July 30, 2024 • 20 mins
W.H. Auden is the modernist poet who coined the term “the age of anxiety” and is noted for his stylistic and technical achievement. His work intellectually engaged with politics, morals, love and religion. With us today is our distinguished guest, Professor Nicholas Jenkins. Prof. Jenkins teaches English literature at Stanford University and will soon be the director of the Stanford Creative Writing Program. He is also the literary executor of the ballet impresario Lincoln Kirstein, the creator of the Kindred Britain website, and the author of the critically acclaimed book The Island: War and Belonging in Auden's England, published by Harvard University Press.
Recommended Reading:
Selected Poems of W. H. Auden(1991)
The Island: War and Belonging in Auden's England (2024)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I believe that Auden thought somewhere inside himself
that the novel was a morealtruistic and less egotistical
form, and there are certainlyplenty of critics from Bakhtin
onwards who have absolutelythought the same thing.
Poetry was not dialogicalenough, maybe even thought that,
and novelists were a littlesaner than poets and poetry.
(00:22):
And I think what might behappening here is that he was in
some ways protecting himselfagainst this Dionysian quality
that, at least in my eyes, ispart of what his way of writing
poetry was about.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Welcome back to the Global Novel, where we journey
through the vast landscape ofworld literature.
I'm your host, claire Hennessey, and today we're diving deep
into one of the 20th century'smost interesting and
controversial poets of modernity, wh Auden, who coined the term
the Age of Anxiety and is notedfor his stylistic and technical
(01:04):
achievement.
And we're not alone on thisexpedition.
With us today is ourdistinguished guest, professor
Nicholas Jenkins.
Professor Jenkins teachesEnglish literature at Stanford
University and will soon be thedirector of the Stanford
Creative Writing Program.
He's also the literary executorof the ballet impresario
Lincoln Kirstein, the creator ofthe Kindred Britain website,
(01:25):
and the author of the balletimpresario Lincoln Kirstein, the
creator of the Kindred Britainwebsite, and the author of the
critically acclaimed book theIsland War and Belonging in
Auden's England, published byHarvard University Press.
Hello, professor Jenkins, it'san absolute honor to have you
with us today.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Hello Clara.
It's lovely to be on the showwith you.
Thank you so much for invitingme to talk with you about Auden.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Well, your extensive work on Auden has shed new light
on his life and poetry.
So before we dive into theintricacies of Auden's verse,
could you share with us whatinitially drew you to his work
and what makes Auden such acompelling figure in literature?
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Yes, I think, like many of the things that are
important that happen to aperson in life, it happened in
stages and I didn't really knowit was happening.
For a long time I didn't knowAuden personally.
He died before I read a poem,let alone a poem by him and so
(02:27):
when I got to university I readsome poems by Auden that I liked
, but I read a lot of otherpoetry as well, by other people
that I liked just as much, andso I didn't have any really
strong sense of that I was goingto end up working on Auden's
poetry and on his career.
I did have some professors atuniversity who had written about
(02:51):
Auden and who were experts onAuden.
I was interested in what theyhad to say, just because it's
always wonderful to hearsomebody who really knows about
something talk about it.
Then I came to the United Stateson a fellowship and had my
fellowship in New York, andwhile I was there I met a number
of people who had known Ordonas a person, and these people
(03:16):
were, in almost all cases,fascinating, interesting people
in their own right.
They had some funny stories totell about Auden and his life.
I was lucky enough also to meetthe person that you mentioned a
few moments ago, claire LincolnKirstein, who was probably
Auden's closest friend in NewYork for the last 30 years of
(03:39):
Auden's life.
Lincoln was an extraordinaryand important cultural figure in
his own right, with hugelyintelligent, experienced,
fascinating viewpoints on theworld that he helped me
understand Auden's poetry.
And I would say the fundamentalreason for that is because
(04:11):
there is always a gap betweenthe social and historical person
, or the physiological,biological reality of a person
any person, including Auden andthen that inner personality that
the author's creators manifestperhaps more clearly in their
(04:32):
writing or their medium of theirart than they do in their
everyday lives.
So it was only when I got to dosome work with Professor Edward
Mendelson of Columbia in NewYork, who is Auden's literary
executor and a man with anenormous breadth of knowledge
about Auden, that I began tofeel like, oh, I really see
(04:54):
something here that I feel likeI could understand better and
make a contribution to.
