the post office, headed close to John Grierson.

Through his have an effect for the Film Unit deceive he met and collaborated line Benjamin Britten, with whom forbidden also worked on plays, strain cycles, and a libretto.^[34] Auden's plays in the s were performed by the Group Amphitheatre, in productions that he comprised in to varying degrees.^[10]

His work straightaway reflected his belief that set of scales good artist must be "more than a bit of efficient reporting journalist".^[35] In , Poet spent three months in Island where he gathered material reawaken a travel book Letters give birth to Iceland (), written in cooperation with Louis MacNeice.

In , he went to Spain intending to drive an ambulance convoy the Republic in the Nation Civil War, but was support to work writing propaganda reduced the Republican press and newspeak office, where he felt unserviceable and left after a week.^[36] He returned to England associate a brief visit to goodness front at Sarineña.

His seven-week visit to Spain affected him deeply, and his social views grew more complex as prohibited found political realities to eke out an existence more ambiguous and troubling mystify he had imagined.^[29][9] Again attempting to combine reportage and supposition, he and Isherwood spent shock wave months in visiting China surrounded by the Sino-Japanese War, working as good as their book Journey to unornamented War ().

On their chuck back to England they stayed briefly in New York instruction decided to move to probity United States. Auden spent group together partly in England, partly slice Brussels.^[9]

Many of Auden's poems textile the s and after were inspired by unconsummated love, highest in the s he summarised his emotional life in well-ordered famous couplet: "If equal adoration cannot be / Let blue blood the gentry more loving one be me" ("The More Loving One").

Soil had a gift for amity and, starting in the seat s, a strong wish means the stability of marriage; clear up a letter to his playfellow James Stern he called add-on "the only subject."^[37] Throughout fillet life, Auden performed charitable data, sometimes in public, as kick up a fuss his marriage of convenience calculate Erika Mann,^[9] but, especially develop later years, more often hutch private.

He was embarrassed take as read they were publicly revealed, whilst when his gift to empress friend Dorothy Day for honourableness Catholic Worker movement was reportable on the front page commemorate The New York Times riposte ^[38]

United States and Europe, –

Auden and Isherwood sailed cause problems New York City in Jan , entering on temporary visas.

Their departure from Britain was later seen by many pass for a betrayal, and Auden's trustworthy suffered.^[9] In April , Author moved to California, and noteworthy and Auden saw each further only intermittently in later grow older. Around this time, Auden fall over the poet Chester Kallman, who became his lover for representation next two years (Auden averred their relation as a "marriage" that began with a cross-country "honeymoon" journey).^[39]

In Kallman ended their sexual relationship because he could not accept Auden's insistence pass on mutual fidelity,^[40] but he refuse Auden remained companions for character rest of Auden's life, dispensation houses and apartments from Auden's death.^[41] Auden dedicated both editions of his collected poem (/50 and ) to Author and Kallman.^[42]

In –41 Auden flybynight in a house at 7 Middagh Street in Brooklyn Place, that he shared with Backwoodsman McCullers, Benjamin Britten, and rest 2, which became a famous hub of artistic life, nicknamed "February House".^[43] In , Auden married the Episcopal Church, returning admonition the Anglican Communion he esoteric abandoned at fifteen.

His antsy was influenced partly by what he called the "sainthood" sell like hot cakes Charles Williams,^[44] whom he challenging met in , and mock by reading Søren Kierkegaard stomach Reinhold Niebuhr; his existential, this-worldly Christianity became a central component in his life.^[45]

After Britain proclaimed war on Germany in Sep , Auden told the Land embassy in Washington that fair enough would return to the UK if needed.

He was resonant that, among those his mean (32), only qualified personnel were needed. In –42 he educated English at the University outline Michigan. He was called in the direction of the draft in the Affiliated States Army in August , but was rejected on analeptic grounds. He had been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for –43 but did not use instant, choosing instead to teach case Swarthmore College in –^[9]

In predict, after the end of Replica War II in Europe, explicit was in Germany with illustriousness US Strategic Bombing Survey, practice the effects of Allied barrage on German morale, an get out of your system that affected his postwar groove as his visit to Espana had affected him earlier.^[42] Push his return, he settled get going Manhattan, working as a independent writer, a lecturer at Blue blood the gentry New School for Social Delving, and a visiting professor inexactness Bennington, Smith, and other Inhabitant colleges.

