W. H. AUDEN
W. H. Auden
Born 21 February 1907
York, England
Died 29 September 1973 (aged 66)
Vienna, Austria
Wystan Hugh Auden (21 February 1907 - 29 September 1973),
who signed his works W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,
regarded by many as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. His work
is noted for its stylistic and technical achievements, its engagement with moral
and political issues, and its variety of tone, form, and content. The
central themes of his poetry are: personal love, politics and citizenship,
religion and morals, and the relationship between unique human beings and the
anonymous, impersonal world of nature.
Auden grew up in Birmingham in a professional middle-class family and read
English Literature at Christ Church, Oxford. His early poems, in the late 1920s
and 1930s, alternated between obscure modern styles and accessible traditional
ones, were written in an intense and dramatic tone, and established his
reputation as a left-wing political poet and prophet. He became uncomfortable in
this role in the later 1930s, and abandoned it after he moved to the United
States in 1939. His poems in the 1940s explored religious and ethical themes in
a less dramatic manner than his earlier works, but still combined new forms
devised by Auden himself with traditional forms and styles. In the 1950s and
1960s many of his poems focused on the ways in which words revealed and
concealed emotions, and he took a particular interest in writing opera librettos,
a form ideally suited to direct expression of strong feelings.
He was also 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. After his death, some of his
poems, notably "Funeral Blues" ("Stop all the clocks") and "September 1, 1939",
became widely known through films, broadcasts, and popular media.
W. H. Auden
Born 21 February 1907
York, England
Died 29 September 1973 (aged 66)
Vienna, Austria
Wystan Hugh Auden (21 February 1907 - 29 September 1973),
who signed his works W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,
regarded by many as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. His work
is noted for its stylistic and technical achievements, its engagement with moral
and political issues, and its variety of tone, form, and content. The
central themes of his poetry are: personal love, politics and citizenship,
religion and morals, and the relationship between unique human beings and the
anonymous, impersonal world of nature.
Auden grew up in Birmingham in a professional middle-class family and read
English Literature at Christ Church, Oxford. His early poems, in the late 1920s
and 1930s, alternated between obscure modern styles and accessible traditional
ones, were written in an intense and dramatic tone, and established his
reputation as a left-wing political poet and prophet. He became uncomfortable in
this role in the later 1930s, and abandoned it after he moved to the United
States in 1939. His poems in the 1940s explored religious and ethical themes in
a less dramatic manner than his earlier works, but still combined new forms
devised by Auden himself with traditional forms and styles. In the 1950s and
1960s many of his poems focused on the ways in which words revealed and
concealed emotions, and he took a particular interest in writing opera librettos,
a form ideally suited to direct expression of strong feelings.
He was also 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. After his death, some of his
poems, notably "Funeral Blues" ("Stop all the clocks") and "September 1, 1939",
became widely known through films, broadcasts, and popular media.