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| 5/20/1937 |
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Auden, Orwell, Spain
On this day in 1937 W. H. Auden's Spain was published. Proceeds from sales of this pamphlet-length poem went to the Medical Aid Committee, one of many international organizations supporting the anti-Franco cause in the Spanish Civil War, and a group which Auden had tried to join as an ambulance driver. Had he been successful, he might have helped George Orwell: also on this day in 1937, he was shot in the throat while fighting for the Republican side. |
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| 9/1/1939 |
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Auden, Anne Frank, War
On this day in 1939 Germany invaded Poland, starting WWII. This gave moment to W. H. Auden's "September 1, 1939," one of his most famous poems, and one of many attempts to figure how "the windiest militant trash" could have us all "Lost in a haunted wood." On this day two years later, the yellow star was made obligatory for Jews in Germany; and this day three years after would be Anne Frank's last before learning her fate: the last train bound out of Holland for Auschwitz. |
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Academy of American Poets
Offers a biography that reviews the poet's life and influences (Thomas Hardy, Robert Frost, William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Old English verse). Accompanied by selected poems:
"As I Walked Out One Evening"
"Epitaph on a Tyrant"
"The Fall of Rome"
"In Memory of Sigmund Freud"
"In Memory of W. B. Yeats"
"Lullaby"
"The More Loving One"
"On the Circuit"
"September 1, 1939"
"The Shield of Achilles"
"The Unknown Citizen" |  | John Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism
Find a scholarly essay examines Auden's theories on art, poetry, and language, and the writer's view that the reading of a text is akin to interacting with its author.
"... in dealing with a text we are dealing with a 'person.' Auden encourages us as critics to approach a work initially with the question, 'What kind of a guy inhabits this poem?', but this does not imply a naive belief in the 'presence' of the author. In 'Squares and Oblongs' he writes that 'a poem is a pseudo-person,' which makes clear that the speaking subject implied by the text is a constructed subject, at least partly a product of the 'verbal contraption' on the page. This idea -- that the 'person' we encounter in a poem is construed and construable from nowhere but its linguistic surface -- is stressed by Auden's further suggestion that such a person is like 'an image in a mirror' ..." | | Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database (New York University)
Offers synopses and commentary from a medical perspective on poems including "Letter to a Wound," "Miss Gee," "Musee des Beaux Arts," and "Surgical Ward." On "Miss Gee":
"This 28-line, seven-quatrain poem illustrates the damaging way in which illness can function as a cultural metaphor. Cancer is a disease of repressed emotion and life-energy. Childless women have suppressed the life-energy, thereby becoming useless and cancer-prone. Similarly, retired men have lost the meaning (i.e. male self-identity as occupation) in their lives and are, therefore, vulnerable to the same fate." | | The W. H. Auden Society
Offers a list of books by Wystan Hugh Auden, links to some of his poems, a selective list of recordings of his readings and of musical settings of his poems, and a biography. Recent news of publications and events of interest to Auden's readers, reports of work in progress, and brief scholarly and interpretive notes may also be found here. Visitors seeking further information can find selective lists of published criticism and biography, links to other web sites, and the archives of the Society's Newsletter. | |
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The TinL masthead features photography by
Natasha D'Schommer
, and the book art featured is by Jim Rosenau.
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