And so it was, paradoxically, itwas only when I sort of moved
away from personal knowledge ofAuden through the mediated,
through these friends of Auden'sthat I've met in New York, that
I felt I got closer to the poet, and at that point I.
(05:14):
I did become very interested andI noticed something that
perhaps is relevant to mentionjust in the context of doing
research about any historicalfigure, which is that it can
seem overwhelming when there's alarge body of work that's
already been published about anyfigure like Auden or any other
(05:36):
great writer or artist can seemoverwhelming, there's nothing
more to say.
I think that's the opposite ofthe truth, and I noticed in
Ordon's case and I would betthat it's true of other cases as
well that there's always anenormous amount to discover
that's lying pretty close tohand, that either hasn't been
seen or has been forgotten aboutor needs to be thought about in
(06:00):
a different way.
And so I realized, as I startedto get very interested in Auden
, that there was also a lot tosay about Auden that hadn't been
said before, both in terms ofhis poetry, his work, the place
that he poured, the reallyintense energy, creative energy
of his being, but also justlearning stuff about him, his
(06:22):
views of the world and his life,from his letters, from
interviews, from transcripts ofreadings and conversations that
he'd given.
So actually I feel like there'salways a lot more to find out
about even somebody who's becomenow a central part of 20th
century poetic history and Ifelt privileged to be able to
(06:46):
just spend some time doing that.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Great, great Well.
Regarding Auden as one of theliterary voices of the era, you
mentioned that understandingAuden's poetry involves
listening to other voices fromhis time.
So how do writers like WyndhamLewis and TS Eliot help us
better appreciate Auden'srelationship with and his
(07:10):
contributions to literarymodernism?
And through Auden's work, whatinsights can we gain into this
larger picture of the modernistmovement?
What insights can we gain intothis?
Speaker 1 (07:20):
larger picture of the modernist movement.
It's a crucial question and Ithink it's important for us,
just as we start to dig into ita little bit for the benefit of
people who may just be coming tothe term literary modernism, to
just for me to give a kind ofthumbnail sketch of what I
understand literary modernism tobe, particularly in the poetic
(07:45):
context.
So I think it's all thesedifferent things in different
places in cultural history,different geographical places,
but also different mediums.
So poetic modernism for me, asAuden would have understood it,
I think, has to do with a focuson the modern city.
Modernism has a lot to do withanxiety about modernity.
(08:06):
It's very cosmopolitan, usuallyin its cultural coordinates, in
being obsessed with themetropolis.
I think that it's very, verydifferent as a way of writing
poetry and as a focus for poetryfrom a lot of the previous
history of, certainly, englishliterature, and it's also
(08:32):
written by people who have avery kind of cosmopolitan
outlook on the world, whichagain, is unfortunately not
always true of many of thewriters who are storied figures
in English literary history.
So modernism involves too, awillingness to experiment and
try and write poems in differentways, not just continue to
(08:53):
write tidy little box-like poemsthat rhyme and scan neatly, but
to break up all kinds ofregular and expected patterns of
structuring poetry and look forother ways to make a poem
respond to the unprecedentedmoment that these writers felt
(09:14):
that they were living in.
So I thinken absorbed some ofthat and the figures that were
most important to him I wouldsay I mean there's a whole
galaxy of poetic modernists,including people like Marianne
Moore, ezra Pound, wallaceStevens, gertrude Stein, but for
(09:39):
me anyway, the two figures thatreally deeply influenced
Auden's imagination were theIrish poet, WP Yeats, and the
poet who was born in the Statesbut living in England for most
of his adult life, ts Eliot.
And above all TS Eliot, I think,was a reference point for Auden
and it's sort of natural tothink that young writers, like
(10:00):
Auden was in the 1920s, wouldlook to the most sophisticated
experiments of the time.
So Auden tried to write like amodernist poet in some of the
ways that I just described, andit didn't really work for him.
He wrote some quite bad poemswhen he was trying to be his
most modernist.
I think in the end he went backto writing poems that are more
(10:26):
traditionally structured, thatoften are centered on a single
speaking voice, reacting to aworld that is around that voice,
that are not as experimental intheir coordinates and also are
more if I can use the term inall of its connotations more
(10:46):
insular.