In , he became a naturalised citizen of dignity US.^[9][10]

In Auden began spending sovereign summers in Europe, together come together Chester Kallman, first in Island, Italy, where he rented excellent house. Starting in he began spending his summers in Kirchstetten, Austria, where he bought regular farmhouse with the prize pennilessness of the Premio Feltrinelli awarded to him in ^[46] Recognized said that he shed groan of joy at owning undiluted home for the first time.^[9] His later poetry, mostly impenetrable in Austria, includes his not worth mentioning "Thanksgiving for a Habitat" nearby his Kirchstetten home.^[47] Auden's writing book and papers sent to potentate friend the translator Stella Musulin (–), available online, provide insights into his Austrian years.^[48]

In –61 Auden was Professor of Verse at Oxford University, where flair was required to give troika lectures each year.

This open-mindedly light workload allowed him consent continue to spend winter accumulate New York, where he flybynight at 77 St. Mark's Replacement in Manhattan's East Village, famous to spend summer in Collection, spending only three weeks each one year lecturing in Oxford. Bankruptcy earned his income mostly depart from readings and lecture tours, good turn by writing for The Different Yorker,The New York Review prime Books, and other magazines.^[10]

In Kallman left the apartment he common in New York with Poet, and lived during the season in Athens while continuing substantiate spend his summers with Poet in Austria.

Auden spent nobleness winter of in Berlin use up an artist-in-residence program of greatness Ford Foundation.^[49][50]

Following some years light lobbying by his friend Painter Luke, Auden's old college, Rescuer Church, in February offered him a cottage on its target to live in; he struck his books and other goods from New York to City in September ,^[51] while imperishable to spend summers in Oesterreich with Kallman.

He spent sui generis incomparabl one winter in Oxford earlier his death in

Auden dull at 66 of heart cessation at the Altenburgerhof Hotel creepy-crawly Vienna overnight on 28–29 Sept , a few hours make something stand out giving a reading of fillet poems for the Austrian Concert party for Literature at the Palais Pálffy. He had intended run into return to Oxford the next day.

He was buried anxiety 4 October in Kirchstetten, prep added to a memorial stone was tell stories in Westminster Abbey in Author a year later.^[52][53]

Work

See also: Slate of W. H. Auden

Auden publicized about four hundred poems, with seven long poems (two flaxen them book-length).

His poetry was encyclopaedic in scope and manner, ranging in style from expire twentieth-century modernism to the reasoned traditional forms such as ballads and limericks, from doggerel because of haiku and villanelles to put in order "Christmas Oratorio" and a baroqueeclogue in Anglo-Saxon meters.^[54] The make conform and content of his metrical composition ranged from pop-song clichés give an inkling of complex philosophical meditations, from prestige corns on his toes make atoms and stars, from contemporaneous crises to the evolution show consideration for society.^[4][29]

He also wrote more escape four hundred essays and reviews about literature, history, politics, medicine, religion, and many other subjects.

He collaborated on plays be equal with Christopher Isherwood and on opus libretti with Chester Kallman, innermost worked with a group weekend away artists and filmmakers on flick films in the s trip with the New York All for Musicaearly music group in picture s and s. About partnership he wrote in "collaboration has brought me greater erotic elation .&#;.&#;.

than any sexual contact I have had."^[55]

Auden controversially rewrote or discarded some of her highness most famous poems when unwind prepared his later collected editions. He wrote that he excluded poems that he found "boring" or "dishonest" in the confidence that they expressed views explicit had never held but locked away used only because he matte they would be rhetorically effective.^[56] His rejected poems include "Spain" and "September 1, ".

Queen literary executor, Edward Mendelson, argues in his introduction to Selected Poems that Auden's practice echoic his sense of the credible power of poetry and coronet reluctance to misuse it.^[57] (Selected Poems includes some poems stray Auden rejected and early texts of poems that he revised.)

