Silly Little Country

Humphrey Carpenter's Auden Biography

Over on the sidebar you should see poor Amazon's attempt at offering Humphrey Carpenter's biography of Wystan Hugh Auden. I suspect I have had this hard-cover book for twenty years without contemplating what I am now doing, reading it!
And what a revelation. Before starting this thing I knew two things about W. H. Auden, that he had a 'friend' named Chester Kallman, and that he wrote a poem they taught us in high school, "The Unknown Citizen".
This poem has an appeal that I can see will get it into high school curricula - it does allow the teacher to separate his life path from that of the unknown citizen described, and for all of us to feel superior to the poor sap described.
In any case, this, as my sole experience of Auden, did not leave me highly motivated to read about his life. But now I recommend Carpenter's biography with great enthusiasm! Apparently Auden wrote other poems, and had a whole series of confusing views about life! He married Erika Mann to help her flee Nazi persectution. He lived flagrantly as a homosexual in an era when one could be hounded to death as Alan Turing was. University administrations helped him cover this up! (I am so impressed at the backbone they could find then that seems so elusive now.)
He was a fascinatingly confused man, who did in fact produce some truly great art - (this poem, an early work, still just stuns me)

posted by Alan Adamson @ 4:45 PM