And so Auden began to write in away that looked a little bit
more like what previous poetryhad looked like, and in that he
became, in a very strange way, akind of forerunner, or maybe
even a mentor, of TS Eliot, whowas moving away from his
(11:09):
internationalism and towardssomething that, again, was much
more insular, much more devotedto local life, more devoted to
local life, to an organic,largely imagined social world.
And Eliot became a much more, soto speak, provincial writer in
the 1930s and 1940s, and I wouldsay that part of that is
(11:31):
because he saw what youngerpoets, most notably Auden, were
doing.
So in a sense, the person whohad started by teaching Auden
ended up by the person who wasbeing taught by him, and what
that tells us in part aboutliterary modernism is that it
wasn't a once and for allrevolution, it didn't just
(11:51):
happen and change everythingforever.
It certainly was part of thehistory of poetry in English,
just like it's part of thehistory of innumerable
literatures around the world,but it wasn't an absolute thing
and it became just an end point.
It didn't become an end point,it became something that was a
(12:12):
stage, a phase, and literaturemoved beyond it in the form that
Auden was writing.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Well, you also mentioned in your book that
Auden's work reflects a turninto inwardness.
You know that kind ofparochialism.
You just mentioned ruralism,for another example, the English
countryside country, alsohaving both meanings of rural
and national.
How does this inward ethossignal a shift, or even the
(12:42):
ending of modernism, and whatconditions fostered such a
transition from outwardness toinwardness?
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yeah, so I think one of the things that a lot of
people had somewhat easilyassumed about Auden was that he
was a very urbane writer,somebody who was very
intellectual.
Auden was an incrediblyintelligent person, obviously,
(13:10):
but I don't think that's reallywhere the sources of his art
come from.
Person, obviously, but I don'tthink that's really where the
sources of his art come from.
And part of what I tried towrite about in the Island was
that Auden was actually acountry boy.
He grew up in the countryside,knew a lot about natural life.
He's a very avid amateurnaturalist.
He was very well acquaintedwith the rural world, which has
(13:36):
been a kind of bedrock featureof a lot of English poetry over
hundreds and hundreds of years.
But I think it wasn't simply acase of Auden being somebody who
felt at home in the countryside, but it was also a turn away
from modernism, the city, theworld of international
connections, and in that Audenwas tracking something that was
happening on a much, much largerscale in the period between the
(13:59):
end of the First World War in1918 and the beginning of the
Second World War in 1939.
So England, along with a lot ofother countries, including the
US, but also many countries inEurope began to be more inward
turned, be more focused on itsown problems, its own traditions
(14:20):
.
I think the strains of theempire were also beginning to
manifest themselves very visiblyas an unsustainable situation
in Britain.
And of course, there were awhole series of crises in the
interwar period, the first ofthose crises being the aftermath
of the war itself, which leftso many people in a deeply
(14:41):
traumatized state, includingOrdon, and also financial crises
in the 1930s.
So there was a period in whichmany cultures became very inward
, turned very insular to pick upthe word that I use in the
title of my book, the Island andI think Auden's preoccupations
(15:02):
with insular themes were a kindof reflection or a prophetic,
half-understood understanding ofa track that at least English
culture was taking itself duringthat period, and of course TS
Eliot ended up following Audenin that trajectory too.
(15:23):
So this was about somethingbigger than just personal
preference or idiosyncrasy.
This was about a change in theculture, one that, to a greater
or lesser extent, is also veryinfluential today in the UK.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Right, as you just mentioned, that the word island
is almost synonymous withinsular and your book is titled
the Island War and Belonging inOdin's England.
Could you elaborate on whatisland symbolizes in the context
of Auden's poetry and life?
Speaker 1 (15:55):
So the island is a word that has a deep history in
iconography of the British Islesbut more especially, in this
case, in the iconography ofEnglish identity.
And I think one of the thingsthat I was writing about in the
island alongside or within Audenwas also Englishness, english
(16:20):
identity.
And there are innumerable poemsand speeches by politicians in
which England, which is not anisland, it's part of an island
or a group of islands, anarchipelago.
England envisions itself, orEnglish people with an
(16:41):
investment in English identityenvision themselves as living on
an island that's set somewhereoff from the rest of the world,
that is surrounded by sea andhas his own separate story and,
like an island does, which issomewhat related to the rest of
the world but also somewhatseparate from it.
