Une Saison en enfer for many years—he donated 22 Zweig, Erinnerungen an Emile Verhaeren a copy to the Bibliotheque nationale in 1938. A (Vienna, 1917). All references are to the French copy he gave to Jules Mouquet was purchased edition Souvenirs sur Emile Verhaeren (Brussels, by the British Library in 1982 (C.i29.m.i3.). This copy has two interlaced Ls stamped in the 23 Zweig, ibid., p. 76. upper blank margin of the front wrapper and 24 See Zweig's contribution in La nervie, numero below the last line of text; on the first page it special consacre a Louis Pierard, 1930, i, pp. has the inscription 'A Monsieur Jules Mouquet, 20-21. See also Trois cent trente-deux lettres a l'editeur des Vers de college d'Arthur Rimbaud' Louis Pierard, precedees de Memoires exterieurs (Mouquet's edition was published in 1933). It par Marianne Pierson-Pierard, Lettres modernes, is in a fine binding by Rose Adler, signed and Avant-siecle, 11 (Paris, 1971), p. 16. dated 1948. Reproduced in Martin Breslauer, 25 Louis Pierard, 'Le Wallon a l'Orange', La Societe Fine Bindings Catalogue 104, part II, (1981), nouvelle, i4e annee, tom. ii (2e serie, vol. xxx, col. pi. xiii. oct.-dec. 1908), p. 81. The German premiere of 17 Bulletin, i, ler fasc. (1908), p. [3]. Helene de Sparte {Helena's Heimkehr), in Zweig's 18 Revue de Belgique, Annee 37 (Oct. 1905), pp. translation, was given on 13 October 1910, at 105-11. the Stuttgarter Hoftheater, nearly two years 19 Robert Dumont, Stefan Zweig et la France before its Paris premiere, on 4 May 1912, at the (Paris, 1967), pp. 31-88, discusses the friendship Chatelet. between the two men, Verhaeren's influence on 26 Zweig, Souvenirs sur Emile Verhaeren, p. 137. Zweig and Zweig's writings on the poet. See 27 Stefan Zweig, Paul Verlaine. Die Dichtung, Eine also D. A. Prater, European of yesterday: a Sammlung von Monographien, vol. xxx (Berlin- biography of Stefan Zweig (Oxford, 1972), pp. Leipzig, 1905). All references are taken from the 22-98 passim. English edition, Paul Verlaine (Boston, Dublin 20 Zweig was deeply hurt by Verhaeren's expression & London, 1913), where 'The Rimbaud Episode' of bitter anti-German feelings in works such as is on pp. 38-50. La Belgique sanglante and Les Ailes rouges de la 28 Arthur Rimbaud, Gedichte [tr. from the French guerre, written after the German invasion of by K. L. Ammer {pseud, of Karl Klammer)], Belgium. (Leipzig, 1907). 21 For a list of Zweig's translations of Verhaeren's 29 Zweig, Verlaine (1913), p. 49, note. Berrichon's works see Randolph J. Klawiter, Stefan Zweig: Lettres de Jean-Arthur Rimbaud was published a bibliography. University of North Carolina in 1899. Studies in the Germanic Languages and Litera- 30 Zweig, ibid., p. 41: 'he never had a single line tures, no. 50 (Chapel Hill, 1965), pp. 70-71. In printed by his own efforts, he was utterly 1912, Zweig also organized Verhaeren's highly regardless ofthe fleeting examples of his gigantic successful lecture tour in Hamburg, Berlin, power'. Vienna and Munich. See Prater, European of 31 Pierson-Pierard, op. cit., p. 346. Yesterday, pp. 42-4.

