Wystan Hugh Auden

Wystan Hugh Auden was a British poet, author and playwright best known as a
leading literary figure in the 20th century for his poetry. Known for his chameleon,
like ability to write poems in almost every verse form, Auden’s travels in countries
torn by political strife influenced his early works. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948.
W.H. Auden was born in York, England, on February 21, 1907. Raised by a physician
father and a strict, Anglican mother, Auden studied science and engineering at Oxford
University before finding his calling to write and switching his major to English.
Auden pursued his love of poetry, influenced by Old English verse and the poems of
Thomas Hardy, Robert Frost, William Blake and Emily Dickinson. He graduated
from Oxford in 1928, and that same year, his collection Poems was privately printed.
In 1930, with the help of T. S. Eliot, Auden published another collection of the same
name (Poems) that featured different content. The success of this collection
positioned him as one of the leading influencers in literature in the 20th century.
Auden’s poems in the latter half of the 1930s reflected his journeys to politically torn
countries. He wrote his acclaimed anthology, Spain, based on his first-hand accounts
of the country’s civil war from 1936 to 1939. More so, Auden was lauded for his
chameleon-like ability to write poems in almost every verse form. His work
influenced aspiring poets, popular culture and vernacular speech. He stated in
Squares and Oblongs: Essays Based on the Modern Poetry Collection at the
Lockwood Memorial Library (1948), “A poet is, before anything else, a person who
is passionately in love with language”. After moving to America, Auden’s work
shifted away from political influences to instead reveal more religious and spiritual
themes. Another Time, a collection that debuted in America, features many of his
most popular poems, including September 1, 1939 and Musee des Beaux Arts.
Accolades followed Auden, including his 1948 Pulitzer Prize win for The Age of
Anxiety. Though best known for his poetry, Auden was also a distinguished
playwright and author. Auden wed Erika Mann, daughter of German novelist Thomas
Mann, in 1935. The nuptial did not last, as it was a marriage of convenience for her to
gain British citizenship and flee Nazi Germany. Auden, ever the avid traveler, visited
Germany, Iceland and China, and then, in 1939, moved to the United States. On this
side of the pond, he met his other true calling, his lifelong partner, fellow poet
Chester Kallman. Auden eventually became an American citizen. With his health
waning, Auden left America in 1972 and moved back to Oxford. He spent his last
days in Austria, where he owned a house. Auden died in Vienna, Austria, on
September 29, 1973.
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden was born on February 21, 1907, in York, England. He was the
last of three sons born to George and Constance Auden. His father was the medical
officer for the city of Birmingham, England, and a psychologist (a person who studies
the mind). His mother was a devoted Anglican (a member of the Church of England).
The combination of religious and scientific themes are buried throughout Auden’s
work. The industrial area where he grew up shows up often in his adult poetry. Like
many young boys in his city, he was interested in machines, mining, and metals and
wanted to be a mining engineer. With both grandfathers being Anglican ministers,
Auden once commented that if he had not become a poet he might have ended up as
an Anglican bishop. Another influential childhood experience was his time served as
a choirboy. Auden wed Erika Mann, daughter of German novelist Thomas Mann, in
1935. The nuptial did not last, as it was a marriage of convenience for her to gain
British citizenship and flee Nazi Germany. Auden, ever the avid traveler, visited
Germany, Iceland and China, and then, in 1939, moved to the United States. On this
side of the pond, he met his other true calling, his lifelong partner, fellow poet
Chester Kallman. Auden eventually became an American citizen. He was educated at
St. Edmund’s preparatory school and at Oxford University. At Oxford fellow
undergraduates Cecil Day Lewis, Louis MacNeice, and Stephen Spender, with
Auden, formed the group called the Oxford Group or the “Auden Generation”. Auden
was the first poet in English to use the imagery (language that creates a specific
image) and sometimes the terminology (terms that are specific to a field) of clinical
psychoanalysis (analysis and treatment of emotional disorders). In 1928, when Auden
was twenty-one, a small volume of his poems was privately printed by a school
friend. Poems was published a year later by Faber and Faber (of which T. S. Eliot
[1888–1965] was a director). The Orators (1932) was a volume consisting of odes
(poems focused on extreme feelings), parodies (take offs) of school speeches, and
sermons that criticized England. It set the mood for a generation of public school
boys who were in revolt against the empire of Great Britain and fox hunting. After
completing school Auden traveled with friends in Germany, Iceland, and China. He
then worked with them to write Letters from Iceland (1937) and Journey To A War
(1939). In 1939 Auden took up residence in the United States, supporting himself by
teaching at various universities. In 1946 he became a U.S. citizen, by which time his
literary career had become a series of well-recognized successes. He received the
Pulitzer Prize and the Bollingen Award and enjoyed his standing as one of the most
distinguished poets of his generation. From 1956 to 1961 he was professor of poetry
at Oxford University. Auden's early poetry, influenced by his interest in the Anglo-
Saxon language as well as in psychoanalysis, was sometimes riddle-like and clinical.
It also contained private references that most readers did not understand. At the same
time it had a mystery that would disappear in his later poetry. In the 1930s W. H.
Auden became famous when literary journalists described him as the leader of the so-
called “Oxford Group”, a circle of young English poets influenced by literary
Modernism, in particular by the artistic principles adopted by T. S. Eliot. In his work
Auden applied concepts and science to traditional verse forms and metrical (having a
measured rhythm) patterns while including the industrial countryside of his youth.
Auden was well educated and intelligent, a genius of form and technique. In his
poetry he realized a lifelong search for a philosophical and religious position from
which to analyze and comprehend the individual life in relation to society and to the
human condition in general. He was able to express his dislike for a difficult
government, his suspicion of science without human feeling, and his belief in a
Christian God. In his final years Auden wrote the volumes City without Walls, and
Many Other Poems (1969), Epistle to a Godson, and Other Poems (1972), and Thank
You, Fog: Last Poems (1974), which was published posthumously (after his death).
All three works are noted for their lexical (word and vocabulary relationship) range
and humanitarian (compassionate) content. With his health waning, Auden left
America in 1972 and moved back to Oxford. He spent his last days in Austria, where
he owned a house. Auden died in Vienna, Austria, on September 29, 1973. Auden is
now considered one of the greatest poets of the English language.