(17:09):
So the Victorian poet, laureateTennyson, talked about an island
story when he was talking aboutEnglishness essentially, and
that phrase got picked up andused by politicians, most
notably or infamously, winstonChurchill, who talked constantly
about these islands, the island, the island story, picking up
Tennyson's phrase from his poem.
(17:33):
And so, at one level, the islandis about the nature of the
illusion within nationalidentity that England is a place
apart, separated off from therest of the world and has its
own unique, specific and veryinward-facing characteristics.
(17:55):
I think also I was saying thatthe kind of person that Auden
was and the kind of poetry thathe was writing were insular and
that that was his way ofunderstanding his social
positioning.
And I think maybe I was alsogesturing towards the idea,
(18:16):
which often comes to mind whenyou're reading poetry, that a
poem set out on a page is likean island of type in a sea of
white paper surrounding it.
So I was thinking aboutmultiple different levels of the
term the island, and it's onethat Auden uses a lot to talk
(18:37):
about his home, the place thathe imagines.
In the end Auden gave all ofthose fantasies or illusions up,
but for a long while, in thelate 1920s and the beginning of
the 1930s I think, he really wasa kind of lyrical nationalist
poet, and for an English lyricalnationalist poet that
(18:59):
mythography of the island camevery easily to hand.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Contrast this with a later Auden who basically
struggles with ordinary humanunhappiness, as he wrote in his
poems.
Let's begin with the18-year-old Auden, who
identified with the condition ofShakespeare's character Calvin
as a disinherited outcast.
So why is this image in yourbook, the uncanny image of Auden
(19:32):
as a iconoclast, so powerfulthroughout your book and
argument, and why did this earlystage of the poet as a rebel
caught your scholarly attention?
Speaker 1 (19:42):
So I think there's always something interesting
about outsiders.
I think they're incrediblyimportant to the health of a
world, of a culture.
Auden, for lots of differentreasons having to do with um,
just personal idiosyncrasies, Ithink did think of himself as a
little bit of an outsider.
Um, I think his sexuality alsoenforced that sense on him.
(20:08):
Um, I think he probably alsocame from a background, a family
background, that was a littlebit different from most homes.
His parents were veryfascinating and neurotic,
anxious, talented people, and soso I'm just I value outsiders.
(20:28):
I think that the abjected oneis a person who must never be
forgotten.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
In the second half of this episode, professor Jenkins
will talk about how to closelyread Auden's poetry in a unique
narrative arc.
As long as Auden's rhetoricstyle and depth of artistry.
To listen to the entire episode, we encourage you to subscribe
at theglobalnovelcom slashsubscribe.
Thank you so much for listening.
I believe that Auden thought somewhere inside himself
that the novel was a morealtruistic and less egotistical
form, and there are certainlyplenty of critics from Bakhtin
onwards who have absolutelythought the same thing.
Poetry was not dialogicalenough, maybe even thought that,
and novelists were a littlesaner than poets and poetry.
(00:22):
And I think what might behappening here is that he was in
some ways protecting himselfagainst this Dionysian quality
that, at least in my eyes, ispart of what his way of writing
poetry was about.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Welcome back to the Global Novel, where we journey
through the vast landscape ofworld literature.
I'm your host, claire Hennessey, and today we're diving deep
into one of the 20th century'smost interesting and
controversial poets of modernity, wh Auden, who coined the term
the Age of Anxiety and is notedfor his stylistic and technical
(01:04):
achievement.
And we're not alone on thisexpedition.
With us today is ourdistinguished guest, professor
Nicholas Jenkins.
Professor Jenkins teachesEnglish literature at Stanford
University and will soon be thedirector of the Stanford
Creative Writing Program.
He's also the literary executorof the ballet impresario
Lincoln Kirstein, the creator ofthe Kindred Britain website,
(01:25):
and the author of the balletimpresario Lincoln Kirstein, the
creator of the Kindred Britainwebsite, and the author of the
critically acclaimed book theIsland War and Belonging in
Auden's England, published byHarvard University Press.
Hello, professor Jenkins, it'san absolute honor to have you
with us today.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Hello Clara.
It's lovely to be on the showwith you.
Thank you so much for invitingme to talk with you about Auden.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Well, your extensive work on Auden has shed new light
on his life and poetry.
So before we dive into theintricacies of Auden's verse,
could you share with us whatinitially drew you to his work
and what makes Auden such acompelling figure in literature?
