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“The Auden Group” 1 Subject: ENGLISH Class: B.A. Part 1 English Hons., Paper-1, Group B Topic: THE AUDEN GROUP Lecture No: 20 By: Prof. Sunita Sinha Head, Department of English Women’s College Samastipur L.N.M.U., Darbhanga Email: [email protected] Website: www.sunitasinha.com Mob No: 9934917117 “THE AUDEN GROUP” INTRODUCTION • The Auden Group or the Auden Generation is a group of British and Irish writers active in the 1930s that included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Cecil Day Lewis, Louis MacNeice and Christopher Isherwood. • The Auden Group is also sometimes referred to as the Nineteen Thirties Poets or The Oxford Poets who represented a new, more experimental literary style. • All the poets knew one another, and most had been educated at either Oxford or Cambridge, all sharing vaguely left-wing viewpoints. The writers associated with the grouping—W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, Cecil Day- 2 Lewis, Stephen Spender, Christopher Isherwood never gathered together in the same room, nor shared any coherent poetic or literary values. • Rather, the poets connected individually, particularly through Auden, who collaborated several times with both Isherwood and MacNeice, and wrote with Day-Lewis an introduction to the annual Oxford Poetry. • In the public mind, the individuals continued to be linked, with poet Roy Campbell referring to “MacSpaunday” in his 1946 work, Talking Bronco, a word created from the names of MacNeice (Mac), Spender (sp), Auden (au- n), and Day-Lewis (day). • The English Poetry of 1930s is primarily recognized as the poetry of leftist philosophy. The poets during this period were highly influenced by the philosophy of Karl Marx and his followers. The leftist movement started during this period was pioneered by W.H. Auden. • The poets, like W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Cecil Day Lewis, Louis MacNeice and Christopher Isherwood are known as social poets belonging to the Auden group. All these poets were sensitively alive to contemporary social and political problems and. their poetry reflects their awareness of the world lying around them. • The poetic concept of these poets was shaped by their acute awareness of the social reality which enabled them to plunge into hectic political activities. All these poets were deeply influenced by the contemporary happenings like the Spanish Civil War, The First World War, the economic depression of 1929, mass starvation, unemployment, the General strike in Britain in 1926, the powers of Fascist and Nazi dictators and the Second World War. These poets started to react to the social, political and economic conditions of their time. • They reflected the mood of the times in their poetry. Among these social poets, Auden, Spender and Lewis are recognized as major social poets of 1930s. 3 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE POETRY OF THE AUDEN GROUP • They wrote poems which were a clear reaction against the reigning stylishly esoteric poetry. • They also made natural use of imagery taken from contemporary life and propagated some sort of personally interpreted ideal of Communism for remedying the ills of man’s life. • The poetry of Oxford poets is intellectual and unemotional. • These poets took interest in political and economic affairs. They thought that Marxism was the only source to end all the evils of the man's life. • They abominated bourgeois society. • They affirmed their faith in revolution. According to them revolution would bring about a new order and new values. The new world order would be communistic. The Oxford poets also show the influence of Freud. • Their poetical technique was greatly influenced by Imagism, French, Symbolisms and Hopkins-Eliot innovations. 4 IMPORTANT POETS OF THE AUDEN GROUP W.H. AUDEN [1907-1973] • Wystan Hugh Auden is considered one of the finest poets of the twentieth century, occupying a position among the likes of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. He was remarkably prolific and experimental in his poetry; his early stage was characterized by an Eliot-like modernism, his middle stage incorporated Marxist and Freudian themes, and his late stage was more conversational and dealt with Christianity. • Auden was the chief spokesman of the “Oxford Coterie” of young poets that included Stephen Spenders, Louis MacNeice and Cecil Day Lewis. W.H. Auden together with these poets catalyzed the process of introducing themes that are now archetypal to the modernist poetry of the 20th century. Auden’s poems deal with the social and political problems and also the problems of identity, reclamation of space, and the herculean difficulties associated with war-affected nations. • At Oxford in the late 1920s, Auden read the work of Eliot and was inspired majorly by the latter. Auden’s earliest verse was also influenced by Thomas Hardy and Wilfred Owens. His poems are fragmented, hinging on substantial images and colloquial concerns to convey Auden’s political and psychological fears. • He experimented with a variety of forms: lyric poetry, odes, ballads, meditations, arguments, satires, conversations, and more. He used both formal and free verse. Auden won the National Medal for literature in 1967, with the award explaining that Auden’s poetry “has illuminated our lives and times with grace, wit and vitality. His work, branded by the moral and ideological fires of our age, breathes with eloquence, perception and intellectual power.” 