Talk:W. H. Auden/Archive 1

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General material

It's been awhile since I had poetry, so ... is Auden's homosexuality documented, or simply widely suspected? In other words, does the last paragraph need rephrasing? Koyaanis Qatsi

No doubt at all about it. He entered therapy for it, and eventually accepted it. Several unpublished poems of his treat the issue. --Peccavimus 00:45, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

How do you pronounce his first name? Is it like "Winston" without the 'n'? - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 22:42, Mar 10, 2004 (UTC)

I think it was just widely suspected, especially since there is no real documentation then the fact he went into therapy. Which could have been for a different reason. --24.71.223.141 00:28, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Auden was undoubtedly homosexual - his circle was famous for it in the thirties (Orwell called them "the pansy poets", though MacNeice seems to have been entirely heterosexual). He had a long-standing relationship with Chester Kallman and several other male lovers. Read Humphrey Carpenter's biography or see the biography on the BBC history site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/auden_wystan_hugh.shtml

It is clearly documentented - read the biographies. No doubt at all. First name I believe is prodounced 'Wisstun'?

Auden is difficult for some to accept. His homosexuality is well-documented, but he also took his Christianity very seriously. For example, Harold Bloom (in his Western Canon) refers to Auden as a moralist, and many of his poems were motivated by a Christian ethic. There is a tendency for critics either to "discuss Auden's homosexuality while ignoring his Christianity or to discuss Auden's Christianity while conveniently ignoring his homosexuality." (c.f. http://www.samla.org/sar/00fMartin.html) To maintain NPOV on this page, it is important to represent both carefully since most would be disposed toward one of these biases or the other. At present, the article leans slightly toward the homosexual angle, and without deleting any of this, it could be improved by documenting the influence of his faith on his work (since he is explicit in his use of such themes). Even T.S. Eliot complained of Auden's didacticism (though probably more in light of what he viewed as pedantry than the content) (c.f. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/whauden.htm for an article with sources). --JECompton 03:40, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

There are one or two things I'd like to tweak, but thought I should note here first, in case there are any objections.

Is the sentence

"That the marriage produced no children is less than surprising, given Auden's homosexuality and Mann's lesbianism."

really necessary? We've already established the couple as having married simply in order to facilitate Mann's escape from Nazi Germany. The fact that it was such an arrangement already makes the fact that no children "resulted" "less than suprising", and this additional sentence imparts no new information, as previous sentences have already told us that Auden was gay and that it was a marriage of convenience. More generally, I think the tone is a little too gossipy for what's supposed to be an encyclopedia entry

"After Oxford he went to live for a year in the hedonistic atmosphere of Weimar Berlin."

Once again, the wording of this sounds too much like a certain kind of journalism to me. I can't imagine reading that sentence in an encyclopedia. The words "the hedonistic atmosphere of" should probably be removed.

"In tolerant Berlin he found a practical sexual education in homosexuality, to complement the theoretical education he had gained through his reading of Edward Carpenter."

Unless I'm mistaken, this implies that Auden was a virgin until his time in Berlin, an assumption unsupported by any biographical account I've ever read. If someone has a source for this, please provide it, or the sentence will have to be removed or changed. Additionally, "In tolerant Berlin", coming so soon after "Weimar Berlin", reads clunkily.

Finally, the usual practice when referring to untitled poems by their first lines is to put the first line in quote marks in plain text, not capitalize every word of that line and put it in italics as if it were an actual title, as has been done here.

So, what do you think? Should I change these things or leave them as they are? --Chips Critic 15:48, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

As no-one has raised any objections since I posted the above, I'll make those changes now. --Chips Critic 04:28, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

No objection to change in tone, but I don't think we should remove information in the process. It's probablly worth knowing that he married a lesbian and had no children. - Nunh-huh 04:53, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You're quite right, of course. That's a great improvement. I initially removed that because I had assumed, erroneously as it turns out, that the entry on Erika Mann would mention her sexuality (which it only does indirectly). Should have checked it first. Of course, although I assumed the childlessness of his marriage would have been obviously indicated, this is by no means neccesarily the case (just look at Wilde). Thanks. --Chips Critic 23:13, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I removed the reference to Erika Mann's lesbianism until the discrepancy between this article and her own is cleared up. Her article is entirely unclear as to her sexual behavior.

Her article doesn't mention her sexuality, but she was a lesbian. Here is confirmation from Isherwood. Just google for "Erika Mann lesbian" - not all the information in the world is in Wikipedia (yet). --ajn (talk) 21:24, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Amazing amounts of misinformation added in mid April 2006 which needs to be fixed. One reviser actually changed "Kirchstetten" to "Hirchstetten" because he said there was no such place as Kirchstetten... Please check any Auden biography (online or off) to see that Kirchstetten is the name of the village where Auden spent the last fifteen years of his life. The whole piece needs to be reviewed to clear out this and other misinformation (poems described as having been written at the Downs School that were written years before he got there or longer after he left, etc., etc.).