W. H. AUDEN'S POEMS OF 1928

Joanna Leevers

IN April 1987 the Modern British Section summer vacation. It is a surprisingly small of the British Library acquired a rare and volume measuring only 12 x 95 cm., bound in important copy of W. H. Auden's Poems of limp orange covers; the title-page reads: W. 1928. This was Auden's first published work, H. AUDEN [long rule] POEMS [short rule] privately printed by his fellow poet and under- S.H.S.: 1928. Its pagination is pp. [i-iv, 1-2] graduate Stephen Spender during the Oxford 3-37 [38-40]^ and a printed erratum slip is 203 loosely inserted between pp. 6 and 7. The Isherwood in a Soho restaurant in 1927. Fol- British Library copy, press-mark C.i9O.aa.24., lowing this meeting, Auden wrote to Upward has manuscript alterations by Auden himself. several times enclosing poems for him to Though it is stated on page two that 'About 45 comment on, and in return Upward sent Auden copies' were produced. Spender later admitted a copy of his short story The Railway Accident. that thirty was a more realistic figure,^ The The importance of the literary discussions and book has since become, in the words of Chris- correspondence between Auden, Upward and topher Isherwood, 'a bibliophile's prize'.-^ Isherwood is alluded to in Auden's letter to Owing to its scarcity, this edition of Auden's Upward which accompanied this copy of the earliest poems has received httle attention from Poems. He acknowledges half-jokingly 'I shall critics, yet it is a seminal work by one of the never know how much in these poems is filched twentieth century's most influential and prolific from you via Christopher'.* In years to come poets. It contains work written before Auden Upward was to exert a more direct political went to Berlin and wrote most of the material influence on Auden. for the edition of Poems published by Faber Spender began printing Poems, together with & Faber in 1930. Some of the poems were his own Nine Experiments, at his parents' house never republished, but nevertheless played an at 10 Frognal, in Hampstead. The British important part in Auden's poetic development. Library only has the 1964 facsimile of Nine Experiments, which has a foreword by Spender explaining that he 'later retrieved and destroyed as many copies of Nine Experiments as possible. Thus it is probably rarer than the Auden -About 45 copies. Poems, though not nearly as remarkable, for the latter contains some work that even today counts among his most interesting, and unlike my pamphlet, it is nothing to be ashamed of At first Auden's Poems was hand-printed with a primitive 'Adana printing set price £-] for Fig. I. Verso of title page chemists' labels';^ however, when Spender's patience and the machine broke down, he took it to be completed and bound at the Holywell Press in Oxford. The original copy was supplied in both handwritten and typewritten form by Until now, the British Library has held only A. S. T. Fisher, and Auden himself. Auden facsimiles ofthe 1928 Poems, reproduced from copiesbelongingtoMr John Johnson (no. 12), continued to send Spender copy whilst he Durham University Library (no. 24), and the was setting up the poems. The compositor's University ofCincinnati Library (no. 17). The mistakes and uneven printing that resulted copy recently acquired is no. 9 (fig. i), and was from this rather haphazard method of publi- originally presented by Auden to the novelist cation add a certain character to the finished Edward Upward. Only close friends and rela- product. As in other copies, the inking on tives were given copies of the book, and this pp. 3 and 18 is particularly uneven, and the copy had until now remained unrecorded.^ It numbers of pages 18 and 20 are miss-set so is signed by both Auden and Upward, and that they appear in the gutter instead of the its provenance stands as a testimony of the fore-edge of the page. The printing noticeably enduring friendship between the two writers, improves from p. 23 onwards; this was the They were first introduced by Christopher point at which the Holywell Press took over. 204 Just as Auden continued to send Spender it into a new poem. In this way whole poems were poems once printing had begun, he continued constructed which were simply anthologies of my favourite lines, entirely regardless of grammar or the process of addition and deletion after all the copies were printed. In the facsimile copies sense . . . to which I have had access these alterations Perhaps crediting Auden with rather more are inserted by Spender; the British Library's artistic integrity, Stephen Spender corrobor- copy, however, has only a few minor alterations ates: in Spender's hand, the remainder being by ... he was not shocked at the idea of tacking lines Auden. This copy may well be unique in this from a rejected poem onto a new one—as though a respect. poem were not a single experience but a mosaic held The book is therefore not simply the product together by the consistency of an atmosphere, a of an important publishing project, but an rhythm or an idea common to all its parts. example of an aspect of the creative process Thus 'the earlier poems are often made up of which Auden was often at pains to emphasise. scraps of still earlier ones','° and these hnes He was a perfectionist and a firm believer in are again recycled in later works. Poem II, 'On Valery's dictum: 'A poem is never finished, the frontier at dawn getting down', appears in only abandoned', to which he adds 'Yes, but its entirety only in this book, but its opening it must not be abandoned too soon'.