Wystan Hugh Auden 1907 1973 Performer Heritage Marina

Wystan Hugh Auden (1907 -1973) Performer Heritage Marina Spiazzi, Marina Tavella, Margaret Layton © 2017

Wystan Hugh Auden 1. Life • Born in 1907 in York to middle-class Anglican parents. • A voracious reader. • At Oxford became the leader of the so-called ‘Oxford poets’, a group of left-wing intellectuals. • Deeply committed to social and political issues. Wystan Hugh Auden. Performer Heritage

Wystan Hugh Auden 1. Life • 1926: worked for the strikers in the General Strike • 1928: went to Berlin and witnessed the rise of Nazism. • 1935: married the German writer Thomas Mann’s daughter so that she could escape Nazi Germany. • Became increasingly concerned with his homosexuality, regarded as a criminal offence in Britain. Wystan Hugh Auden. Performer Heritage

Wystan Hugh Auden 1. Life • In 1939 moved to New York and settled in a house in Brooklyn. • In 1940 began teaching in New York and published Another Time: Poems by W. H. Auden, Random House, (1940) first printing. Performer Heritage

Wystan Hugh Auden 1. Life • From then on his social poetry was to be anti-ideological, anti-political. • Returned to Anglicanism, the religion of his youth. • Developed a growing concern with poetics and difficult verse forms. Performer Heritage Auden with Cecil Day-Lewis and Stephen Spender.

Wystan Hugh Auden 1. Life • In 1946 became a citizen of the USA. • In 1956 he was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford. • Died in 1973. Performer Heritage

Wystan Hugh Auden 2. England vs America Auden’s English period • Influenced by Freud and psychoanalysis. • Psychological models in relation to the customs of an entire society. • Another influence was that of Karl Marx. • Took for granted the engagement of the individual with history. Performer Heritage

Wystan Hugh Auden 2. England vs America Auden’s American period Performer Heritage • Withdrawal from political commitment. • Disillusionment with the political events in Spain and the Soviet Union. • Did not want to be the leader of the intellectual left but simply a verbal artist. • Came to believe that improvement must begin within the self, not within society.

Wystan Hugh Auden 3. Development of theme Theme of quest = at first it regards secular political interests. Theme of quest = later it regards ethical concerns. Sorrow, the relationship between man and nature, alienation, love, death, transgression and renewal. Performer Heritage

Wystan Hugh Auden 4. Style Mixture of modes and forms Performer Heritage Mode Form Fictional, didactic, comic, contemplative, fantastic Free verse, metre, rhyme, popular forms such as ballads or songs

Wystan Hugh Auden 5. The figure of the poet • The role of poetry was to tell stories from which each person may draw his/her own conclusions according to their own immediate needs. • Performer Heritage The poet’s task was to act as a public voice, to support the causes for freedom against tyranny.

Wystan Hugh Auden 6. Another Time (1940) • • • The collection contains some of Auden’s most famous poems. Symbolic title: the poet entered ‘another time’ through the exile he shared with other refugees. The collection marks Auden’s turn from secular political interests to ethical concerns. Performer Heritage

Wystan Hugh Auden 6. Another Time The poems are organised in three sections I. People and Places II. Lighter Poems III. Occasional Poems Performer Heritage The relationship between man and nature. Poems with a comic tone and domesticity. He celebrates great figures or tries to understand great historical events.