St. Cecilia

I've changed the title of Auden's poem back to Anthem for St. Cecilia's Day. Although originally proposed as Three songs for St. Cecilia's Day, it was only published as Anthem, as far as I can tell. This is from "Columbia Granger's Poetry Database", as well as from Humphrey Carpenter's biography of Britten. The title is also not to be confused with Dryden's "A Song for St. Cecilia's Day" from which Auden got some amount of inspiration. Makemi 17:29, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid this is not correct, unfortunately. The title of the separate pamphlet publication was "Three Songs for St. Cecilia's Day". Go to hollis.harvard.edu, choose a "Title beginning with" search, enter "Three songs for St Cecilia's Day" and look at the second item. It will show the pamphlet printed by Auden's friend and patron Caroline Newton. You can find this in other library catalogues, and it is of course fully documented in "W. H. Auden: A Bibliography" by B. C. Bloomfield, the standard reference source. If you don't trust the accuracy of the Harvard Library catalogue, you can see a photograph of the pamphlet itself here:

http://www.bookgarden.com/books/132857.html

I hope this settles the question. if there is any doubt, of course, please feel free to post questions here.User:Etaoinshrdlu

Influential?

In this edit, Liteditor removed the phrase

widely regarded as among the most influential and important writers of the 20th century.

with the edit tag deleted pov statement. It could indeed be POV to say that Auden is widely regarded in this way, since it's hard to quantify that. However, I think it's factually clear that he has been widely cited as influential, as shown on the web alone by a Google search which lists many pages making such comments as:

  • One of the most influential poets of the 20th century [1]
  • After Yeats and Eliot, Auden is the most influential English-language poet of the twentieth century. [2]
  • Auden is ordinarily depicted as the most influential and, in many cases, best-loved member of his generation of English poets [3]

So I've changed the article to say that "Auden . . . was an English poet, often cited as one of the most influential of the 20th century". (In so doing I've omitted the word "critic", but this is covered under the Work section where it is indicated that he is primarily known as a poet.) -- JimR 05:14, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Bugger's dream

I don't think that the user who wrote the part about a "bugger's dream" intended it as a vandalism. Atavi 19:00, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Last public appearance

I had read that Auden's last public appearance was at the Ilkley Literature Festival. This detail has been now been removed from the article without a suggestion as to what his last appearance actually was. Could the person who removed it, or indeed anyone else, please indicate what it was? --Richardob 11:43, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Can you give a reference to where you read this? The suggestion is borne out by the statements in the Ilkley Literature Festival article that the festival starts at the end of September and that Auden spoke at the first festival in 1973, since he died on 1973-09-29. -- JimR 06:10, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
I read it on the official ILF web site at http://www.ilkleyliteraturefestival.org.uk/about.html. Yes, as you say, the ILF starts at the end of September - usually the 29th. It is odd that the person who has made the modifications quite defensively comments that the opening at Ilkley was "not at all his last public appearance" and "NOT final public reading, not more significant than a dozen other appearances in the UK". I suggest (s)he is confused - a dozen appearance seems unlikely - and there's no reason to doubt the original entry. I suggest it is re-instated. --Richardob 23:01, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Auden spoke at the Ilkley Festival probably on 19 April 1973 (the festival dates that year were 19-24 April, not September, so any inference based on the currrent schedule is mistaken). He then appeared in public at the London Poetry Festival on 24 June 1973 (reported in Carpenter's biography, p. 449) , and at the Young Vic on 1 July 1973. He then gave a public reading at the Palais Palffy in Vienna on 28 September 1973 (reported in Carpenter's biography p. 450, and all other biographies). That means there were at least three public appearances after his appearance at Ilkley. This surely makes it impossible to describe the Ilkley appearance as his last public appearance.

As for other public appearances in the last year of his life: he got a D.Litt in London in November 1972, gave a public reading in Newcastle in December 1972, gave a BBC television interview in January 1973, appeared in Brussels at the premiere of the opera Love's Labour's Lost in February 1973, presented prizes in London to schoolchildren-poets in March 1973 (pictures appeared in newspapers), and he preached in a church near Edinburgh in March 1973. With the other appearances listed in the paragraph above, that makes at least ten appearances that were described in major newspapers at the time. Carpenter's biography mentions other talks given at Oxford, so a "dozen" is probably an understatement. There's nothing special about the Ilkley occasion that makes it more worth mentioning than any of the hundreds of appearances he made in the UK and US during the previous thirty years, and of course it was at best his fourth-from-last public appearance. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 162.84.234.67 (talk • contribs) 31 July 2006.

