About the Book
W. H. Auden's first ten years in the United States were marked by rapid and extensive change in his life and thought. He became an American citizen, fell in love with Chester Kallman, and began to reflect on American culture and to explore the ideas of Reinhold Niebuhr and other Protestant theologians. This volume contains every piece of prose that Auden wrote during these years, including essays and reviews he published under pseudonyms. Most have never been reprinted in any form since their initial publication in such magazines and newspapers as the Nation, the New Republic, Common Sense, Vogue, and the New York Times. Auden's prose during this period is frequently directly autobiographical even as he comments on literature, psychology, politics, and religion. The writings range from a dialogue about W. B. Yeats through a respectful parody of Gertrude Stein to Jamesian essays on Henry James. They also include lively and often profound responses to ancient and modern history as well as to contemporary issues in politics and religion.Other highlights include writings on opera and poetry as well as reports of Auden's lectures and the text of an unfinished autobiographical book, The Prolific and the Devourer. Throughout, Edward Mendelson's extensive and illuminating editor's notes explain all contemporary and private allusions. By making available a large cache of important but previously difficult-to-obtain writings on key subjects, this volume will be of obvious appeal to Auden's legions of admirers. It will also be enjoyed by everyone interested in twentieth-century literature, religion, and culture.
Table of Contents:
Preface ix Acknowledgements xi Introduction xiii The Text of This Edition xxxiii ESSAYS AND REVIEWS, 939-948 The Public v. the Late Mr William Butler Yeats 3 A Great Democrat 8 Whitman and Arnold 11 Christian on the Left 13 Effective Democracy 15 How Not to Be a Genius 18 Young British Writers--On the Way Up (by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood) 21 Rilke in English 25 Democracy Is Hard 27 The Dyer's Hand 29 Heretics 32 Louis MacNeice 35 Inside China 35 Jacob and the Angel 37 Poet and Politician 39 A Literary Transference 42 The Icon and the Portrait 49 Tradition and Value 51 Against Romanticism 53 The Double Focus: Sandburg's Lincoln 55 Empirics for the Million 57 A Review of How to Read a Book, by Mortimer J.Adler 59 Yeats: Master of Diction 61 Romantic or Free? 63 "What Is Culture?" 72 Poet in Wartime 73 Open Letter to Knut Hamsun 76 Mimesis and Allegory 78 Who Shall Plan the Planners? 88 Criticism in a Mass Society 90 A Note on Order 100 Symposium [on the role of intellectuals in political affairs ]104 Where Are We Now? 104 Tract for the Times 108 The Wandering Jew 110 All about Ida 114 James Joyce and Richard Wagner 115 Yale Daily News Banquet Address 119 A Review of Open House, by Theodore Roethke 125 The Masses Defined 127 Opera on an American Legend 129 The Means of Grace 131 Ambiguous Answers 134 Eros and Agape 137 A Grammar of Assent 141 Last Words 143 La Trahison d'un Clerc 148 W. H. Auden Speaks of Poetry and Total War 152 The Rewards of Patience 153 The Fabian Figaro 158 Lecture Notes [I] 161 Lecture Notes [II] 163 Lecture Notes [III] 165 Lecture Notes [IV] 168 Lecture Notes [V] 170 An Unbiased Biography of Yeats and His World 173 Vocation and Society 175 Auden Calls "Night" Fun but Not Art 183 Purely Subjective 184 The Poet of the Encirclement 198 Introduction to A Selection from the Poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson 203 Student Government-or Bombs? 212 A Preface to Kierkegaard 213 A Knight of the Infinite 218 In Poor Shape 221 Children of Abraham 224 Augustus to Augustine 226 William Shakespeare, in a Wartime Format 231 Beauty Is Everlasting 234 The Giving of Thanks 236 Agee on Films 239 In Praise of the Brothers Grimm 239 Henry James and the Dedicated 242 Foghorn Bellow, Sly Bitchery, Spark Shakespeare's Worst Play 244 Foreword to The Flower of Grass, by Emile Cammaerts 246 Mr Welch 251 A Toast 253 Concerning the Village of Gschaid, and Its Mountain 254 The Day-by-Day Jottings of Piotr Tchaikovsky 256 The Christian Tragic Hero 258 The Guilty Vicarage 261 Introduction to The American Scene, by Henry James 270 K's Quest 282 As Hateful Ares Bids 286 Mozart and the Middlebrow 290 Red Lizards and White Stallions 292 