5 • Auden's literary career is divided into two phases. In the first phase he published poems and the Orators. At this stage he was influenced by both Marx and Freud. Thus, his early poetry shows a strange fusion of Freudian and Marxist views. He found the solution of all social and political ills in left wing political ideologies. The main theme of his early poems is social criticism and protest. • The second phase of his poetry began in 1939. His later poetry consists of The Shield Achilles, Homage to Clio, and About the House. This second phase shows a change in Auden interests. The poetry of this phase reflects his deep understanding of life and its problems. After sometime Auden gave up communism. Consequently, his poetry took a religious and metaphysical turn. STEPHEN SPENDER [1909-1995] • Poet and critic, Stephen Spender was a member of the generation of British poets who came to prominence in the 1930s, a group—sometimes referred to as the Oxford Poets—that included W.H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, C. Day Lewis, and Louis MacNeice. • In the beginning he too was attracted by left wing politics. Apart from politics his poetry shows deep empathy with essential human condition. Perhaps this is what makes Spender more relevant as a poet. • His important works are - poems, Dolphins, Collected Poems, The Generous Days, Poems of Dedication, Vienna, The Still Centre, Ruins and Visions, World Within A World. He also composed some highly moving poems on war. His poetry is a beautiful combination of his political commitment with his own personal feeling and emotions. • He was an accomplished poetic artist who used exact words. Above all, his poems expressed a self-critical, compassionate personality. In the following decades Spender, in some ways a more personal poet than his early associates, 6 became increasingly more autobiographical, turning his gaze from the external topical situation to the subjective experience. CECIL DAY LEWIS [1904-1972] • Cecil Day Lewis was a brilliant critic, a great translator and fine story writer. However, he is remembered chiefly as a gifted poet. In his youth and during the disruption and suffering of the Great Depression, Day-Lewis adopted communist views, becoming a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain from 1935 to 1938. • His early poetry was marked by didacticism and a preoccupation with social themes. In his later poetry he turned to personal and pastoral themes. His important works are - From Feathers to Iron, The Magnetic Mountain and A Time for Dance. • His stinging reproach to the gray, gritty present and his great faith in the possibility of a new social order, as well as the qualities revealed in his earlier writing, are in evidence throughout this work. LOUIS MACNEICE [1907-1963] • Louis MacNeice was widely regarded in the 1930s as a junior member of the Auden-Spender-Day Lewis group: MacNeice and Stephen Spender were contemporaries and friends at Oxford, serving as joint editors of Oxford Poetry, 1929. • MacNeice became a friend of W.H. Auden’s and collaborated with him on Letters from Iceland (1937). In Modern Poetry (1938), MacNeice provided the best critical statement of the poetic aims and achievements of his friends. Despite these personal and professional ties, MacNeice did not share the ideological commitments of the “Auden group.” 7 • From first to last, his own work reflects a melancholy skepticism too honest to give final assent to any fixed system. MacNeice remained a detached outsider. • His works include - The Earth Compels, Plant and Phantom, Eighty-Five Poems and The Burning Perch. This poet did not embrace any political ideology like other Oxford poets. His opinions about communism were fluctuating. His poetry expresses the anguish of the age of machine. In short, he was a great and gifted poetic artist. CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD [1904-1986] • Christopher Isherwood of the 1930's was a legendary figure, in his own right as the author of “The Last of Mr. Norris” and “Goodbye to Berlin”. He was one of those gifted, leftward‐leaning young English writers of the decade like W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, C. Day Lewis, and Louis MacNeice. • These poets influenced a generation as much by their politics as by their poetry, and entered history collectively as “Auden & Co.,” a Marxified successor group to Bloomsbury. CONCLUSION • Thus, the contribution of the Oxford poets is memorable. They changed the current of poetry and added new things to it. *** By: Prof. Sunita Sinha Head, Department of English Women’s College Samastipur L.N.M.U., Darbhanga Email: [email protected] Website: www.sunitasinha.com Mob No:9934917117 .
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