The list of appearances given above seems to be mostly accurate, but a few corrections might be noted for the sake of the record. First, Auden's public appearance at a festival in June 1973 was at the Poetry International festival in London, not the London Poetry Festival (which looks like a simple mistake in transcribing the name), and the date was June 29th, 1973 (at the Queen Elizabeth Hall), not June 24th. His appearance at the Young Vic on July 1st was, I believe, for a television broadcast, but it may also have been open to the public; I don't have enough details to be certain. These were Auden's last public appearances in the UK, followed by his last public appearance of all, in Vienna, on the evening before his death.
Also, the dates of the Ilkley Festival in 1973 were April 23rd through 28th. (The 19th-24th dates above seem to refer to the days when Auden was staying in Ilkley.) It seems likely that the original misstatement about Ilkley being Auden's last public appearance (and it is unquestionably a misstatement) derives from this web page, which is much less emphatic: http://pages.britishlibrary.net/alan.myers/auden.html - This describes an appearance in Nottingham in December 1972, and remarks that it "seems to have been his last in this country, apart from an appearance at the Ilkley Festival in April 1973." Of course, this does not pretend to be authoritative, and it ignores Auden's appearances at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in June, at the Young Vic in July, and in Vienna in September. Alan Myers is not at all responsible for the over-interpretation of his page that seems to have taken place on other pages.
Anyone with access to the Times Digitized Archive 1785-1985 can easily confirm the dates of Auden's appearances at Ilkley and at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, and the fact that Auden had given a public reading on the evening before his death. -Emendelson 21:28, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Note on Work Section

I moved the following text from the article, recently added by User:12.27.184.21 at the top of the 'Work' section: The following section needs to be thoroughly rewritten in order to emphasize the poems and essays that Auden regarded as important and which have been regarded as important by literary history. Far too many details below seem to be Wikipedia-style miscellaneous details that are almost entirely insignificant except to the contributors. Sounds reasonable although rather grumpy. Stumps 04:36, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Love relationship with schoolboy Michael Yates

It seems that this peerson was very important in Auden's life and deserves mention here. They seem to have been together since Yates' public school days, as this article and this review suggest. Any thoughts on adding this material to the article? Haiduc 03:59, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

They weren't "together" since Yates's public school days; they remained on friendly terms long after Auden began living with Chester Kallman and Yates got married (as he was until the end of his life). See any biography of Auden. 70.23.235.45 02:30, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

There is no implication in the text that they "remained together" but only that they spent time together. Yes, they did remain friends for a long time. Please do not delete the "Pederasts" category if it is accurate, despite what Auden's feelings about categories may have been. Haiduc 02:41, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Actually it isn't accurate (although it is certainly accurate for, say, Benjamin Britten). Auden's romantic relations, after his mid-twenties, were always with people in their twenties or thirties.160.39.18.250 14:10, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Not so. He had another fling with Yates when the boy was seventeen and he was twenty nine, and he was thirty two when he hooked up with the eighteen year old Kallman. Haiduc 23:16, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Actually you're right about those details. I always tend to think of Kallman as the middle-aged man he had turned into when he and Auden collaborated on opera libretti.160.39.18.250 21:41, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Peter Rogers a "gardener"?!

[This page] claims he was a former pupil! Haiduc 15:45, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

"The latter [Roger, not Rogers] now worked as a gardener at the school." - H. Carpenter, W. H. Auden: A Biography, p. 169. Carpenter notes that Roger had been a pupil earlier; but then, most people were school pupils when they were younger. The linked page is a very compressed chronology of Auden's life, based on printed sources such as Carpenter, Davenport-Hines, etc.

