Word: auden
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...CONSIDER," one of the best of his early poems, W.H. Auden offered his generation two destinies: "To disintegrate on an instant in the explosion of mania/Or lapse for even in to a classic fatique." It may be unfair to judge Auden's recent poetry until we can read his as yet unpublished work, particularly his love poetry, but it seems as if our verdict in his case must be one of fatigue. There are seventeen poems in Thank You, Fog--few of them are bad and they are all characteristic, but they are enervated, written on a lower energy level...
...never step twice into the same Auden," his first really good critic, Randall Jarrell observed, and went on to identify "Four Stages of Auden's Ideology." On the other hand, Auden's development can be neatly split into only two periods. At first he felt uncomfortable in his world, and rejected its economic organization, social structure, and sexual practices; even nature, things like landscape and weather, seemed sick and threatening. Auden himself, in a poem in this book called "Thanksgivings," takes a stab at explaining why he abandoned this radical alienation...
...Auden returned to Christianity and a certain complacence about politics, even though he maintained to his death that "human time is a city/where each inhabitant has/a political duty/nobody else can perform." But in his later work Auden is no longer interested in defining that duty, or even in dramatically exhorting anyone to perform it. He is content to inhabit the realm of "common-sense" and its unrevolutionary complement, "tall stories...
...Auden finds himself at home here. He feels himself in a world where "trees are proud of their posture,/stones are delighted to lie/just where they are." His disgust for man himself, and he is willing to settle for mediocrity so long as it is not troublesome. Beasts can be admired in preference...
...scene has been extensive. As a visiting professor and lecturer on numerous American campuses, and as British editor for fourteen years on the Anglo-American literary magazine Encounter, Spender has been more than a mere witness to American literary activity for almost half a century. Along with W. H. Auden, C. Day Lewis and Louis MacNeice, he was part of the 'thirties foursome that brought radical changes to a somewhat stagnating English literary style and consciousness. He is known internationally not only for his poetry but for numerous critical works, the most famous of which is The Destructive Element...