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Yes, I think, like many of the things that are
important that happen to aperson in life, it happened in
stages and I didn't really knowit was happening.
For a long time I didn't knowAuden personally.
He died before I read a poem,let alone a poem by him and so
(02:27):
when I got to university I readsome poems by Auden that I liked
, but I read a lot of otherpoetry as well, by other people
that I liked just as much, andso I didn't have any really
strong sense of that I was goingto end up working on Auden's
poetry and on his career.
I did have some professors atuniversity who had written about
(02:51):
Auden and who were experts onAuden.
I was interested in what theyhad to say, just because it's
always wonderful to hearsomebody who really knows about
something talk about it.
Then I came to the United Stateson a fellowship and had my
fellowship in New York, andwhile I was there I met a number
of people who had known Ordonas a person, and these people
(03:16):
were, in almost all cases,fascinating, interesting people
in their own right.
They had some funny stories totell about Auden and his life.
I was lucky enough also to meetthe person that you mentioned a
few moments ago, claire LincolnKirstein, who was probably
Auden's closest friend in NewYork for the last 30 years of
(03:39):
Auden's life.
Lincoln was an extraordinaryand important cultural figure in
his own right, with hugelyintelligent, experienced,
fascinating viewpoints on theworld that he helped me
understand Auden's poetry.
And I would say the fundamentalreason for that is because
(04:11):
there is always a gap betweenthe social and historical person
, or the physiological,biological reality of a person
any person, including Auden andthen that inner personality that
the author's creators manifestperhaps more clearly in their
(04:32):
writing or their medium of theirart than they do in their
everyday lives.
So it was only when I got to dosome work with Professor Edward
Mendelson of Columbia in NewYork, who is Auden's literary
executor and a man with anenormous breadth of knowledge
about Auden, that I began tofeel like, oh, I really see
(04:54):
something here that I feel likeI could understand better and
make a contribution to.
And so it was, paradoxically, itwas only when I sort of moved
away from personal knowledge ofAuden through the mediated,
through these friends of Auden'sthat I've met in New York, that
I felt I got closer to the poet, and at that point I.
(05:14):
I did become very interested andI noticed something that
perhaps is relevant to mentionjust in the context of doing
research about any historicalfigure, which is that it can
seem overwhelming when there's alarge body of work that's
already been published about anyfigure like Auden or any other
(05:36):
great writer or artist can seemoverwhelming, there's nothing
more to say.
I think that's the opposite ofthe truth, and I noticed in
Ordon's case and I would betthat it's true of other cases as
well that there's always anenormous amount to discover
that's lying pretty close tohand, that either hasn't been
seen or has been forgotten aboutor needs to be thought about in
(06:00):
a different way.
And so I realized, as I startedto get very interested in Auden
, that there was also a lot tosay about Auden that hadn't been
said before, both in terms ofhis poetry, his work, the place
that he poured, the reallyintense energy, creative energy
of his being, but also justlearning stuff about him, his
(06:22):
views of the world and his life,from his letters, from
interviews, from transcripts ofreadings and conversations that
he'd given.
So actually I feel like there'salways a lot more to find out
about even somebody who's becomenow a central part of 20th
century poetic history and Ifelt privileged to be able to
(06:46):
just spend some time doing that.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Great, great Well.
Regarding Auden as one of theliterary voices of the era, you
mentioned that understandingAuden's poetry involves
listening to other voices fromhis time.
So how do writers like WyndhamLewis and TS Eliot help us
better appreciate Auden'srelationship with and his
(07:10):
contributions to literarymodernism?
And through Auden's work, whatinsights can we gain into this
larger picture of the modernistmovement?
What insights can we gain intothis?
Speaker 1 (07:20):
larger picture of the modernist movement.
It's a crucial question and Ithink it's important for us,
just as we start to dig into ita little bit for the benefit of
people who may just be coming tothe term literary modernism, to
just for me to give a kind ofthumbnail sketch of what I
understand literary modernism tobe, particularly in the poetic
(07:45):
context.
So I think it's all thesedifferent things in different
places in cultural history,different geographical places,
but also different mediums.
So poetic modernism for me, asAuden would have understood it,
I think, has to do with a focuson the modern city.
Modernism has a lot to do withanxiety about modernity.
(08:06):
It's very cosmopolitan, usuallyin its cultural coordinates, in
being obsessed with themetropolis.