Foreword to Poems, by Joan Murray 295 Address on Henry James 296 Introduction to Slick but Not Streamlined, by John Betjeman 303 Introduction to Intimate Journals, by Charles Baudelaire 307 Old Formulae in a New Light 315 Some Notes on D. H. Lawrence 317 The Essence of Dante 322 The Mythical Sex 325 Foreword to A Beginning, by Robert Horan 332 I Like It Cold 334 Mystic-and Prophet 337 Squares and Oblongs 339 Philosophy with Courage and Imagination 351 Introduction to The Portable Greek Reader 354 The Ironic Hero 377 Yeats as an Example 384 Introduction to Tales of Grimm and Andersen 390 The Poet's Life-and His Work 398 Opera Addict 400 Foreword to The Grasshopper's Man, by Rosalie Moore 403 APPENDICES I "The Prolific and the Devourer" 409 II Auden as Anthologist and Editor 459 III Courses, Syllabi, Examinations, and a Curriculum 464 IV Reported Lectures 481 V Endorsements, a Commissioned Text, and a List 498 VI Auden on the Air 501 VII Lost and Unwritten Work 506 TEXTUAL NOTES Essays and Reviews, 1939-948 511 Index of Titles, First Lines, and Books Reviewed 553
About the Author :
Edward Mendelson is the Literary Executor of the Estate of W. H. Auden and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
Review :
"For anyone interested in 'early Auden' this book is indispensable."--Bernard Knox, New York Review of Books "We need Auden again, sacred and profane. As the New Age lunges into the volcano, we could do worse than read the Auden of the '30s, if only to prepare us to understand, and value, the later Audens ... The Complete Works, edited with elegant scruple by Auden's literary executor Edward Mendelson is ... the only way to get at Auden as he happened, year by year, bit by bit, and not as he, or his later biographers, want us to think of him."--Tom D'Evelyn, Boston Book Review "Before famously (and more or less permanently) emigrating to New York in 1939, W. H. Auden was not only the foremost English poet of his generation but also a prolific reviewer and essayist whose tastes and political sensibilities dominated the anti-fascist England of the 1930s... This essential volume in a projected complete edition restores the voracious reader and never pedantic critic to the master poet."--Publisher's Weekly "The collection, which can be dipped into as well as read as a whole, is a feast of language and insight, and a brilliant, if indirect, cultural history of the World War II period as well as an often prophetic look at our own."--Arthur Kirsch, Washington Post Book World "To have found and contextualized the material collected in this second volume of Auden's prose is a magnificent achievement, and Edward Mendelson's immaculately handled edition will be a scholarly resource of a permanent kind."--Peter MacDonald, Times Literary Supplement "At last, we have a big book in which we can step into the quarry of ideas, good and bad, from which [Auden] mined [his] poems... The essays are overwhelming in the number and variety of the subjects addressed, ideas aired, capital letters employed, and systems invented to prove a small point... The essays are also a reminder of how many more places a poet could work out his worries in public fifty years ago... If he sometimes sounds in the forties as if he were speaking to us from a very high soapbox in a very big square, well, listen: we can hear him, still."--Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker "To read a mere decade's worth of Auden's essays, reviews, articles and miscellaneous musings is to be reminded that the best English poet of the 20th century was one of its brightest commentators. His range of interests was incomparably wide, his manner generally clear and always insightful, his curiosity unflagging."--Glyn Maxwell, The Guardian "Auden's range of topics is impressively, even dizzyingly broad... Auden did not sacrifice depth; numerous pieces are reflective, analytic, and otherwise carefully developed, and few of the pieces seem dated... Like its predecessors, the book is the model of an intelligently edited compilation."--Choice "Auden displays the capacious intellect, wide-ranging sympathies, and unfaltering brilliance that make him one of the most admired writers of the 20th century. Mendelson's meticulously edited collection will be a delight for all who relish the work of this massive, mid-century mind."--Virginia Quarterly Review
