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English-born poet, whose world view developed from leftist intellectual
to religious thinker. Among Auden's greatest accomplishments as
a poet was that of reconciling tradition and modernism.
"But time is always guilty. Someone must pay for
Our loss of happiness, our happiness itself."
(from 'Detective Story' in Collected Poems, 1991)
 W.H.
Auden was born in York, North Yorkshire, and brought up in Solihull
in the West Midlands, an industrial landscape which was to remain
important to him as a poet. He studied at Oxford, receiving his
B.A. in 1928. From 1928 to 1929 Auden lived in Berlin, where he
took advantage of the sexually liberal atmosphere, and was introduced
to the psychological theories of Homer Lane.
After returning to England Auden taught at prep school, in 1930
privately in London, at Larchfield Academy, Helensburgh (Scotland)
in 1930-32, and at Downs School, Colwall, Herefordshire in 1932-35.
He was staff member of GPO film Unit (1935-36), making documentaries
such as Night Mail (1935). Music for this film was provided
by Benjamin Britten, with whom Auden collaborated on the song-cycle
Our Hunting Fathers and on the unsuccessful folk-opera Paul
Bunyan. In 1936 Auden travelled in Iceland with Louis MacNeice
- Auden believed himself to be of Icelandic descent.
As a poet Auden made his debut with POEMS, in 1930. The poems were
short, untitled, often slightly cryptic, and as a reaction to romanticism
there is little Yeatsian self-expression. Auden soon gained fame
as a leftist intellectual, and wrote passionately on social problems,
among others in his collection of poems LOOK, STRANGER! (1936).
Compressed figures of speech, direct statement, and musical effect
characterized ON THIS ISLAND (1937) and ANOTHER TIME (1940). In
the late 1930s Auden's poems were perhaps less radical politically,
seeing suffering as a part of ordinary life.
In 1937 Auden went to Spain as a civilian in support of the Republican
side, and gave radio broadcasts for the Republican forces. Auden
recorded his experiences in the book SPAIN (1937), but did not discuss
his experiences much. In 1935 he married Thomas Mann's daughter
Erika Mann, a lesbian actress and journalist, so that she could
get a British passport.
In the 1930s Auden collaborated with Christopher Isherwood in several
plays, and travelled with him in China in 1938. In January 1939
they emigrated to America and in 1946 Auden became a US citizen.
In the 1940s he turned into a religious thinker, converting to Anglicanism,
and depicted his conversion in the THE SEA AND THE MIRROR (1944)
and FOR THE TIME BEING (1944), in which 'The Sea and the Mirror',
subtitled 'A Commentary on Shakespeare's The Tempest', presents
a Christian-allegorical reading of Shakespeare's work. The poem
works somewhat like a medieval allegorical drama, with Prospero
representing the conscious ego, Ariel the imagination, Caliban not
only flesh but our awareness of ourselves as fallen creatures.
When Statesmen gravely say 'We must be realistic',
The chances are they're weak and, therefore, pacifistic,
But when they speak of Principles, look out: perhaps
Their generals are already poring over maps.
(from Shorts in Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957)
During World War II Auden was a major with the U.S. Army Strategic
Bombing survey in Germany (1945). From 1956 to 1961 he was a professor
of poetry at Oxford and a member of the American Academy from 1954.
Auden lived primarily in New York, though from 1957 he spent summers
in Kirchstetten, Austria. From 1939 to 1953 he taught at various
schools and universities. He was a member of the editorial board
of Decision magazine (1940-41), Delos magazine (1968),
and editor of the Yale Series of Young Poets (1947-62). 'Thanksgiving
for a Habitat' in ABOUT THE HOUSE (1965) represented Auden's technically
adept and intellectually sharp mature period. Its poems corresponded
to the rooms of Auden's Austrian house.
 Auden
talked of himself as a colonizer of modern verse, as distinct from
such explorers as Marianne Moore or Ezra Pound. He also wrote opera
librettos with American poet Chester Kallman, who lived with him
over 20 years. In 1972 Auden left New York and returned to Oxford,
living in a cottage provided by Christ Church. He died of a heart-attack
after giving a poetry reading in Vienna on September 29, 1973. Auden
was buried in nearby Kirchstetten.
'Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique
and impossible to get rid of as his shadow.'
In 'Psychology and Art To-Day,' Auden claimed that art consists
in telling parables 'from which each according to his immediate
and peculiar needs may draw his own conclusions.' Sometimes Auden
used the parable as a means of speaking about Christianity at a
distance, as in the 1954 essay 'Balaam and his Ass.' In 'The Guilty
Vicarage' (1949) Auden found in the detective story a Christian
parable of existential guilt.
For further reading: The Poetry of W.H. Auden by Monroe
K. Spears (1963); A Reader's Guide to W.H. Auden by John Fuller
(1970); W.H. Auden: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter (1981);
W.H. Auden: The Critical Heritage, ed. by John Haffenden (1983);
W.H. Auden: The Far Interior, ed. by Alan Bold (1985); Auden's
Apologies for Poetry by Lucy McDiarmid (1990); Auden by Richard
Davenport-Hines (1995) - See The Spanish Civil War and writers:Ernest
Hemingway, George Orwell, Federico García Lorca, etc.
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