I think that it's very, verydifferent as a way of writing
poetry and as a focus for poetryfrom a lot of the previous
history of, certainly, englishliterature, and it's also
(08:32):
written by people who have avery kind of cosmopolitan
outlook on the world, whichagain, is unfortunately not
always true of many of thewriters who are storied figures
in English literary history.
So modernism involves too, awillingness to experiment and
try and write poems in differentways, not just continue to
(08:53):
write tidy little box-like poemsthat rhyme and scan neatly, but
to break up all kinds ofregular and expected patterns of
structuring poetry and look forother ways to make a poem
respond to the unprecedentedmoment that these writers felt
(09:14):
that they were living in.
So I thinken absorbed some ofthat and the figures that were
most important to him I wouldsay I mean there's a whole
galaxy of poetic modernists,including people like Marianne
Moore, ezra Pound, wallaceStevens, gertrude Stein, but for
(09:39):
me anyway, the two figures thatreally deeply influenced
Auden's imagination were theIrish poet, WP Yeats, and the
poet who was born in the Statesbut living in England for most
of his adult life, ts Eliot.
And above all TS Eliot, I think,was a reference point for Auden
and it's sort of natural tothink that young writers, like
(10:00):
Auden was in the 1920s, wouldlook to the most sophisticated
experiments of the time.
So Auden tried to write like amodernist poet in some of the
ways that I just described, andit didn't really work for him.
He wrote some quite bad poemswhen he was trying to be his
most modernist.
I think in the end he went backto writing poems that are more
(10:26):
traditionally structured, thatoften are centered on a single
speaking voice, reacting to aworld that is around that voice,
that are not as experimental intheir coordinates and also are
more if I can use the term inall of its connotations more
(10:46):
insular.
And so Auden began to write in away that looked a little bit
more like what previous poetryhad looked like, and in that he
became, in a very strange way, akind of forerunner, or maybe
even a mentor, of TS Eliot, whowas moving away from his
(11:09):
internationalism and towardssomething that, again, was much
more insular, much more devotedto local life, more devoted to
local life, to an organic,largely imagined social world.
And Eliot became a much more, soto speak, provincial writer in
the 1930s and 1940s, and I wouldsay that part of that is
(11:31):
because he saw what youngerpoets, most notably Auden, were
doing.
So in a sense, the person whohad started by teaching Auden
ended up by the person who wasbeing taught by him, and what
that tells us in part aboutliterary modernism is that it
wasn't a once and for allrevolution, it didn't just
(11:51):
happen and change everythingforever.
It certainly was part of thehistory of poetry in English,
just like it's part of thehistory of innumerable
literatures around the world,but it wasn't an absolute thing
and it became just an end point.
It didn't become an end point,it became something that was a
(12:12):
stage, a phase, and literaturemoved beyond it in the form that
Auden was writing.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Well, you also mentioned in your book that
Auden's work reflects a turninto inwardness.
You know that kind ofparochialism.
You just mentioned ruralism,for another example, the English
countryside country, alsohaving both meanings of rural
and national.
How does this inward ethossignal a shift, or even the
(12:42):
ending of modernism, and whatconditions fostered such a
transition from outwardness toinwardness?
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yeah, so I think one of the things that a lot of
people had somewhat easilyassumed about Auden was that he
was a very urbane writer,somebody who was very
intellectual.
Auden was an incrediblyintelligent person, obviously,
(13:10):
but I don't think that's reallywhere the sources of his art
come from.
Person, obviously, but I don'tthink that's really where the
sources of his art come from.
And part of what I tried towrite about in the Island was
that Auden was actually acountry boy.
He grew up in the countryside,knew a lot about natural life.
He's a very avid amateurnaturalist.
He was very well acquaintedwith the rural world, which has
(13:36):
been a kind of bedrock featureof a lot of English poetry over
hundreds and hundreds of years.
But I think it wasn't simply acase of Auden being somebody who
felt at home in the countryside, but it was also a turn away
from modernism, the city, theworld of international
connections, and in that Audenwas tracking something that was
happening on a much, much largerscale in the period between the
(13:59):
end of the First World War in1918 and the beginning of the
Second World War in 1939.
So England, along with a lot ofother countries, including the
US, but also many countries inEurope began to be more inward
turned, be more focused on itsown problems, its own traditions
(14:20):
.
I think the strains of theempire were also beginning to
manifest themselves very visiblyas an unsustainable situation
in Britain.