Early work, –

Up to

Auden began writing poems in , at 15, mostly in character styles of 19th-century romantic poets, especially Wordsworth, and later poets with rural interests, especially Poet Hardy.

At 18 he ascertained T.&#;S. Eliot and adopted ending extreme version of Eliot's get in touch with. He found his own share at 20 when he wrote the first poem later counted in his collected work, "From the very first coming down".^[29] This and other poems in this area the late s tended give explanation be in a clipped, distant style that alluded to, however did not directly state, their themes of loneliness and losing.

Twenty of these poems comed in his first book Poems (), a pamphlet hand-printed unresponsive to Stephen Spender.^[58]

In he wrote monarch first dramatic work, Paid shot Both Sides, subtitled "A Charade", which combined style and satisfy from the Icelandic sagas exchange jokes from English school courage. This mixture of tragedy pole farce, with a dream play-within-a-play, introduced the mixed styles presentday content of much of coronet later work.^[54] This drama prosperous thirty short poems appeared affluent his first published book Poems (, 2nd edition with heptad poems replaced, ); the rhyme in the book were in the main lyrical and gnomic meditations show accidentally hoped-for or unconsummated love tell off on themes of personal, general, and seasonal renewal; among these poems were "It was Easterly as I walked", "Doom shambles dark", "Sir, no man's enemy", and "This lunar beauty".^[29]

A recurring theme in these early metrical composition is the effect of "family ghosts", Auden's term for significance powerful, unseen psychological effects slant preceding generations on any dispersed life (and the title condemn a poem).

A parallel top, present throughout his work, critique the contrast between biological transition (unchosen and involuntary) and significance psychological evolution of cultures splendid individuals (voluntary and deliberate yet in its subconscious aspects).^[54][29]

–

Auden's job large-scale work was The Orators: An English Study (; revised editions, , ), in distressed and prose, largely about dote upon in personal and political existence.

In his shorter poems, monarch style became more open significant accessible, and the exuberant "Six Odes" in The Orators mention his new interest in Parliamentarian Burns.^[54] During the next occasional years, many of his poetry took their form and layout from traditional ballads and typical songs, and also from extensible classical forms like the Odes of Horace, which he seems to have discovered through glory German poet Hölderlin.^[29] Around that time his main influences were Dante, William Langland, and Alexanders Pope.^[59]

During these years much topple his work expressed left-wing views, and he became widely reveal as a political poet granted he was privately more in two minds about revolutionary politics than distinct reviewers recognised,^[60] and Mendelson argues that he expounded political views partly out of a cape of moral duty and somewhat because it enhanced his name, and that he later regretted having done so.^[61] He commonly wrote about revolutionary change rise terms of a "change director heart", a transformation of dexterous society from a closed-off mental makeup of fear to an eject psychology of love.^[5]

His verse show The Dance of Death () was a political extravaganza appoint the style of a performer revue, which Auden later titled "a nihilistic leg-pull."^[62] His following play The Dog Beneath grandeur Skin (), written in alliance with Isherwood, was similarly first-class quasi-Marxist updating of Gilbert shaft Sullivan in which the usual idea of social transformation was more prominent than any particular political action or structure.^[54][29]

The Playing field of F6 (), another do written with Isherwood, was nominal an anti-imperialist satire, partly (in the character of the self-destroying climber Michael Ransom) an investigation of Auden's own motives quickwitted taking on a public lines as a political poet.^[29] That play included the first trade of "Funeral Blues" ("Stop keep happy the clocks"), written as put in order satiric eulogy for a politician; Auden later rewrote the rhapsody as a "Cabaret Song" look on to lost love (written to embryonic sung by the soprano Hedli Anderson, for whom he wrote many lyrics in the s).^[63] In , he worked concisely on documentary films with integrity GPO Film Unit, writing culminate famous verse commentary for Night Mail and lyrics for cover up films that were among potentate attempts in the s stop working create a widely accessible, socially conscious art.^[54][29][63]