Tendentious editing

Haiduc, your attempts to spam your favourite category everywhere are annoying. How may a relationship between an 18-year-old and a 32-year-old be described as pederastic? Please be more constructive. Write the article about A Day for a Lay, for example. If you do, I will write something about Miss Gee :) --Ghirla -трёп- 19:30, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Ghirla, care to expound on the roots of your annoyance? And what limits would you set to pederastic relations? Haiduc 00:19, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
In most jurisdictions, 18-year-olds are not regarded as minors. But it's not my point. It's most unhelpful to label all gay people in history as pederasts, as you are keen to do. This may be considered a form of tendentious editing. Your edits tend to give undue weight to certain details of Auden's private life. In the current version of the article, there is more information about his brief and neglectable relationship with Yates, than about those with Isherwood and Kallmann. This is madness. The article needs to be balanced, especially as Auden's centenary is coming and many people would want to check the article. --Ghirla -трёп- 10:20, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for your diagnosis, I'll be sure to bring it up with my internist at the earliest opportunity. As for your contentions, a couple of minor points. The discussion of love relationships is one that is factored on emotions and desire. Have you read Auden's poem to Yates? It is very beautiful, and very moving (for me personally and for a number of critics, if you want to be formal about this discussion). There is nothing there about "jurisdictions" or "minors". It is a love poem from a man to a boy. Is it tendentious editing to call it gay, or is it tendentious editing to call it pederastic? As for correctly labeling men who loved boys, I think we need to stick to the facts. The problem, of course, is that love is hard to quantify. Take his fling with Kallman. He met him when the boy was eighteen and they were lovers for two years, though friends for life. Is that relationship pederastic? Would you like to go by numbers? Or would you like to look at the pattern, man meets boy, man loves boy, man remains chaste friends with boy even after boy grows up? But at any rate it is not this relationship which clinches the matter, but the one with Yates. And as for balance, you may wish to neglect his love for Yates, but Auden regarded him as one of the five great loves of his life. Forgive me, but I'll take Auden's opinion about what to neglect and what not, over yours.
Speaking generally, I welcome your gadfly incarnation, and I'll be pleased to discuss individual articles at your discretion. Haiduc 13:32, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Life section

Does someone want to look at the unfinished sentence that starts 'In 1922 he met' ... ?

It seems to have been a first start toward the sentence about Robert Medley in the preceding paragraph and should presumably be deleted.

The repeated deletion of the "Pederast" category from this article

The Auden article is in no way diminished by the removal of that category since the facts of his love life speak eloquently enough for themselves. However, anyone wanting to do a study on pederasty will be handicapped by this failure of proper categorization. Is there some overriding reason why we should hew to this course of action? Haiduc 02:16, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Pederasty in common usage is a term of gross disapprobation. If Auden's relationship with Kallman is the source of the desire to use this label, I think it is stretching too far, as Kallman was 18 when he met Auden, close enough to being an adult that the use of the term is not appropriate.--Paul 17:12, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Comments from User talk pages

You know, I would not mind so much if you could just come out and say you have a personal problem with Auden's pederasty. But trotting out this presumed defense of Auden's philosophy for you to hide behind is far worse. Do as you see fit. Haiduc 00:21, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Alright: PERSONALLY I don't think that anything useful is gained by including ANYONE in a "pederasty" category. If you want to include Auden in a homosexual category, go ahead it is pretty clearly correct, but I regard a "pederasty" category to be just about as useful as an "insect torturing" category. I think there are certain rules of propriety that should be followed here, and a "pederasty" category, or one for jew baiters, is beyond the pale, and doesn't really add to human knowledge.--Paul 00:36, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Paul, it is the farthest thing from my mind to attempt to change your view of pederasty. But I do think that the disagreement between us is more one of semantics than of substance. I deplore child abuse at least as much as the next man. But Auden is cut of a different cloth. He had an honorable, loving, erotic, mutual relationship with a youth who welcomed his attentions and remained his friend for life. And Auden had the courage and integrity to sing of it to the whole world, critics be damned. I think we owe him to not mince words. But I understand that many are unaware of the multiple meanings of "pederasty". Would you accept "Category:Pederastic poetry" instead? Haiduc 01:35, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Jumping in here to add to Paul's point: No, that category would be totally misleading: there is absolutely nothing "pederastic" about Auden's poetry - in fact, until the biographies appeared, most readers would have assumed that the poems were all about adult heterosexual love (as the biographies show that some of the poems, otherwise indistinguishable from the rest, certainly are); that's how Auden's friend Henry Moore illustrated them, in fact. It might help to read the poems before categorizing them (and it isn't clear that this has been done by the person who proposed "pederastic poetry" as a category).—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.59.207.217 (talk • contribs) 15:53, 27 November 2006 UTC.