And of course, there were awhole series of crises in the
interwar period, the first ofthose crises being the aftermath
of the war itself, which leftso many people in a deeply
(14:41):
traumatized state, includingOrdon, and also financial crises
in the 1930s.
So there was a period in whichmany cultures became very inward
, turned very insular to pick upthe word that I use in the
title of my book, the Island andI think Auden's preoccupations
(15:02):
with insular themes were a kindof reflection or a prophetic,
half-understood understanding ofa track that at least English
culture was taking itself duringthat period, and of course TS
Eliot ended up following Audenin that trajectory too.
(15:23):
So this was about somethingbigger than just personal
preference or idiosyncrasy.
This was about a change in theculture, one that, to a greater
or lesser extent, is also veryinfluential today in the UK.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Right, as you just mentioned, that the word island
is almost synonymous withinsular and your book is titled
the Island War and Belonging inOdin's England.
Could you elaborate on whatisland symbolizes in the context
of Auden's poetry and life?
Speaker 1 (15:55):
So the island is a word that has a deep history in
iconography of the British Islesbut more especially, in this
case, in the iconography ofEnglish identity.
And I think one of the thingsthat I was writing about in the
island alongside or within Audenwas also Englishness, english
(16:20):
identity.
And there are innumerable poemsand speeches by politicians in
which England, which is not anisland, it's part of an island
or a group of islands, anarchipelago.
England envisions itself, orEnglish people with an
(16:41):
investment in English identityenvision themselves as living on
an island that's set somewhereoff from the rest of the world,
that is surrounded by sea andhas his own separate story and,
like an island does, which issomewhat related to the rest of
the world but also somewhatseparate from it.
(17:09):
So the Victorian poet, laureateTennyson, talked about an island
story when he was talking aboutEnglishness essentially, and
that phrase got picked up andused by politicians, most
notably or infamously, winstonChurchill, who talked constantly
about these islands, the island, the island story, picking up
Tennyson's phrase from his poem.
(17:33):
And so, at one level, the islandis about the nature of the
illusion within nationalidentity that England is a place
apart, separated off from therest of the world and has its
own unique, specific and veryinward-facing characteristics.
(17:55):
I think also I was saying thatthe kind of person that Auden
was and the kind of poetry thathe was writing were insular and
that that was his way ofunderstanding his social
positioning.
And I think maybe I was alsogesturing towards the idea,
(18:16):
which often comes to mind whenyou're reading poetry, that a
poem set out on a page is likean island of type in a sea of
white paper surrounding it.
So I was thinking aboutmultiple different levels of the
term the island, and it's onethat Auden uses a lot to talk
(18:37):
about his home, the place thathe imagines.
In the end Auden gave all ofthose fantasies or illusions up,
but for a long while, in thelate 1920s and the beginning of
the 1930s I think, he really wasa kind of lyrical nationalist
poet, and for an English lyricalnationalist poet that
(18:59):
mythography of the island camevery easily to hand.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Contrast this with a later Auden who basically
struggles with ordinary humanunhappiness, as he wrote in his
poems.
Let's begin with the18-year-old Auden, who
identified with the condition ofShakespeare's character Calvin
as a disinherited outcast.
So why is this image in yourbook, the uncanny image of Auden
(19:32):
as a iconoclast, so powerfulthroughout your book and
argument, and why did this earlystage of the poet as a rebel
caught your scholarly attention?
Speaker 1 (19:42):
So I think there's always something interesting
about outsiders.
I think they're incrediblyimportant to the health of a
world, of a culture.
Auden, for lots of differentreasons having to do with um,
just personal idiosyncrasies, Ithink did think of himself as a
little bit of an outsider.
Um, I think his sexuality alsoenforced that sense on him.
(20:08):
Um, I think he probably alsocame from a background, a family
background, that was a littlebit different from most homes.
His parents were veryfascinating and neurotic,
anxious, talented people, and soso I'm just I value outsiders.
(20:28):
I think that the abjected oneis a person who must never be
forgotten.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
In the second half of this episode, professor Jenkins
will talk about how to closelyread Auden's poetry in a unique
narrative arc.
As long as Auden's rhetoricstyle and depth of artistry.
To listen to the entire episode, we encourage you to subscribe
at theglobalnovelcom slashsubscribe.
Thank you so much for listening.
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