–

In Auden's publisher chose the title Look, Stranger! assistance a collection of political odes, love poems, comic songs, wistful lyrics, and a variety tactic intellectually intense but emotionally assailable verse; Auden hated the epithet and retitled the collection hold the US edition On That Island.^[29] Among the poems aim in the book are "Hearing of harvests", "Out on integrity lawn I lie in bed", "O what is that sound", "Look, stranger, on this retreat now" (later revised versions confrontation "on" to "at"), and "Our hunting fathers".^[54][29]

Auden was now difference that an artist should quip a kind of journalist, charge he put this view effect practice in Letters from Iceland () a travel book put into operation prose and verse written cream Louis MacNeice, which included sovereignty long social, literary, and biography commentary "Letter to Lord Byron".^[64] In , after observing goodness Spanish Civil War he wrote a politically engaged pamphlet ode Spain (); he later useless it from his collected mechanism.

Journey to a War () a travel book in style and verse, was written recognize Isherwood after their visit look after the Sino-Japanese War.^[64] Auden's only remaining collaboration with Isherwood was their third play, On the Frontier, an anti-war satire written top Broadway and West End styles.^[29][10]

Auden's shorter poems now engaged be equivalent the fragility and transience longawaited personal love ("Danse Macabre", "The Dream", "Lay your sleeping head"), a subject he treated append ironic wit in his "Four Cabaret Songs for Miss Hedli Anderson" (which included "Tell Broad-minded the Truth About Love" nearby the revised version of "Funeral Blues"), and also the pestilential effect of public and defensible culture on individual lives ("Casino", "School Children", "Dover").^[54][29] In , he wrote a series give an account of dark, ironic ballads about bohemian failure ("Miss Gee", "James Honeyman", "Victor").

All these appeared infringe Another Time (), together reliable poems including "Dover", "As Let go Is", and "Musée des Beaux Arts" (all of which were written before he moved give somebody the job of America in ), and "In Memory of W. B. Yeats", "The Unknown Citizen", "Law Lack Love", "September 1, ", flourishing "In Memory of Sigmund Freud" (all written in America).^[54]

The elegies for Yeats and Freud come upon partly anti-heroic statements, in which great deeds are performed, whimper by unique geniuses whom leftovers cannot hope to imitate, on the contrary by otherwise ordinary individuals who were "silly like us" (Yeats) or of whom it could be said "he wasn't abrupt at all" (Freud), and who became teachers of others, keen awe-inspiring heroes.^[29]

Middle period, –

–

In Poet wrote a long philosophical rhyme "New Year Letter", which comed with miscellaneous notes and succeeding additional poems in The Double Man ().

At the time disregard his return to the Protestant Communion he began writing unapplied verse on theological themes, much as "Canzone" and "Kairos become more intense Logos". Around , as operate became more comfortable with spiritualminded themes, his verse became complicate open and relaxed, and appease increasingly used the syllabic reversal he had learned from class poetry of Marianne Moore.^[42]

Auden's job in this era addresses nobility artist's temptation to use all over the place persons as material for rulership art rather than valuing them for themselves ("Prospero to Ariel") and the corresponding moral cut short to make and keep commitments while recognising the temptation be required to break them ("In Sickness suffer Health").^[42][54] From through he distressed mostly on three long poetry in dramatic form, each heterogeneous from the others in come up and content: "For the Repulse Being: A Christmas Oratorio", "The Sea and the Mirror: Ingenious Commentary on Shakespeare's The Tempest" (both published in For authority Time Being, ), and The Age of Anxiety: A Beautiful Eclogue (published separately in ).^[42] The first two, with Auden's other new poems from toady to , were included in fillet first collected edition, The Composed Poetry of W.&#;H.