Category:Pederastic poetry? Are you serious? john k 17:49, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Holy shit, that category actually exists. Wikipedia is a strange, strange place. john k 17:50, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't see why you are so resistant to calling a spade a spade, especially since we are describing a different period (and morality) from the present one. Auden's grew up in the post-Victorian world, a world still influenced by the pedagogic pederastic ideals of Pater and Wilde's times, and a world in which the male love emancipation movement did not discriminate between egalitarian and intergenerational love. Far from being eggregious, romantic (and even sexual) attachments between masters and pupils at the English boys' schools were not uncommon, even if generally kept under wraps, so to speak.
As for disqualifying Kallman, the Uranian pederastic ideal, for example, is a relationship between a grown man and a youth in mid to late adolescence, not a child. Though it certainly was illegal in Victorian times it would not be illegal today (at least not in Western Europe), and certainly can includes a relationship such as that between Auden and Yates and even Kallman, a relationship which he entertained as a man in his early thirties with a teenager (and ended sexually after Kallman was no longer a teen). And I hope that you will not try to convince us that Kallman at eighteen was an adult, since only eighteen year olds think that eighteen year olds are adult.
If "Pederastic poetry" is not appropriate, then we are left with a choice between "Pederast" and "Pederasty" unless there is sentiment in favor of creating a category "Pedagogic pederasty" for situations in a school environment (which I have been thinking to create anyway). Haiduc 21:28, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Or we could consider that this issue is too awkward to deal with in categories, and should rather be explained in the text. The problem with categories is that there is no nuance at all. There's just a flat statement, which can easily be misinterpreted. What's wrong with just calling him a homosexual? (And, btw, how do marriages from earlier times where a man in his 30s wed a teenage girl fit in?) john k 23:56, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Indeed. A Category is another word for label. I'd vote for deleting this one as the definition isn't that clear, and the label is severe.--Paul 00:16, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
A category is not intended to function as a scarlet letter of a Scout badge. It is so that when someone is interested in a particular topic they can go to that category home page and have immediate access to all the articles that are related to the subject. Our hero has had pederastic relationships and has written love poems to his beloveds. It is in the article. He is important and significant in the pederastic record, quite plausibly as a successor to the Uranian poets. But that is for others to elucidate, not for me here. However, elementary intellectual integrity demands that we list him precisely, not in accordance with our personal likes and dislikes so that the Wikipedia is a useful source of information, not another level of veiling.
This well intentioned attempt to defend Auden's honor is unfortunately an unwitting part and parcel of the suppression of information about homosexuality which goes back a long way. Homosexuality across history is complex and does not lend itself to sanitary and comfortable compartmentalization into our 2006 constructs. The only thing that is severe about describing it accurately is our point of view. Haiduc 00:56, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Tendentious contributions (sexuality gets more attention than work?)

Am I the only person who is puzzled by the way in which this article seems to focus either on Auden's sexual inclinations and on his memories of the Pennine Hills in Northern England? A visitor from Mars would scarcely guess that Auden was important because he was a great poet and essayist. Many Wikipedia articles treat a writer's work as centrally important. This one seems to present Auden as a prominent example of his sexual inclinations. Probably there's nothing to be done about it, but I don't think it does much good to Wikipedia or anything else. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.202.77.248 (talk • contribs)

Yes, I see that as a major problem of Wikipedia. Side issues which spark either the public imagination or one particular editor's pet issue tend to get too much space and attention, and the article becomes unbalanced. The most obvious examples of this phenomenon are trivia sections, but it can lead to larger problems as well. Mak (talk) 21:43, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
The merit of Wikipedia is that many specialists can cooperate to produce an ecumenical result. Haiduc 01:00, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
The problem of Wikipedia is that most tendentious editors are not interested in cooperating. Familiar result of their editing is assigning undue weight to some minor point that interests them most. --Ghirla -трёп- 08:36, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
Are you prepared to argue that a love relationship and life-long friendship which inspired a man celebrated for his love poetry, and which was described in the media as "an emotional milestone," is a "minor point" and "neglectable"?! I cannot quote chapter and verse, as you seem to be able, but I intuitively know that Wikipedia is not a culture of complaint but a place where if an article is unbalanced one is free to fill in the missing pieces (if one is able) rather than rail at others' work. Haiduc 11:44, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Trivial and specialist material moved from main page

The main page is overly long, and includes far too much trivial and special-interest material; here is the material that clearly doesn't belong on the main page:

