W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden was an Anglo-American poet, best known for love poems such as "Funeral Blues," poems on political and social themes such as "September 1, 1939" and "The Shield of Achilles," poems on cultural and psychological themes such as The Age of Anxiety, and poems on religious themes such as For the Time Being and "Horae Canonicae." He grew up in and near Birmingham in a professional middle-class family. He attended English independent (or public) schools and studied English at Christ Church, Oxford. After a few months in Berlin in 1928–29 he spent five years (1930–35) teaching in English public schools, then travelled to Iceland and China in order to write books about his journeys. In 1939 he moved to the United States and became an American citizen in 1946. He taught from 1941 through 1945 in American universities, followed by occasional visiting professorships in the 1950s. From 1947 through 1957 he wintered in New York and summered in Ischia; from 1958 until the end of his life he wintered in New York (in Oxford in 1972–73) and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria.
Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form and content. He came to wide public attention at the age of twenty-three, in 1930, with his first book, Poems, followed in 1932 by
The Orators
. Three plays written in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood in 1935–38 built his reputation as a left-wing political writer. Auden moved to the United States partly to escape this reputation, and his work in the 1940s, including the long poems For the Time Being and The Sea and the Mirror, focused on religious themes. He won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his 1947 long poem The Age of Anxiety, the title of which became a popular phrase describing the modern era. In 1956–61 he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford; his lectures were popular with students and faculty and served as the basis of his 1962 prose collection The Dyer's Hand.
From around 1927 to 1939 Auden and Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship while both had briefer but more intense relations with other men. In 1939 Auden fell in love with Chester Kallman and regarded their relation as a marriage; this ended in 1941 when Kallman refused to accept the faithful relation that Auden demanded, but the two maintained their friendship, and from 1947 until Auden's death they lived in the same house or apartment in a non-sexual relation, often collaborating on opera libretti such as The Rake's Progress, for music by Igor Stravinsky.
Auden was a prolific writer of prose essays and reviews on literary, political, psychological and religious subjects, and he worked at various times on documentary films, poetic plays, and other forms of performance. Throughout his career he was both controversial and influential, and critical views on his work ranged from sharply dismissive, treating him as a lesser follower of W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot, to strongly affirmative, as in Joseph Brodsky's claim that he had "the greatest mind of the twentieth century." After his death, some of his poems, notably "Funeral Blues," Musée des Beaux Arts," "Refugee Blues," The Unknown Citizen," and "September 1, 1939," became known to a much wider public than during his lifetime through films, broadcasts, and popular media.
“I have never, I think, wanted to 'belong' to a group whose interests were not mine, nor have I resented exclusion. Why should thet accept me? All I have ever asked is that others should go their way and let me go mine.”
“Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the differences between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.”
“For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?”
“Those to whom evil is done,do evil in return”
“Music is the best means we have of digesting time.”
“Zajrzała mu przez ramię,Spodziewając się sadów i winnic,Marmuru dostatnich miast,Mórz i żaglowców zwinnych,Lecz on wykuł w lśniącym metaluZamiast przychylnych żywiołówPejzaż sztucznego pustkowiaZ niebem jak ołów.Bura równina, ugór, który nic nie znaczyłBez źdźbła trawy, bez dróg czy drzew przy ludzkich domach;Nie było tu co zjeść, nie było usiąść na czym;A jednak w tym nijakim miejscu znieruchomiałGęsty czworobok, jedna wielka niewiadoma:Milion oczu i butów jakiś nakaz przygnał,By równo jak pod sznurek, czekały na sygnał.Glos pozbawiony twarzy gdzieś w górze wyliczałStatystyczne dowody, że dogmat jest słuszny,Tonem suchym i płaskim jak ta okolica:Nie było braw, nie było mowy o dyskusji;Kolumna za kolumną szła w tumanie dusznym -Odmaszerowali, przekonani święcieLogiką, co ich wtrąci - gdzie indziej - w nieszczęście.Zajrzała mu przez ramię,Oczekując uczt i ołtarzy,Girland na szyjach jałówek,Ku niebu wzniesionych twarzy,Lecz na błyszczącym metalu,Gdzie modły widzieć się winno,Żar kuźni oświetlił scenęZupełnie inną.Drut kolczasty wydzielał arbitralny skrawekGruntu, gdzie stali, nudząc się, funkcjonariusze(Jeden rzucił ospały żart); w słońcu jaskrawymPocili się strażnicy, za drutem posłuszneRzędy porządnych ludzi gapiły się gnuśnie,Gdy trzech mężczyzn, ubranych w drelichy więzienne,Przywiązywano do trzech słupów wbitych w ziemię.Majestatyczna masa tego świata, wszystko,Co ma wagę, co zawsze tyle samo waży,Spoczęła w cudzych rękach; jak na pośmiewiskoRzucono ich, zmalałych, w ten krąg pustych twarzy,Bez nadziei na pomoc; co sobie zamarzyłWróg, stało się: przegrali zhańbieni; skonałaW nich ludzka duma, zanim skonały ich ciała.Zajrzała mu przez ramięOczekując atletów i gonitw,Mężczyzn i kobiet o smukłychCiałach, muzyką wprawionychW płynny, ciepły wir tańca;Lecz on wykuł na tarczy jasnejNie posadzkę taneczną - poleZarosłe chwastem.Obdarty łobuz na pustkowiu dzikimBłąkał się sam, bez celu; ptak z furkotem wzleciał,Spłoszony jego celnie rzuconym kamykiemŻe dziewczynę się gwałci, że gdzie dwóch ma nóż, ginie trzeci,Przyjmował jako aksjomat - on, co nie słyszał o świecie,Gdzie byłaby spełniona obietnica jakaś,I gdzie, płacz cudzy widząc, ktoś mógłby zapłakać.Wąskowargi płatnerz HefajstosWstał, odkuśtykał na bok:Tetyda o piersiach ze światłaMogła tylko zakrzyknąć słabo,Widząc, co bóg wykuł dla mocarza,Co otrzyma jej syn za chwilę -Mężobójca o sercu z żelaza,Młodo umrzeć mający Achilles.”
