Durham E-Theses The intellectual background of the poetry of W.H. Auden Davison, Trevor How to cite: Davison, Trevor (1974) The intellectual background of the poetry of W.H. Auden, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/9980/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk THE INTELLECTUAL BACKGROUND OF THE POETRY OF W.H. AUDEN Trevor Davison Master of Letters thesis, 1974 University of Durham The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. CONTENTS ABSTRACT i-iii INTRODUCT ION i - i i CHAPTER ONE 1-157 CHAPTER TWO 138- 231 CHAPTER THREE 232-355 CHAPTER FOUR 356-450 INDEX- BIBLIOGRAPHY ABSTRACT •Intellectual background' refers to the ideologies upon which Auden draws and the poetic theory arising from the interaction of these ideas and his practice. The thesis is divided into four chapters, the first dealing with Auden's introduction to poetry in 1922 and his subsequent imitation of Hardy and Eliot. Eliot's theory of impersonality and the austerity of Saga literature produce a clinical effect in Poems 1928. The Norse mood dominates the charade Paid on Both Sides (I93O) which uses material from the Mummer's play and contemporary German theatre. Poems 1950 utilises theories of Blake, Lawrence, Freud, Honer Lane and Groddeck to criticise the depressed social and spiritual state of England. Chapter Two considers The Orators (1932) which demonstrates that oratory, including poetry, is a substitute for action. Didacticism of a new directness marks Auden's first play The Dance of Death (1935)• i*8 basis, returned to in On the Frontier (1958), being the Capitalist-Marxist dichotomy. The Dog beneath the Skin (1934) and The Ascent of F6 (1955), written with Isherwood, deal respectively with the necessity of choice and the will for psychic health. Auden's technique becomes more lyrical in Look, Stranger! (1936) and Letters from Iceland (1937) which includes the 'Letter to Lord Byron'. Two works consider actual wars: Spain (1937) dramatises universal guilt and Journey to a War (193S) deals ii lyrically with the hardships and anomalies of war. The occasional poem is introduced in Another Time (1940). In three long essays the relationship between Christianity, art and Communism is examined. Chapter Three deals with the four long, Christian poems written in America. New Year Letter (1941) is his longest attempt at philosophising in verse . With copious appended Notes it draws on several theorists and theologians especially Kierkegaard. For the Time Being (1944) takes the form of an oratorio dramatising the mystery of the Incarnation in Kierkegaardian terms. The Sea and the Mirror (1944)> a commentary on The Tempest, examines the dichotomy of man's nature and imagination, concluding that art is merely a surrogate of the 'real Word'. The Age of Anxiety (1947) adopts the alliterative style of Old English verse to chart the spiritual journey of four people in wartime. Chapter Four, (1948-1969)J examines Auden's collected criticism. The Enchafed Flood (1950) is a collation of stock Romantic images while The Dyer's Hand (1962) comprises aphoristic reflections on art and life, and essays on Shakespeare, America, opera and Christianity, the latter two recurring in Secondary Worlds (1968). The poetry of this period is exuberant, its five books having distinguishable themes. Nones (1951) is concerned with the City and the need to civilise it; The Shield of Achilles (1955) looks to Rome and the Mediterranean; Homage to Clio (I960) meditates on History, Time and Nature; About the House (1966) illustrates the concept of a habitat and City without Walls (1969) includes the more personal self-analyses of the elderly poet. Auden's extreme awareness of his poetic objectives is the main impression left by his writing. INTRODUCTION 'Intellectual background' refers to the body of ideas which make up Auden's theories of poetry and life, either original or the result of influence by other writers and theorists. Auden's poetry and prose are examined chronologically, their theoretical content abstracted, its origins specified, its development traced and its relation to the poet's practice made clear. It has seemed desirable both to correlate intellectual exegesis and literary criticism and to make the examination as comprehensive as possible. The problem of defining exactly what constitutes an 'idea' is facilitated by the extremely intellectual cast of Auden's imagination and expression, and by the large number of articles and essays he has written elaborating his views, especially about poetry. (Reference is made to several prose pieces which have