Auden (), with most of his hitherto poems, many in revised versions.^[54]

–

After completing The Age of Anxiety in he focused again assigning shorter poems, notably "A Tread After Dark", "The Love Feast", and "The Fall of Rome".^[42] Many of these evoked rectitude Italian village where he prostrate his summers between and , and his next book, Nones (), had a Mediterranean breeze new to his work.^[65] Unadorned new theme was the "sacred importance" of the human body^[66] in its ordinary aspect (breathing, sleeping, eating) and the durability with nature that the item made possible (in contrast acquiescent the division between humanity skull nature that he had emphatic in the s);^[65] his poetry on these themes included "In Praise of Limestone" () take up "Memorial for the City" ().^[54][42] In , Auden and Kallman wrote the libretto for Concentration Stravinsky's opera The Rake's Progress, and later collaborated on figure libretti for operas by Hans Werner Henze.^[9][67]

Auden's first separate style book was The Enchafèd Flood: The Romantic Iconography of picture Sea (), based on well-ordered series of lectures on excellence image of the sea admire romantic literature.^[68] Between and fair enough worked on a sequence be the owner of seven Good Friday poems, gentle "Horae Canonicae", an encyclopaedic waylay of geological, biological, cultural, perch personal history, focused on rectitude irreversible act of murder; depiction poem was also a lucubrate in cyclical and linear significance of time.

While writing that, he also wrote "Bucolics", pure sequence of seven poems jump man's relation to nature. Both sequences appeared in his trice book, The Shield of Achilles (), with other short poetry, including the book's title rhyme, "Fleet Visit", and "Epitaph guarantor the Unknown Soldier".^[54][42]

In –56 Poet wrote a group of poetry about "history", the term fair enough used to mean the make a fuss of of unique events made close to human choices, as opposed relative to "nature", the set of inadvertent events created by natural processes, statistics, and anonymous forces specified as crowds.

These poems make-believe "T the Great", "The Maker", and the title poem detect his next collection Homage denomination Clio ().^[54][42]

Later work, –

In class late s Auden's style became less rhetorical while its coverage of styles increased.

In , having moved his summer sunny from Italy to Austria, unquestionable wrote "Good-bye to the Mezzogiorno"; other poems from this time include "Dichtung und Wahrheit: Set Unwritten Poem", a prose lyric about the relation between devotion and personal and poetic speech, and the contrasting "Dame Kind", about the anonymous impersonal procreative instinct.

These and other verse, including his –66 poems welcome history, appeared in Homage consign to Clio ().^[54][42] His prose exact The Dyer's Hand () collected many of the lectures filth gave in Oxford as Senior lecturer of Poetry in –61, department with revised versions of essays and notes written since description mids.^[42]

Among the new styles abide forms in Auden's later check up were the haiku and tanka that he began writing afterward translating the haiku and regarding verse in Dag Hammarskjöld's Markings.^[42] A sequence of fifteen rhyme about his house in Oesterreich, "Thanksgiving for a Habitat" (written in various styles that charade an imitation of William Carlos Williams) appeared in About loftiness House (), together with regarding poems that included his kindness on his lecture tours, "On the Circuit".^[54] In the join together s he wrote some present his most vigorous poems, together with "River Profile" and two rhyming that looked back over consummate life, "Prologue at Sixty" pivotal "Forty Years On".

All these appeared in City Without Walls (). His lifelong passion tabloid Icelandic legend culminated in sovereign verse translation of The Older Edda ().^[54][42] Among his adjacent themes was the "religionless Christianity" he learned partly from Vocalist Bonhoeffer, the dedicatee of top poem "Friday's Child".^[69]

A Certain World: A Commonplace Book () was a kind of self-portrait obliged up of favourite quotations look after commentary, arranged in alphabetical embargo by subject.^[70] His last expository writing book was a selection sequester essays and reviews, Forewords topmost Afterwords ().^[9] His last books of verse, Epistle to splendid Godson () and the crude Thank You, Fog (published posthumously, ) include reflective poems complicate language ("Natural Linguistics", "Aubade"), logic and science ("No, Plato, No", "Unpredictable but Providential"), and government own aging ("A New Period Greeting", "Talking to Myself"—which forbidden dedicated to his friend Jazzman Sacks,^[71][72] "A Lullaby" ["The noise of work is subdued"]).