“Złóż głowę — śpiącą, kochaną,Ludzką — na moim ramieniuNiewiernym; w myślących dzieciachCzas trawi śpiesznym płomieniemUrodę, każdemu z nich danąInaczej, i zżera je lękiem;Ale ja chcę do świtu w objęciachMieć to żywe stworzenie, pełneWiny, niestałe, śmiertelne,Lecz dla mnie skończenie piękne.Bez granic jest dusza i ciało:Kochankom, kiedy w omdleniuConocnym leża pod okiemŁagodnej planety Wenus,Jej blask śle wizje nietrwałeWszechwładnej miłości, obrazyNadziei wiecznie wysokiej;Sny, w abstrakcyjnej wersjiBudzące i w chudej piersiPustelnika zmysłowe ekstazy.Pewność, wierność nie trwa nawetDoby — zgaśnie przed północąJak cichnący dzwonu głos,Znów modni maniacy wzniosąSwoją pedantyczną wrzawęI wróżba z kart nas postraszy:Trzeba spłacić każdy groszKosztów, długów i rachunków;Lecz skarb nocnych pocałunkówWartości rankiem nie straci.Piękność, północ, przywidzenia —Wszystko niknie; niech wiatr brzaskuNad twą głową, która śni,Zbudzi dzień tak pełen blasku,By wzrok i puls śpiewał peanŚwiatu, który pędzi w śmierć;Znajdziesz i w pustyni dniMannę mimowolnych mocy,Znajdziesz i w zniewadze nocyMiłość wszystkich ludzkich serc.”
“Looking up at the stars, I know quite wellThat, for all they care, I can go to hell,But on earth indifference is the leastWe have to dread from man or beast.”
“A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.”
“You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, as surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading, wear that same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-object look.”
“The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music.”
“Slowly we are learning,We at least know this much,That we have to unlearnMuch that we were taught,And are growing charyOf emphatic dogmas;Love like Matter is muchOdder than we thought.”
“Fate succombs many a species. One alone jeopardizes itself.”
“Words have no word for words that are not true.”
“We would rather be ruined than changedWe would rather die in our dreadThan climb the cross of the momentAnd let our illusions die.”
“That the speech of self-disclosure should be translatable seems to me very odd, but I am convinced that it is. The conclusion that I draw is that the only quality which all human being without exception possess is uniqueness: any characteristic, on the other hand, which one individual can be recognized as having in common with another, like red hair or the English language, implies the existence of other individual qualities which this classification excludes.”
“All the rest is silenceOn the other side of the wall;And the silence ripeness,And the ripeness all.”
“In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.”
“Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good.”
“All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation. ”
“No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.”
“What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.”
“Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.”
“He was my North, my South, my East and West,My working week and my Sunday rest,My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.”
“Now the leaves are falling fast, Nurse’s flowers will not last, Nurses to their graves are gone, But the prams go rolling on.”
“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.”
“Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.”
“One cannot review a bad book without showing off.”
“In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster, the ploughman mayHave heard the splash, the forsaken cry,But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shoneAs it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green water,And the expensive ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.”
“I and the public knowWhat all schoolchildren learn,Those to whom evil is doneDo evil in return.”
“The windiest militant trashImportant Persons shoutIs not so crude as our wish:What mad Nijinsky wrote About DiaghilevIs true of the normal heart;For the error bred in the boneOf each woman and each manCraves what it cannot have;Not universal loveBut to be loved alone.”
“Few people take an interest in Iceland, but in those few the interest is passionate.”
“The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.”
“The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.”
“Soft as the earth is mankind and both need to be altered.”
“Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links, Behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks, Under the look of fatigue, the attack of migraine and the sigh There is always another story, there is more than meets the eye.”
“As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption.”