Auden always saw himself as a northerner and had a lifelong allegiance to the high limestone moorland of the North Pennines in Durham, Northumberland and Cumbria, in particular the poignant remains of the once-thriving lead mining industry. Auden called it his 'Mutterland' and his 'great good place'. Auden first went north (to Rookhope, County Durham) in 1919 and the Pennine landscapes excited a Wordsworthian visionary intensity in the twelve-year-old Wystan.
From 1921 Auden often stayed at his parents' cottage atThrelkeld near Keswick in Cumbria, and some forty of the poems of the 1920s and 1930s and two influential plays Paid on Both Sides and The Dog Beneath the Skin are set in the North Pennines. The 1922 epiphany when Auden first became conscious of himself as a creative artist, occurred at Rookhope, when he dropped a stone down a flooded mineshaft.
In her introduction to Juvenilia: Poems 1922-1928 (1994), Katherine Bucknell traces themes relating to Auden's career and describes important aspects of his years at Gresham's School and Christ Church, Oxford, highlighting his instinct for experimentation and the testing of tradition.
References to the North Pennine area, and lead mining, occur constantly throughout Auden’s later life in both prose and verse, most notably in the poems "New Year Letter" (1940); "The Age of Anxiety" (1947); "Amor Loci" (1965) and "Prologue at Sixty" (1967), wherein he calls himself a "Son of the North", as well as the magazine article, printed in Vogue in 1954, "England: Six Unexpected Days", a suggested driving itinerary mostly through the Pennine Dales.
Auden was a frequent correspondent and longtime friend (although they rarely saw each other) of J.R.R. Tolkien, who died three weeks before Auden. He was among the most prominent early critics to praise The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien wrote in a 1971 letter, "I am... very deeply in Auden's debt in recent years. His support of me and interest in my work has been one of my chief encouragements. He gave me very good reviews, notices and letters from the beginning when it was by no means a popular thing to do. He was, in fact, sneered at for it."
His 1947 poem "The Age of Anxiety" provided the basis of a Symphony by Leonard Bernstein; the symphony includes no vocal music, but the mood and themes of the movements were suggested by the poem
His poem "Hymn to the United Nations" was commissioned by the United Nations Secretary-General U Thant who also commissioned a setting for the poem by Pablo Casals; Casals conducted the first performance in 1971, but the work was never adopted officially by the United Nations.
With Leif Sjöberg, Auden translated 66 of the Swedish poet Pär Lagerkvist's poems.
His poem "Victor" served as the basis for a song of the same name on Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson's 1996 solo album, also titled Victor.

The North Pennines

It seems extraordinary to me that Auden's constantly re-affirmed allegiance to his English 'Mutterland' the North Pennines, the place where he states that he first became conscious of himself as a poet, has been ERASED UTTERLY from the main page.

Over seventy proper names from the area can be found in Auden's work. Some forty poems and two important plays (Paid on Both Sides and The Dog Beneath the Skin), plus the documentary Hadrian's Wall and the unpublished epic 'In the year of my youth...' are set in the locality, and references to it re-occur throughout the poet's life.

If the subject had been Shakespeare would we encounter this almost squeamish abhorrence? This cavalier removal of every reference to a major influence on the poet's work?

Presumably because the North Pennines are remote from metropolitan centres, particularly American ones, the main Auden sources have tended to hurry over this vital aspect of study. That is why it is important to keep it in view.

Early in 2007 to celebrate the Auden centenary, Melvyn Bragg will be introducing a film on the South Bank Show, which is to begin at Housesteads fort on Hadrian's Wall, and include some North Pennine lead-mining installations. Benjamin Britten's setting of Roman Wall Blues, rediscovered in Northumberland this year, will be performed.

There is a strong case for re-editing here. I await comments. Bandalore 02:18, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

That's a reasonable observation. A quotation from Auden about the Pennines and lead mining is now right at the top of the entry, in the childhood section.
The whole biographical section needs to be very carefully rewritten to diminish special-interest comments, but Auden's interest in the lead-mining district is indeed important, and I think the current entry reflects its importance. Obviously other matters that were important to Auden throughout his life - such as religion and theology, politics, ethics, language, versification, political and literary history, personal love, music and opera, nature and science, etc. - are all competing with the North Pennines for space in the entry, and maintaining balance will be quite difficult. The added sentences give equal emphasis (as Auden himself did in the quotation) to the specfic landscape and the specific industry. Let's try to avoid making the Pennines the sole focus of these sentences, when Auden's emphasis was always on both the Pennines and the lead-mines.
Worth pointing out that Auden did not become aware of himself "as a poet" in the Pennines - that occurred at Gresham's School, Holt, in Norfolk. What you have in mind is the passage in "New Year Letter" that at Rookhope he first became aware of "self and not-self, death and dread." That's a very different thing from becoming "conscious of himself as a poet."