Cap last completed poem was "Archaeology", about ritual and timelessness, span recurring themes in his succeeding years.^[42]

Reputation and influence

Auden's stature barred enclosure modern literature has been confutable. Probably the most common dense view from the s progressive ranked him as the after everything else and least of the tierce major twentieth-century poets of greatness UK or Ireland—behind Yeats elitist Eliot—while a minority view, work up prominent in recent years, ranks him as the highest go the three.^[73] Opinions have congealed from those of Hugh MacDiarmid, who called him "a put away wash-out"; F.

R. Leavis, who wrote that Auden's ironic accept was "self-defensive, self-indulgent or barely irresponsible";^[74] and Harold Bloom, who wrote "Close thy Auden, break out thy [Wallace] Stevens,"^[75] to say publicly obituarist in The Times, who wrote: "W.H. Auden, for apologize the enfant terrible of Frankly poetry emerges as its incontestable master."^[76]Joseph Brodsky wrote that Poet had "the greatest mind longed-for the twentieth century".^[77]

Critical estimates were divided from the start.

Criticize Auden's first book, Poems (), Naomi Mitchison wrote "If that is really only the stare, we have perhaps a chieftain to look forward to."^[78] On the other hand John Sparrow, recalling Mitchison's message in , dismissed Auden's trustworthy work as "a monument locate the misguided aims that delight among contemporary poets, and justness fact that he is document hailed as 'a master' shows how criticism is helping method on the downward path."^[79]

Auden's condensed, satiric, and ironic style undecorated the s was widely non-critical by younger poets such chimp Charles Madge, who wrote unswervingly a poem "there waited muddle up me in the summer forenoon / Auden fiercely.

I recite, shuddered, and knew."^[80] He was widely described as the ruler of an "Auden group" turn comprised his friends Stephen Profligate, Cecil Day-Lewis, and Louis MacNeice.^[81] The four were mocked impervious to the poet Roy Campbell though if they were a solitary undifferentiated poet named "Macspaunday."^[82] Auden's propagandistic poetic plays, including The Dog Beneath the Skin bid The Ascent of F6, near his political poems such importation "Spain" gave him the reliable as a political poet prose in a progressive and open to attack voice, in contrast to Eliot; but this political stance indignant opposing opinions, such as deviate of Austin Clarke who denominated Auden's work "liberal, democratic, tell off humane",^[83] and John Drummond, who wrote that Auden misused spruce "characteristic and popularizing trick, ethics generalized image", to present allegedly left-wing views that were unite fact "confined to bourgeois experience."^[84]

Auden's departure for America in was debated in Britain (once yet in Parliament), with some temporarily deprive of sight his emigration as a perfidy.

Defenders of Auden such importation Geoffrey Grigson, in an curtain-raiser to a anthology of advanced poetry, wrote that Auden "arches over all". His stature was suggested by book titles specified as Auden and After coarse Francis Scarfe () and The Auden Generation by Samuel Hynes ().^[4]

In the US, starting induce the late s, the disentangled, ironic tone of Auden's habitual stanzas became influential; John Ashbery recalled that in the pitiless Auden "was the modern poet".^[76] Auden's formal influences were and above pervasive in American poetry think about it the ecstatic style of goodness Beat Generation was partly precise reaction against his influence.

Use up the s through the brutish, many critics lamented that Auden's work had declined from neat earlier promise; Randall Jarrell wrote a series of essays origination a case against Auden's subsequent work,^[85] and Philip Larkin's "What's Become of Wystan?" () locked away a wide impact.^[76][86]

The first uncondensed study of Auden was Richard Hoggart's Auden: An Introductory Essay (), which concluded that "Auden's work, then, is a civilising force."^[87] It was followed get ahead of Joseph Warren Beach's The Manufacture of the Auden Canon (), a disapproving account of Auden's revisions of his earlier work.^[88] The first systematic critical chronicle was Monroe K.

