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Auden's Revisions Auden’s Revisions By W. D. Quesenbery for Marilyn and in memoriam William York Tindall Grellet Collins Simpson © 2008, William D. Quesenbery Acknowledgments Were I to list everyone (and their affiliations) to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for their help in preparing this study, the list would be so long that no one would bother reading it. Literally, scores of reference librarians in the eastern United States and several dozen more in the United Kingdom stopped what they were doing, searched out a crumbling periodical from the stacks, made a Xerox copy and sent it along to me. I cannot thank them enough. Instead of that interminable list, I restrict myself to a handful of friends and colleagues who were instrumental in the publication of this book. First and foremost, Edward Mendelson, without whose encouragement this work would be moldering in Columbia University’s stacks; Gerald M. Pinciss, friend, colleague and cheer-leader of fifty-odd years standing, who gave up some of his own research time in England to seek out obscure citations; Robert Mohr, then a physics student at Swarthmore College, tracked down citations from 1966 forward when no English literature student stepped forward; Ken Prager and Whitney Quesenbery, computer experts who helped me with technical problems and many times saved this file from disappearing into cyberspace;. Emily Prager, who compiled the Index of First Lines and Titles. Table of Contents Acknowledgments 3 Table of Contents 4 General Introduction 7 Using the Appendices 14 PART I. PAID ON BOTH SIDES (1928) 17 Appendix 19 PART II. 1927-1932 23 Appendix 31 PART III. LETTER TO LORD BYRON (1936) 63 Appendix 66 PART IV. 1933-1938 73 Appendix 87 PART V. NEW YEAR LETTER (1940) 179 Appendix 181 PART VI. 1939-1947 185 Appendix 194 PART VII. FOR THE TIME BEING (1941-1942) 261 Appendix 262 PART VIII. THE SEA AND THE MIRROR 265 Appendix 267 PART IX. THE AGE OF ANXIETY 269 Appendix 271 PART X. 1948-1957 279 Appendix 285 PART XI. DICTUNG AND WAHRHEIT (1959) 329 Appendix 330 PART XII. 1958 – 1971 331 Appendix 332 PART XIII 1972-1973 437 Appendix 438 INDEX OF TITLES AND FIRST LINES 445 7 General Introduction There is probably no better introduction to the revisions in W. H. Auden’s poetry than to take a look at what Auden himself had to say on the subject. In his preface to The Collected Poetry of W. H. Auden (1945) he wrote In the eyes of every author, I fancy, his past work falls into four classes. First, the pure rubbish which he regrets ever having conceived; second–for him the most painful– the good ideas which his incompetence or impatience prevented from coming to much (The Orators seems to me such a case of the fair notion fatally injured); third, the pieces he had nothing against except their lack of importance; these must inevitably form the bulk of any collection since, were he to limit it to the fourth class alone, to those poems for which he is honestly grateful, his volume would be too depressingly slim. Twenty years later in the forward to Collected Shorter Poems, 1927-1957 (1966), he noted that “I agree with Valery: ‘A poem is never finished, it is only abandoned.’” Unfortunately, this doesn’t get us very far. Is a poem with virtually no revisions an “abandoned” poem, or is a poem that has been heavily revised finally become an “abandoned” poem? Surely, there is some middle ground between “never finished” and “abandoned.” As we shall see, Auden, throughout his career, could (1) abandon whole poems or parts of poems with ruthless finality, (2) tinker endlessly with others, while (3) leaving some poems virtually untouched. What he abandons tells us an much about Auden as does his tinkering and hands off policy. If there is any broad generalization we can make about Auden’s revisions, it is simply that the number and the impact of them decrease throughout his poetic career. For example, none of the poems he wrote as an undergraduate appear in Collected Poems (1976) while virtually every 8 AUDEN’S REVISIONS poem he wrote after 1958 appears in the 1976 collection. The obvious explanations apply: as he found his true poetic voice there was less need for revision and, as he drew near the end of his career, there was less opportunity, or occasion, for revision. There is, I think, a fairly clear demarcation line for this change: it can be tied to his return to his own particular set of beliefs within the framework of Anglican Christianity as well as his adoption of a more casual, more relaxed style following the end of World War II And both of these things begin to happen about the time he completes and publishes The Sea and the Mirror (1944) and The Age of Anxiety (1946). This study is limited to Collected Poems (1976) rather than the edition of ‘complete poems” published by Princeton University