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Wystan Hugh Auden AUDEN, WYSTAN HUGH 4 ics," in Critical Perspectives on Men, I In 1937 he ex~ressedhis svm~a-. - Masculinity and Sports, Michael thy for the loyalist cause by visiting Spain, Messner and Don Sabo, eds., Champaign, and the followingyear he traveled to China IL: Human Kinetics Publishing 1988) D. Sabo and R. Runfola, lock: Sports and with Isherwood. In 1940, having become Male Identity, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: disillusioned with left-wing causes, he Prentice-Hall, 1980; Michael J. Smith, converted back to Anglicanism,- a change- "The Double Life of a Gay Dodger," in that profoundly affected the character and Black MenlWhite Men, San Francisco, tone of his writing. With the outbreak of Gay Sunshine Press, 1983. Brian Pronger World War 11 in Europe, he settled in New York, where he met and fell in love with a young man, Chester Kallman, who was AUDEN,WYSTAN HUGH destined to be his lifelongcompanion. This (1907-1973) relationship was celebrated in a series of Anglo-American poet and critic. poems to an anonymous and ungendered The child of cultivated, upper-class par- lover, and also in a deliberately outrageous ents, Auden profited from a traditional composition, "The Queen's Masque." This British elite schooling. As a student at unpublished dramatic composition, in- Christ College, Oxford, he first excelled in tended to be performed for Kallman's science, but shifted to English with the twenty-second birthday on February 7, intention of becoming a "great poet." A 1943, was not rediscovered until 1988. In quick study, Auden acquired an under- 1941 Auden collaborated with the gay graduate reputation as an almost oracular composer Benjamin Britten in a chamber presence, and he began to assemble around opera, Paul Bunyan. Through Kallman, him a group of young writers that included whose knowledge was expert and unflag- Christopher Isherwood (whomhe hadmet ging, Auden expanded his interest in op- at preparatory school),C. Day Lewis, Louis era, and the two collaborated on a libretto MacNeice, and Stephen Spender. After for Igor Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, leaving Oxford in 1928 Auden decided to as well as other works. Although actual spend a year in Berlin learning German. He sexual relations between them ceased af- then held a series of school-teaching jobs ter the first years, the two men made a life that allowed time for writing. together based on mutual trust and affec- Like the other members of his tion. Auden took charge of earning a liv- group-who came to be known as "the ing, while Chester excelled in cooking and poets of the thirtiesM-Auden broke with homemaking. Despite some asperities, the pastoral placidity of the Georgian trend their relationship survived not only in in English poetry, seeking to encompass New York, but in Ischia on the Mediterra- such modern technology and such trends nean and in Kirchstetten in Austria, where in thought as Freudianpsychoanalysis and they spent the summers. Marxism. Although he later repudiated Auden's later work is marked by their ideological commitments, Auden's ambitious cycles, such as A Christmas early poems have a numinous ambiguity Oratorio (1945) and The Age of Anxiety that unfortunately was largely lost in his (19471, which are technically expert but, later more pellucid but often facile work. for many readers at least, lacking in the In his early poetry the exaltation of the charisma of truly great poetry. Partly to figures of the Airman and the Truly Strong make ends meet, Auden produced a con- Man represents a continuation of the siderable body of prose criticism, and this adolescent aesthete's admiration for the sometimes deals movingly with other "hearty." His work in the 1930s had both homosexual authors. His most explicit the exhuberance and the limitations of homosexual poem is a piece of doggerel youth. called "The Platonic Lay" or "A Day for a 4 AUDEN, WYSTAN HUGH Lay," which is not included in authorized anism, which held that man was a product editions of his works. Late in life he had of a primal struggle between the high god some contacts with the emerging Ameri- and his Satanic opponent, whose powers can gay movement, though to some his at- were almost equally great. Although he titudes seemed old-fashioned and not de- later abandoned this dualistic belief, im- void of self-contempt. portant residues of its dark coloration Auden's works are still being remained with him. edited and published, and consensus on During his youth he formed a his ultimate status has not been achieved. very deep bond withanothermale student. A recent attempt to show that his work After the premature death of this beloved anticipated the feminist and ecology friend, Augustine movingly remarked: "I movements is unconvincing. Often coura- still thought my soul and his soul to have geous in his outspokenness, Auden no been but one soul in two bodies; and there- doubt suffered at the hands of critics who fore was my life a very honor to me, were uncomfortable with his sexuality. because I would not live by halves. And His poetry and prose, which were wide- even therefore perchance was I afraid to ranging and copious, retain a strong sense die, lest he should wholly die, whom so of period: they tell us much of what the passionately I had loved." (Confessions, thirties werelike inBritah, and the forties 46). and fifties in America. In his thirties Augustine came under the influence of Ambrose, Bishop of BIBLIOGRAPHY. Works: Collected Milan, and was baptized in 387. He then Poems, New York: Random House., 1976; The English Auden: Poems, returned to North Africa, where he be- Essays, and Dramatic Writings, came a priest in 391. Four years later he 1927-1939, New York: Knopf, 1977; became bishop of Hippo, where he led a Porewrds and Afterwords, New York: demanding life of church administration, Vintage., 1974. Studies: Humphrey theological controversy, and serious writ- Carpenter, W. H. Auden: A Biography, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 198 1; ing. His best known works are his Dorothy J. Farnan, Auden in Love, New autobiography, The Confessions, and his York: New American Library, 1985; lengthy meditation on Christian history, Martin E. Gingerich, W. H. Auden: A me City of God, which was occasioned by Reference Guide, Boston: G. K. Hall, the news of the sack of Rome in 410. 1977. Wayne R. Dynes In keeping with the mainstream views of the Greek and Latin theologians who had preceded him, the mature Au- ystinemaintained that sexual intercourse AUGUSTINE,SAINT was lawful only within marriage with the (354-430) aim of producing offspring-thus exclud- Bishop of Hippo and one of the ing birth control. Even within marriage he Doctors of the Church. Born at Thagaste in denied that sexual pleasure could ever be North Africa, he was raised as a Christian. approved as an end in itself. Somewhat As a young man Augustine seems to have exceptionally, he held that, despite the been deeply troubled by the strength of his cleansing efficacy of baptism, some taint sex drive. Later he recalled how "in the of the sin of Adam lingered in the very act sixteenth year of my flesh. the madness of procreation through semen which as- of raging lust exercised its supreme do- cended genealogically to our first parent. minion over me." In the course of his From such premises Augustine concluded studies of rhetoric at Carthage he gadu- that the individual free will is radically ally abandoned his Christian faith. Au- circumscribed, seeing in the capacity of ystine was drawn instead to Manichae- the male member for unsought-after erec- .
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