W.H.+Auden

[[image:wh_auden.jpg width="106" height="136"]]W. H. Auden (1907 - 1973)
Auden was born 21st February 1907, in York, the son of a physician. At first interested in science, he soon turned to poetry. In 1925 he entered Christ Church College, University of Oxford, where he became the centre of a group of literary intellectuals that included Stephen Spender, Christopher Isherwood, C. Day Lewis, And Louis MacNeice. After graduation he was schoolmaster in Scotland and England for five years. In London, in the early 1930s, Auden belonged to a circle of promising young poets who were strongly leftist. His book //Poems//, which helped to establish his reputation, focused on the breakdown of English capitalist society but also showed a deep concern with psychological problems. He subsequently wrote three verse plays with Isherwood: //The Dog Beneath the Skin//, //The Ascent of F-6//, and //On the Frontier//. In 1937 he drove an ambulance for the Loyalists in the Spanish civil war. In the same year he was awarded the King's Gold Medal for Poetry, a major honour. Trips to Iceland and China - the first with MacNeice, the second with Isherwood - resulted in two jointly written books, //Letter from Iceland//, and //Journey to a War//. In 1939 Auden moved to the US, where he became a citizen and was active as a poet, reviewer, lecturer and editor. His //Double Man// and //For the Times Being// reflect an increasing concern with religion, which, he discovered, offered a better solution to his problems than communism. //The Age of Anxiety//, a "baroque eclogue" that takes place in a New York City bar, won him the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for poetry and provided an apt and convenient name for his era. His numerous other works include //Collected Poetry, the Shield of Achilles, Collected Longer Poems//, and several opera librettos written with the American Chester Kallman. From 1956 to 1961 he was professor of poetry at Oxford, and in 1972 he returned to Christ Church as a writer in residence. He died on 28th September, 1973, in Vienna. As a poet, Auden bore some resemblance to **T.S. Eliot**. Like him, he had a cool, ironic wit, yet was deeply religious. He was concerned to a greater degree than Eliot, however, with social problems. Possessed of probing psychological insight, Auden also had a supremely lyric gift. __Like Eliot Auden was deeply pessimistic about spiritual condition of modern man__. However, unlike Eliot and Yeats __he welcomed the force and vitality of the modern world with open arms, without taking refuge in a mythical__ past. Auden's subject was above all the present moment. __For Auden the past was no better than the present__. The same problems had always existed. Refugee Blues by W H Auden

Say this city has ten million souls, Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes: Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.

Once we had a country and we thought it fair, Look in the atlas and you'll find it there: We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

In the village churchyard there grows an old yew, Every spring it blossoms anew; Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that.

The consul banged the table and said: 'If you've got no passport, you're officially dead'; But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.

Went to a committee; they offered me a chair; Asked me politely to return next year: But where shall we go today, my dear, but where shall we go today?

Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said: 'If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread'; He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky; It was Hitler over Europe, saying: 'They must die'; We were in his mind, my dear, we were in his mind.

Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin, Saw a door opened and a cat let in: But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews.

Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay, Saw the fish swimming as if they were free: Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees; They had no politicians and sang at their ease: They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.

Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors, A thousand windows and a thousand doors; Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.

Stood on a great plain in the falling snow; Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro: Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me. '**Blues**': a slow, sad song, traditionally with 3-line stanzas with 4 beats to each line. The music features 'blue notes': mainly flattened thirds and sevenths. The Blues were first sung by African Americans working on slave plantations in the southern states of the USA; these melancholy ballads expressed the unhappiness of the slaves' lives. Later, Blues became part of the development of popular song and jazz. WH Auden's poem uses many of the characteristics of a blues lyric.

//Funeral Blues (Song IX / from Two Songs for Hedli Anderson)//
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 in the sky the message He is Dead, Put crêpe 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 forever, 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. []