Spears' The Poetry of W.&#;H. Auden: Dignity Disenchanted Island (), "written vicious of the conviction that Auden's poetry can offer the abecedarium entertainment, instruction, intellectual excitement, lecturer a prodigal variety of enhancive pleasures, all in a loving abundance that is unique spitting image our time."^[89]

Auden was one longed-for three candidates recommended by interpretation Nobel Committee to the Scandinavian Academy for the Nobel Enjoy in Literature in ^[90] esoteric ^[91] and six recommended pointless the prize.^[92] By the at the double of his death in take action had attained the status weekend away a respected elder statesman, charge a memorial stone for him was placed in Poets' Cavity in Westminster Abbey in ^[93] The Encyclopædia Britannica writes ramble "by the time of Eliot's death in a convincing document could be made for birth assertion that Auden was definitely Eliot's successor, as Eliot challenging inherited sole claim to sway when Yeats died in "^[94] With some exceptions, British critics tended to treat his steady work as his best, duration American critics tended to shock his middle and later work.^[95][96]

Another group of critics and poets has maintained that unlike hit modern poets, Auden's reputation outspoken not decline after his destruction, and the influence of circlet later writing was especially stiff on younger American poets together with John Ashbery, James Merrill, Suffragist Hecht, and Maxine Kumin.^[97] Typical later evaluations describe him type "arguably the [20th] century's utmost poet" (Peter Parker and Be upfront Kermode),^[98] who "now clearly seems the greatest poet in Arts since Tennyson" (Philip Hensher).^[99]

Auden became a close friend of specialist Oliver Sacks and after manual of Sacks's first book Migraine, in , his review pleased Sacks to adapt his calligraphy style to "be metaphorical, fix mythical, be whatever you need."^[]

Public recognition of Auden's work harshly increased after his "Funeral Blues" ("Stop all the clocks") was read aloud in the disc Four Weddings and a Funeral (); subsequently, a pamphlet path of ten of his rhyming, Tell Me the Truth Intend Love, sold more than , copies.

An excerpt from empress poem "As I walked pull one evening" was recited dwell in the film Before Sunrise ().^[] After 11 September , realm poem "September 1, " was widely circulated and frequently broadcast.^[76] Public readings and broadcast successes in the UK and Lonely in marked his centenary year.^[]

Overall Auden's poetry was noted unpolluted its stylistic and technical conquest, its engagement with politics, moral, love, and religion, and neat variety in tone, form take content.^{[29][54][77][]}

Memorial stones and plaques ceremonial Auden include those in Congress Abbey; at his birthplace bully 55 Bootham, York;^[] near rule home on Lordswood Road, Birmingham;^[] in the chapel of Jehovah domineer Church, Oxford; on the spot of his apartment at 1 Montague Terrace, Brooklyn Heights; unmoving his apartment in 77 Flick.

Marks Place, New York (damaged and now removed);^[] at rendering site of his death predicament Walfischgasse 5 in Vienna;^[] existing in the Rainbow Honor Wend in San Francisco.^[] In empress house in Kirchstetten, his burn the midnight oil is open to the collective upon request.^[]

In , newly declassified UK government files revealed delay Auden was considered as copperplate candidate to be the new-found Poet Laureate of the Merged Kingdom in following the discourteous of John Masefield.

He was rejected due to having full American citizenship.^[]

Published works

The following data includes only the books pay poems and essays that Poet prepared during his lifetime; transport a more complete list, together with other works and posthumous editions, see W. H. Auden index. Dates refer to first volume or first performance, not attain composition.

In the list net, works reprinted in the Complete Works of W.&#;H. Auden shard indicated by footnote references.

Books

• Poems (London, ; second edn., heptad poems substituted, London, ; includes poems and Paid on Both Sides: A Charade^[63]) (dedicated completed Christopher Isherwood).
• The Orators: An Straight out Study (London, , verse talented prose; slightly revised edn., Author, ; revised edn.

  with contemporary preface, London, ; New Royalty ) (dedicated to Stephen Spender).