Press for three reasons: (1) simply because Collected Poems includes all the poetry Auden wished to preserve, (2) because this edition is the one most likely to be used by Auden critics and (3) because, having seen the additional poems in the complete edition, it seems to me that nothing of importance is to be gained by its use. Auden’s judgment in not wishing to preserve those works strikes me as sound, with a few notable exception which are discussed as we come to them. What also strikes me as sound is avoiding too much analysis. This work is far more descriptive than it is analytical. I have made a few guesses along the way as to Auden’s reasons for one thing and another, but mostly I have tried to avoid temptation. Besides, there are very nearly as many “correct” analyses as there are critics. Auden’s homosexuality and his personal slovenliness have received less than equal- handed treatment: biographers tend to gossip about them; literary critics tend to ignore them A frank assessment of their impact on the poems seems unlikely, but would be nonetheless welcome. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 9 One other point has been noted but not sufficiently emphasized is Auden’s heavy reliance on dictionaries. He used them extensively in writing his poems—he even traveled with them— and there are few among us who can read his poems without referring to them. In working on this study, I have used throughout the codes and abbreviations supplied by Edward Mendelson and B. C. Bloomfield in their W. H. Auden: A Bibliography, 1924-1969, especially sections A, B, and C. For purposes of quick reference--as may be needed throughout this work--an abbreviated list of works from Section A follows. After 1969, I have simply used title abbreviations. 10 AUDEN’S REVISIONS Reference Numbers, Abbreviations and Short Titles (From Bloomfield and Mendelson, W. H. Auden: A Bibliography, 1924-1969) A1 P (1928) Poems A2 P Poems, Faber, 1930 A2b P2 Poems, Faber, 1933 A3 O The Orators, Faber, 1932 A3b O The Orators, Faber, 1934 A3c O The Orators, Faber, A3d O The Orators, Random House, 1967 A4 DD The Dance of Death, Faber, 1933 A5 The Witnesses, privately printed, 1933 A6 Poem, privately printed, 1933 A7 AP Poems, Random House, 1934 A8 Two Poems, privately printed, 1934 A9 DBS The Dog Beneath the Skin, Faber, 1935 A9b DBS The Dog Beneath the Skin, Random House, 1935 A9c DBS The Dog Beneath the Skin, Modern Library (pb), 1958 A9d DBS The Dog Beneath the Skin, Vintage Books (pb), 1964 A9e DBS The Dog Beneath the Skin, Faber (pb), 1968 A10 Our Hunting Fathers, privately printed, 1935 A11 Sonnet, privately printed, 1935 A12 AF6 The Ascent of F6, Faber, 1936 A12b AF6 The Ascent of F6, Random House, 1937 A12c AF6 The Ascent of F6, Faber, 1937 A12d AF6 The Ascent of F6 and On the Frontier, Faber (pb), 1958 A13 LS Look Stranger, Faber, 1936 A13b OTI On This Island, Random House, 1937 A14 Spain, Faber, 1937 A14b Spain, Hours Press, 1937 GENERAL INTRODUCTION 11 A15 LFI Letters from Iceland, Faber, 1937 A15b LFI Letters from Iceland, Random House, 1937 A15c LFI Faber, 1967 A15d LFI Random House, 1969 A16 Night Mail, privately printed, 1938 ? A17 SP Selected Poems, Faber, 1938 A18 OTF On the Frontier, Faber, 1938 A18b OTF On the Frontier, Random House, 1939 A18c OTF The Ascent of F6 and On the Frontier, (see A12d), 1958 A19 Education Today and Tomorrow, Hogarth Press, 1939 A20 JTW Journey to a War, Faber, 1939 A20b JTW Journey to a War, Random House, 1939 A21 Epithalamion, privately printed, 1939 A22 AT Another Time, Random House, 1940 A22b AT Another Time, Faber, 1940 A23 SoP Some Poems, Faber, 1940 A24 DM The Double Man, Random House, 1941 A24b NYL New Year Letter, Faber, 1941 A25 Three Songs for St. Cecilia’s Day, privately printer, 1941 A26 FTB For the Time Being, Random House, 1944 A26b FTB For the Time Being, Faber, 1945 A27 CP The Collected Poetry of W. H. Auden, Random House, 1945 A28 Litany and Anthem for S. Matthew’s Day, Stanton and Son, 1946 A29 AA The Age of Anxiety, Random House, 1947 A29b AA The Age of Anxiety, Faber, 1948 A30 CSP Collected Shorter Poems, 1930-1944, Faber, 1950 A31 EF The Enchafed Flood, Random House, 1950 A31b EF The Enchafed Flood, Faber, 1951 12 AUDEN’S REVISIONS A31c EF Vintage Books, 1967 A32 N Nones, Random House, 1951 A32b N Nones, Faber, 1962 A33 The Rake’s Progress, Boosey and Hawkes, 1951 b, c, d, e, f A34 Mountains, Faber, 1954 A35 SA The Shield of Achilles, Random House, 1955 A35 SA The Shield of Achilles, Faber, 1955 A36 OMR The Old Man’s Road, Voyages Press, signed edition, 1956 A36b OMR The Old Man’s Road, Voyages Press, regular edition, 1956 A37 The Magic Flute, Random House, 1956 A37b The Magic Flute, Faber, 1956 A38 Making, Knowing and Judging, The Clarendon Press, 1956 A39 Reflections in a Forest, DePauw University, 1957 A40 PA W.
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