Missing person report

I dread to cavil at Macspaunday's professional editing job, but if I might raise one small issue - why is it that all mentions of Michael Yates have been expunged from this article? Haiduc 18:29, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Many thanks for the generous words on the editing. I am trying to make this entry superior to anything available on Auden in printed encyclopias, and I hope the current version is getting close to that goal. The hardest part of the task has been keeping the entry within the suggested 30KB limits that seem suitable to an encyclopedia entry. This means massively compressing or omitting much important material about Auden's poetry, prose, plays, libretti, essays, and other writings that are the reason he is listed in Wikipedia in the first place.
What went wrong with the earlier edits is that it got saturated with material (such as Auden's love for the north of England and the different titles of his poem for St Cecilia's Day and the location of his last reading) that was all unquestionably important, but which was no more and no less important than dozens of other things that were left out entirely. Also, the entry got cluttered with needless details that got added in detail-wars, where one person added a detail (like the location of Auden's last reading) solely in order to counter a mistaken detail that someone else had included. It seemed worth the effort to clear out all these matters and get the balance right from beginning to end.
About your specific question, among the many issues I researched before going to work were the standard Wikipedia guidelines and established practice in other entires for treating the subject's sexual relationships. The general theory (which strikes me as entirely valid) seems to be that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a substitute for full biographical accounts of the kind provided (for example) by the Oxford Dictionary of British Biography, and that the 30KB limit is worth maintaining (as I'm very pleased to have done so far).
Therefore, I have given what I hope is an accurate description of Auden's relationships with Christopher Isherwood and Chester Kallman, relations that Auden recorded in his dedications to his Collected Poetry and Collected Shorter Poems, and which every biographical account agrees were the two most significant in his life. This meant omitting his relations with women (at least two names are known) and plus at least three important relations that occurred later in his life, in the years after 1947 when he wrote his list of five significant relations in a notebook that he was using at the time he was writing The Age of Anxiety. This is an encyclopedia entry, not a biography.
The editing here now brings this item into line with the treatment of sexual relations in entries for other modern writers such as W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, William Empson (a really superb entry), Stephen Spender, Louis MacNeice (another fine entry), C. Day-Lewis, and others. It seems to be the right practice to keep entries such as these more or less coordinated in their treatment.
Thank you again for your generous words about the professionalism of the editing. As you can see, over the past few days, I've removed much material that I added earlier when I realized that I was getting the balance wrong. (And may I modestly point out the massive improvements in the list of publications, critical and biographical references, and links?) Macspaunday 19:10, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
Looking back, I see that the preceding is rather a long answer to a short question. My excuse is that I wanted to point out the way in which the whole entry has (I hope, at least) been made more coherent, more lucid, more consistent, more professional, in every possible way. I frankly wondered whether anyone would notice, so your word "professional" was very gratifying. Macspaunday 19:41, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for your considerate answer. The content of an article, regardless of the whole NPOV theory, is obviously something that is at the discretion of the editor, and his particular perspective. We all have one. So I will not claim to be dealing in absolutes when I say that there is room for a bit more expansion in this article, and that some things that have been left out were best included.
In what regards article size, I think you are doing yourself a disfavor by restricting the article to 30k. 32K is the size mentioned in the guidelines, and in the same breath we are told that it is not a hard and fast rule anymore. I checked today's featured article (Salsa music) and noticed it is 41k long, and obviously no less valued for it. I would venture to say that aiming at some target between 30 and 40k is more than reasonable, not so much from the perspective of the rules but more so as to preserve legibility.
Having said that, I would like to ask you to consider looking a bit more closely at his personal life, and in particular the five people who were most important to him. I think they each deserve a brief mention. In particular Michael Yates was a very significant individual in his emotional life and was a person he kept as a friend his whole life. You would not think it from the article, where the poem inspired by Yates is presented as an example of his transient relationships, while the Kallman relationshp (which sexually may not have been any less transient) is contrasted to it as being akin to a marriage (in what sense?). At the same time, I will concede that the length of the treatment that episode received previously in the article may have been excessive, and were best covered in an article on Michael Yates himself. Haiduc 19:57, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
All definitely worth thinking about. As for "marriage": Auden wore a wedding ring during the first year of his relationship with Kallman, and wrote a marriage poem, "In Sickness and in Health" to Kallman; the poem was first published with a dedication to the married couple from whom Auden rented an apartment in Swarthmore, but that was because the wife in the married couple saw the poem and asked Auden to dedicate it to them, apparently because she thought it might act a kind of magical charm to save her marriage. The incident, and Auden's view of his relation with Kallman as a marriage, is fully described in the sources listed in the entry. (The poem "Lay your sleeping head" is quite explicitly and literally about the theme of love's transience and the poet's own "faithless[ness]", by the way. It seems important in writing these entries to reflect the actual content of the poems.)
Meanwhile, I'll continue to work within the 30KB limit, partly because, arbitrary or not, it seems to enforce a real concentration on the crucial matter of Auden's work. Once we start adding the people to whom or about whom Auden wrote poems (other than Isherwood and Kallman), then the problem of scale becomes very difficult.
You mention "five people" close to him - but that was in a list he made when he was only thirty-nine or forty, and a full list would have at least eight, and it wouldn't include very important nonsexual relations such as those with Annie Dodds and Lincoln Kirstein and Geoffrey Gorer, et al., et al.; and I dread the insistence that would follow on adding material about all the places that Auden valued; and about all the authors whom he wrote about and the editors he worked with; and about his views on book design; and about all the theologians whom he worked with; and the composers who set his music; and about his collaboration with early music groups, etc., etc. Even listing these topics (all of which are tempting to include) makes me turn slightly pale. Macspaunday 20:30, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Quotations moved to separate page