received little critical attention before.) Necessarily, however, there is a tendency to assume that influences can be specified more precisely than is perhaps the case and that the poet was absolutely conscious of what he was writing. (It seems, though, that both assumptions may be more justifiable of Auden than of most poets.) The thesis deals with Auden's writing from its inception in 1922 to the date of City without Walls, I969. It is divided into four chapters covering the years 1922-1932, 1932-1939, 1939-1948, I948-I969 respectively. The work of each period seems to form a distinct unity though the poet's development is, of course, continuous. CHAPTER ONE (1922-1932) This period includes Auden's introduction to writing poetry and his first three full-length works : Poems 1928 , Paid on Both Sides and Poems 1930 • The period is obviously important for the indication it gives of Auden's first approach to poetry and the rapidity of his subsequent development both of technique and of a point of view. The poet has provided a comprehensive portrait of himself as a schoolboy: The son of book-loving, Anglo-Catholic parents of the professional class, the youngest of three brothers, I was mentally precocious, physically backward, short-sighted, a rabbit at all games, very untidy and grubby, a nail-biter, a physical coward, dishonest, sentimental, with no community sense whatever, in fact a typical little highbrow and difficult child. Until the age of sixteen Auden's interests were mainly scientific. He was particularly interested in the machinery and techniques of lead mining and wanted to be a mining engineer. As a result his (1) '"Honour": Gresham's School, Holt', The Old School, edit. Graham Greene, (London, 1934)» P«9 - 2 - reading had included such specialised works as Machinery for Metaliferous Mines and Lead and Zinc Ores of Northumberland and Alston Moor.^^ His father's profession as a doctor placed before him a library of medical books such as The Edinburgh School of Surgery and Dangers to Health (a Victorian treatise on plumbing), as well as works on human anatomy from which, according to Isherwood who attended St. Edmund's Preparatory School with him, he divulged "the first naughty stupendous breath-taking hints (2) of sex." His Icelandic ancestry and High Church upbringing (his second name is taken from St. Wystan of Repton) meant that he grew up familiar both with the Icelandic sagas and legends, and with Anglican hymns and psalms. Clearly all these were latent influences on the emergent poet. Having made the decision to write poetry "one afternoon in (5) March at half-past three"w/ in 1922, he turned for models from which to learn the rudiments of writing to the library (1) The list of Auden's reading is condensed from several sources by M.K.Spears in his The Poetry of W.H.Auden; The Disenchanted Island , (New York, 1963), p. 61, note 2. (This work is hereafter referred to by its author's name alone.) (2) Christopher Isherwood, Lions and Shadows, (London, 1937)i P» 182 (This work is hereafter referred to by its title alone.) (3) 'Letter to Lord Byron', Letters from Iceland. (1937)t p. 208 (All quotations from Auden's works in book form are from the first London editions unless otherwise stated.) - 3 - of Greshain's School, Holt, "taking up some poet for a few weeks then dropping him for another, de la Mare, W.H.Davies, and even A.E., without finding what I really wanted.The discovery of Hardy in the summer of 1923 was crucial^/(its effect being overwhelming enough to be described later using the psychological term 1 transference'), and for more than a year afterwards he read 2 no one elsei . ( ') Auden identified his own world with Hardy's and valued Hardy's "hawk's vision", his ability to adopt a perspective which showed "the individual life related not only to the local social life of its time, but to the whole of human history.Even more important, however, was the practical model Hardy presented to the young poet in the variety of his verse forms which "help (4) the imitator to find out what he has to say"x ' and in his emphasis on direct colloquial diction, especially useful because (5) "his directness was in phrasing and syntax, not in imagery."x/ (1) 'A Literary Transference*, Purpose, XII, (1940), p.127 (2) Ibid., p.128 At about this time Auden was given de la Mare's anthology Come HitherI (1923) which, he later said, "more than any other book I have read before or since, taught me what poetry is" ; 'Jacob and the Angel1, The New Republic , CI, 1308 (1939), P.292 (3) 'A Literary Transference', p.132 (4) Ibid., p.134 (5) Loc.