W. H. AUDEN Also by Rainer Emig MODERNISM IN POETRY: Motivations, Structures and Limits W. H. Auden Towards a Postmodern Poetics Rainer Emig First published in Great Britain 2000 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-349-41057-6 ISBN 978-0-230-28697-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230286979 First published in the United States of America 2000 by ST. MARTIN’S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN978- 0–312–22138–X Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Emig, Rainer, 1964– W.H. Auden : towards a postmodern poetics / Rainer Emig. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. 1. Auden, W. H. (Wystan Hugh), 1907–1973—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Postmodernism (Literature) 3. Modernism (Literature) 4. Poetics. I. Title. PR6001.U4Z67 1999 811'.52—dc21 99–27617 CIP © Rainer Emig 2000 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2000 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. 10987654321 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 For Gerald ‘To you simply From me I mean.’ Contents Acknowledgements ix Editions used in the Text and their Abbreviations x 1 Taming the Monster 1 2 Early Auden: Farewell to the Signified 9 Images 10 Mechanisms 17 Models 23 3 Libidinous Charades: The Auden-Isherwood Plays 29 Paid and Bought by Both Sides 29 Dances with Marxism 35 Parody or Pathos: The Ascent of F6 41 On the Frontier 45 4 The Orators: A Study of Authority 52 Changing the Code 52 Unwriting the Self 60 Reading the Other 68 Writing Difference 77 5 The Challenge of History 80 Partings 80 Parables 88 Symbolic Documentaries 100 Pathos 103 Histories of Knowledge 111 6Displaced Voices: Post-War Auden 115 Identity and Subversion 115 English Wanderers 118 Plural Perspectives 128 vii viii Contents Diaspora and Dialogue 133 Disputes of Will and Love 136 7From Eros to Agape: The Philosophy of Auden’s Later Works 145 Premature Extrapolations 145 Multiple Codes 148 Dialogue and its Dissidents 157 Allegories of Anxiety 164 In Praise of the Limit 169 8 Last Things 175 A Truce between Subject and Objects 175 A Poetry Coming to its Senses 183 Humane Order 188 Thanksgiving 196 9 Auden’s Postmodernism 204 Notes 213 Bibliography 225 Index 231 Acknowledgements This book has a long history that dates back to my first endeavours to come to terms with English Literature as an undergraduate at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Ger- many. There, an undergraduate seminar on the 1930s, taught by Harald Raykowski, gave me a taste of the writers of this period. As is so often the case, my engagement with Auden derived from an ini- tial resistance: I did not like his poetry very much to start with. But it was that very negative initial impression of preposterous cleverness and abstract detachment that kept me fascinated, to the point that I eventually wrote my M.A. dissertation at Warwick University on Auden’s early poetry, very kindly supervised by Edward Larrissy. During my time as a doctoral student in Oxford, I had the privilege not only to be supervised by one of the greatest Auden scholars in Britain, John Fuller, but also to be permitted to participate in one of his M.Phil. seminars on Auden. Since then I have learned most about Auden through teaching his works at Frankfurt University and the University of Wales, Cardiff. I am grateful to Cardiff for pro- viding me with an intellectual environment in which the study of lit- erature and debates in Critical and Cultural Theory go hand in hand. This outlook has very much shaped this book. I am also grate- ful to my students for reminding me that they find Auden’s poetry difficult, while at the same time showing a level of interest that has kept me convinced that it might be worthwhile to add to the existing corpus of Auden studies another voice that signals his continuing relevance in the literary and critical debates at the end of the twenti- eth century. ix Editions used in the Text and their Abbreviations Auden’s complete works are in the process of being collected in a complete critical edition at the time of writing this book. Unfortu- nately, the volume containing Auden’s poetry has not been released to date – for reasons that can easily be guessed by anyone familiar with Auden’s habit of constant revisions. The present study there- fore uses the most easily accessible collection of Auden’s poetry throughout, and supplements it with an edition of his early writings when necessary. Auden’s verse plays are taken from the first vol- ume of the new complete edition. References to some of his prose writings refer to the first volume of the latter in the critical Complete Works. CP W. H. Auden, Collected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson (Lon- don: Faber & Faber, 1976). EA W. H. Auden, The English Auden: Poems, Essays and Dramatic Writings 1927–1939, ed. Edward Mendelson (London and Bos- ton: Faber & Faber, 1978). Pl W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, Plays and Other Dra- matic Writings by W. H. Auden 1928–1938, ed. Edward Mendel- son, The Complete Works of W. H. Auden (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988). Pr W. H. Auden, Prose – Volume 1: 1926–1938, ed. Edward Men- delson, The Complete Works of W. H. Auden (Princeton, NJ: Prin- ceton University Press, 1996). DH W. H. Auden, The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays (London and Boston: Faber & Faber, 1963). x.