^ He was line was re-used four years later in The Orators. never satisfied, and his poems went through Only nine of the original twenty poems are endless stages of revision. Such linguistic 'tin- reprinted in the 1930 Faber & Faber edition. kering' (as he termed it) is particularly signifi- Some have been revised, and the final four cant at this early stage of his career, for he was poems are reworked into the charade 'Paid on about to emerge as a leading voice for the both sides'. In the 1932 edition a further five writers of the 1930s; Stephen Spender has were cut. Only the remaining four were declared retrospectively 'The 1930s began in included in Auden's Collected Poems (London, 1928'.'' These poems and their alterations see 1976), where they are entitled: 'The Water- Auden formulating a poetic form and language shed', 'The Love-letter', 'The Secret Agent' with which to launch himself and his contempo- and 'As well as can be expected' (later retitled raries into the historic decade. Today, many 'Taller Today'). Tbe editor Edward Mendelson literary critics influenced by the linguistic writes in his preface 'This edition includes all theory established by Ferdinand de Saussure, the poems that W. H. Auden wished to pre- and by structuralism, might be interested in serve, in a text that represents his final revision'. Auden's various choices of words, or 'signifi- But, as Auden was aware, and the British ers'. Where he has substituted certain words, Library's purchase of Poems confirms: ^^ the text can be viewed as a focal point where signifiers intersect and the whole linguistic There are no secret literary sins. By cutting or process of signification is set in motion.® revising a bad poem in later editions, one may show repentance, but the first is still there; one can never The way in which Auden structured his forget or conceal from others that one has com- poems was in radical contrast to his prede- mitted it. cessors. The insertions in the British Library's copy bear witness to the enthusiasm with which The second poem in the British Library's he juggled his lines. Isherwood claims that his copy is heavily annotated; significantly it was own opinions played a large part in this:^ excluded from later collections. In the original printing, lines 39-44 read: If I didn't like a poem, he threw it away and wrote In ticking silence, I another. If I liked a line, he would keep it and work Gripping an oily rail 205 Talking feverishly to one and private despair'.'* Eliot's vision of a waste Professional listener, land was one which was slowly penetrating the I know, old boy, I know And reached his hand for mine world of Oxford students. Auden commented on his days at Oxford: 'We were far too insular and preoccupied with ourselves to know or care what was going on across the Channel . . Before 1930 I never opened a newspaper.'^^ 10 Gripping an oily rail, This was a generation who saw strike breaking }*Ju.£> ^.Jl ^ t»-Talked feverishly to one during the General Strike as a 'tremendous *«ft"i H K- ^ Professional listener middle-class lark','^ and inhabited private fan- 7 Knot./, *I know uld»bo^ 1 koow And reached his hand for oiine. tasy worlds, like Isherwood and Upward's invented land of Mortmere. No%v in a brown study At ihe Miiltr-logged quarry. But Auden's poems are an attempt to redress the balance, to understand or at least acknowl- Fig. 2. Manuscript alterations to Poem II edge the rift between the private and public spheres. In their preface to the 1926 volume of Oxford Poetry, Auden and Charles Plumb With the alterations in manuscript (fig. 2), it proposed that *If it is a natural preference to reads: inhabit a room with casements opening upon In tickling silence I, Fairyland, one at least of them should open Gripping an oily rail. upon the Waste Land'.^'' In the wake of Eliot, Talked feverishly to one Auden's 1928 poems are full of deserts and Professional listener valleys—a 'lean country' (Poem II). In Poem Who puckered mouth and brow VI he laments: In ecstasy of pain, I know, I know, I know This land, cut off, will not communicate. And reached his hand for mine The opening lines to The Waste Land resound Both the influences on Auden and his future throughout Auden's Poem I where: direction are discernible in these poems. He In Spring we saw was writing at a time when poetry was viewed The bulb pillow as a viable link between the personal and Raising the skull. Thrusting a crocus through clenched teeth. the increasingly confusing public and political world. Poetry was becoming recognized as a A sense of personal isolation and fragmentation particular type of discourse, which could per- can be felt from these poems. They were haps organise what T. S. Eliot had called the written shortly after Auden and Day Lewis 'immense panorama of futility and anarchy wrote the 1927 preface to Oxford Poetry, which which is contemporary history'.^^ The pioneer became a manifesto for the writers of the of New Criticism, I. A. Richards, believed that thirties. Auden wrote of a world where 'no poetry 'is capable of saving us; it is a perfectly universalized system—political, religious or possible means of overcoming chaos'.