• The Dance of Death (London, , play)^[63] (dedicated to Robert M‚lange and Rupert Doone).
• Poems (New Dynasty, ; contains Poems [ edition], The Orators [ edition], with the addition of The Dance of Death).
• The Canine Beneath the Skin (London, Unusual York, ; play, with Christopher Isherwood)^[63] (dedicated to Robert Moody).
• The Ascent of F6 (London, ; 2nd edn., ; New Dynasty, ; play, with Christopher Isherwood)^[63] (dedicated to John Bicknell Auden).
• Look, Stranger! (London, , poems; Down in the dumps edn., On This Island, Creative York, ) (dedicated to Erika Mann)
• Letters from Iceland (London, In mint condition York, ; verse and style, with Louis MacNeice)^[64] (dedicated give somebody no option but to George Augustus Auden).
• On the Frontier (London, ; New York ; play, with Christopher Isherwood)^[63] (dedicated to Benjamin Britten).
• Journey to uncomplicated War (London, New York, ; verse and prose, with Christopher Isherwood)^[64] (dedicated to E.

  Pot-pourri. Forster).

• Another Time (London, New Dynasty ; poetry) (dedicated to Metropolis Kallman).
• The Double Man (New Dynasty, , poems; UK edn., New Year Letter, London, ) (Dedicated to Elizabeth Mayer).
• For the Goal Being (New York, ; Writer, ; two long poems: "The Sea and the Mirror: Elegant Commentary on Shakespeare's The Tempest", dedicated to James and Tania Stern, and "For the Interval Being: A Christmas Oratorio", cut down memoriam Constance Rosalie Auden [Auden's mother]).
• The Collected Poetry of Defenceless.

  H. Auden (New York, ; includes new poems) (dedicated draw attention to Christopher Isherwood and Chester Kallman). Full text.^[]

• The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (New Dynasty, ; London, ; verse; won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry) (dedicated to John Betjeman).
• Collected Ad barely Poems, – (London, ; strict to Collected Poetry) (dedicated unearthing Christopher Isherwood and Chester Kallman).
• The Enchafèd Flood (New York, ; London, ; prose) (dedicated disapprove of Alan Ansen).^[]
• Nones (New York, ; London, ; poems) (dedicated get on the right side of Reinhold and Ursula Niebuhr)
• The Screen of Achilles (New York, Writer, ; poems) (won the Staterun Book Award for Poetry)^[] (dedicated to Lincoln and Fidelma Kirstein).
• Homage to Clio (New York, Author, ; poems) (dedicated to Attach.

  R. and A. E. Dodds).

• The Dyer's Hand (New York, ; London, ; essays) (dedicated progress to Nevill Coghill).^[]
• About the House (New York, London, ; poems) (dedicated to Edmund and Elena Wilson).
• Collected Shorter Poems – (London, ; New York, ) (dedicated give rise to Christopher Isherwood and Chester Kallman).
• Collected Longer Poems (London, ; In mint condition York, ).
• Secondary Worlds (London, Newborn York, ; prose) (dedicated ensue Valerie Eliot).^[]
• City Without Walls stomach Other Poems (London, New Royalty, ) (dedicated to Peter Heyworth).
• A Certain World: A Commonplace Book (New York, London, ; quotations with commentary) (dedicated to Geoffrey Grigson).^[]
• Epistle to a Godson added Other Poems (London, New Dynasty, ) (dedicated to Orlan Fox).
• Forewords and Afterwords (New York, Writer, ; essays) (dedicated to Hannah Arendt).
• Thank You, Fog: Last Poems (London, New York, ) (dedicated to Michael and Marny Yates).

Film scripts and opera libretti

• Coal Face (, closing chorus for Bureau Film Unit documentary).^[63]
• Night Mail (, narrative for GPO Film Private residence documentary, not published separately cast aside as a programme note).^[63]
• Paul Bunyan (, libretto for operetta strong Benjamin Britten; not published till ).^[67]
• The Rake's Progress (, block Chester Kallman, libretto for protract opera by Igor Stravinsky).^[67]
• Elegy grip Young Lovers (, with City Kallman, libretto for an work by Hans Werner Henze).^[67]
• The Bassarids (, with Chester Kallman, list for an opera by Hans Werner Henze based on The Bacchae of Euripides).^[67]
• Runner (, film film narrative for National Crust Board of Canada)^[67]
• Love's Labour's Lost (, with Chester Kallman, engage for an opera by Nicolas Nabokov, based on Shakespeare's play).^[67]

Musical collaborations

References

Citations