The list of quotations (now on a separate page W. H. Auden: Quotations) was a messy and disorganized gathering that seems to have been taken (complete with errors) from quotation sites on the web. It is far below Wikipedia standards as it stands, and perhaps someone will be inspired to rework it in chronological order, with quotations checked against printed originals, and with a more representative selection. Macspaunday 20:54, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Have also added a link to the far better list in Wikiquote. Macspaunday 21:50, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Have now put correct versions of W. H. Auden: Quotations material on Wikiquote page and removed link to W. H. Auden: Quotations; will eventually ask for deletion of the Quotations page, as the Wikiquote page is infinitely better. Macspaunday 15:35, 29 December 2006 (UTC) - Later: Deletion requested for Quotations page. Macspaunday 17:43, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Harping

Looking over the article I was again struck by the assimilation of the relationship with Kallman to a marriage. If that is how Auden himself saw it then it makes sense. But without that support it reads more as a modern gloss. Also, a pity to have gone to all that effort with the Yates page without a mere link to it in this article. The point where lifelong friendships are mentioned seems like a good place, all the more as it follows the title of the poem inspired by the boy. Haiduc 18:21, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

But marriage is exactly and explicitly how Auden saw and described his relation with Kallman. This is very fully documented, starting with his letter to his brother ("this time, my dear, I really believe it's marriage"), then his letters describing their 1939 cross-country travels as a "honeymoon"; then his poem addressed to Kallman titled "In Sickness and In Health" (the phrase of course is part of the Anglican marriage service - "in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, until death you do part" etc.); and much else available in printed sources. It's hard to imagine anything more explicit than this. (Perhaps you're relying only on information available in online sources, rather than the extensive printed sources?)
As for links, I've tentatively sorted out how to do this: at some point I'm going to create a list of Auden's dedications with links to all the people who were emotionally important to him. This will take time, but it's on my list of projects. And of course, by being based on freely available printed materials, it will avoid any point-of-view disputes. Meanwhile, I've begun linking (and creating pages) for other important aspects of Auden's life and work, e.g. the Group Theatre. This whole entry was a disaster area until recently.... Macspaunday 19:20, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
I also still have a lot of work to do on the Kallman page, which (except for the material I added recently) seems to be based entirely on the half-dozen bits of information available online. Wikipedia, unavoidably, tends to include mostly information that people can find online, but that obviously is a major problem in dealing with any matters that predate the internet. Macspaunday 19:24, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
All harping is welcome, by the way - it only helps to encourage clarification. Throughout his life, Auden wrote extensively about marriage, which he once called "the only subject" (apparently meaning the only subject suitable for art, conversation, etc.), and which emphasized repeatedly was his own emotional preference. In fact, his strong emphasis on marriage in its psychological, moral, erotic, and religious aspects, is one of the aspects of his work that distinguishes him from all major writers. It's very tempting to expand the coverage of this in the entry because of its great importance to Auden, but I'm trying hard to maintain balance, and avoiding everything that went wrong with the entry in earlier versions. Macspaunday 19:35, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
I guess that as long a harping does not spill over into carping it is still a collaboration. Thanks for the marriage explanation. It really needs to be touched upon in the article -- as it is, the unexplained mention reads like an anachronism. (I am playing here the role of a naive reader, which comes to me rather naturally.) As for Yates, right now that section reads like the inadvertent commission of an omission. The mention of his name will complete the contrast with Kallman (and strengthen the rationale for including the comment on "Lullaby). Haiduc 21:58, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
Again, I'll continue to touch this up to avoid emphasis errors (and to anything that would commit me to insert a dozen parallel details). You've seen that I've added details on "marriage" and am about to add a very crucial point that Auden made about his passion for words. Happy New Year to all! Macspaunday 22:01, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

And I should add that your questions and comments have been enormously helpful. I've focused far more carefully on consistency, balance, clarity, and specficity than I probably would have done on my own. (I like to hope I would have got around to it someday, but I can't be certain of that.) Many thanks again for all these comments and questions. It's obvious that this and other entries are far better because of them. Macspaunday 22:25, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:W. H. Auden/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

== Biography assessment rating comment ==

WikiProject Biography Assessment

The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- Yamara 11:59, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Certainly thorough enough to warrant GA status. For anything above that, be certain every paragraph has enough unique facts to warrant inline citations, then provide them. The article might well be A-class by Wikiproject Biography standards, even as it stands now. -- Yamara 12:17, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Last edited at 16:16, 29 January 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 20:01, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

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