^-^ metaphysical—has been bequeathed to us'. His The influence of the images and structure of 1928 poems are an attempt to realign T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, can be seen throughout Eliot's now famous 'dissociated sensibility' Auden's Poems. Spender wrote recently that through the act of writing. Echoing I. A. '. . . the early poems of Auden all seem to Richards, the 1927 preface declared 'All genu- come out of The Waste Land, a poem that ine poetry is in a sense the formation of private acted like a rope bridge over an abyss of public spheres out of public chaos'. 206 Auden and his contemporaries could not original version of 'The Watershed') begins yet claim to be actively political, though, as 'Who stands, the crux left of the water- Stephen Spender recognized: 'The Oxbridge shed . . .'. poets extended essentially aesthetic values into The relatively little-known poems in this politics in defence of freedom. They wrote book prove Auden to be an acute diagnostician political poetry but they never judged their of prevalent feelings and also show him for- work by standards derived from politics.'^^ mulating a language and an imagery with which Purely by virtue of being a group, or 'gang'. to express those feelings. The early poems, like Spender remembers Auden, Isherwood, Day his manifesto, provided his contemporaries Lewis and Rex Warner as 'rather like a shadow with metaphors of exploring beyond their im- cabinet, the successors to the literary heritage mediate world. They were to spend the 1930s of tomorrow'. They were governed 'by J. C. venturing beyond the immediate in terms of Squire and a group of Georgian poets . . . The writing, travel, politics, sexuality and social honorable opposition was Bloomsbury.'^^ class. Written on the verge of a new decade The modern poet felt that the language and and a new literary movement, Auden's Poems structure of the Georgian poets could not of 1928 in a sense record this transition, tracing express his new concerns. The poetic language how: of the previous generation seemed redundant The womb began its crucial expulsion (Poem IV) and needed to be broken and reinvented. The fragmentary, dense lines of poetry which They anticipate the birth and growth of a emerge from Poems reveal Auden's search for generation: an appropriate poetic. Poem III in the book Bones wrenched, weak whimper, lids wrinkled, first sees the poet poised between past and future dazzle known. eras and attempts to forge a link between the World-wonder hardened as bigness, years, brought, two, yet as the 1927 preface indicated, the knowledge, you, . . . (Poem I) demise of any unified vision means that no solution can be offered. 1 Stephen Spender, World Within World (London, 1951), p. 116. No trenchant passing this 2 Christopher Isherwood, 'Some notes on Of future from the past. Auden's early poetry', in Monroe K. Spears (ed.), Auden: A Collection of Critical Essays But still the mind would tease (Englewood Cliffs, 1964), pp. 10-15. In local irritation 3 B. C. Bloomfield and Edward Mendelson, And difficult images W. H. Auden: A Bibliography 1924-1969 (Char- Demand an explanation lottesville, 1972), p. 3, records a total of twelve Across this finite space traced copies. Buttressed expensively 4 Quoted in Humphrey Carpenter, W. H. Auden: The pointed hand would place A Biography (London, 1983), p. 118. Error in you, in me. 5 Stephen Spender in a letter to B. C. Bloomfield. Bloomfield and Mendelson, W. H. Auden: A Here, Auden's images are invested with a Bibliography 1924-1969, p. 2. personal and an historical significance. The 6 Quoted in B. C. Bloomfield, W. H. Auden: A frontiers which define 'Auden country'^^ are Bibliography: The Early Years through 19^$ not just Auden's, but represent the aspirations (Charlottesville, 1964), p. viii. of a whole generation of writers. Several lines 7 Stephen Spender, 'Where No-one Was WelF, The Observer, 7 Feb. ig88. and passages convey a sense of standing on the 8 However, Auden issued words of warning to brink. The opening line to Poem V reads 'On over-enthusiastic literary students, citing an the frontier at dawn . . .', and Poem VI, (the occasion when 'one critic made quite a to-do 207 about a difference between two versions of 13 I. A. Richards, Science and Poetry (London, a line, in which he detected an ideological 1926), p. 823. It is significant that in his 1953 significance, when in fact, the difference was due edition of Science and Poetry, Richards used to a typo in one of them'. Bloomfield, op. cit. n, lines from three of Auden's poems as epigraphs. 6 above, pp, viii-ix. 14 Stephen Spender, 'Where No-one Was Well'. 9 Christopher Isherwood, 'Some Notes on Au- 15 W. H. Auden, 'As it Seemed to Us', New Yorker, den's Early Poetry'. 3 April 1965, p. 80. 10 Stephen Spender, 'W H Auden and his Poetry', 16 Christopher Isherwood, quoted in Samuel Atlantic Monthly, cxcii (1953), pp. 74-9- Hynes, The Auden Generation: Literature and 11 Quoted in B. C. Bloomfield, W. H. Auden: A Politics in England in the 1930s (London, 1979), Bibliography: The Early Years through 1955., p. p. 80. viii. 17 Ibid., p. 31. 12 T. S. Eliot, 'Ulysses, Order and Myth' (1923), 18 Stephen Spender, 'Where No-one Was Well'. in Frank Kermode (ed.). Selected Prose of T S 19 Stephen Spender, 'W H Auden and his Poetry'. Eliot (London, 1975), pp. 175-9- 20 Samuel Hynes, op. cit., p. 53.

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