Introduction
The literary works of W. H. Auden were recognized as stylistic and technically achieved because of his commitment to the issues regarding moral and political and also the use of different types of tones, forms and content. As described by Edward Mendelson, Auden was the most inclusive poet of the twentieth century possessing the ability to be a true and frank writer. Auden, according to him, is the first major poet to collaborate the ideas of modern psychological insights and exemplars as an accepted element amongst his works and thought. In addition, Auden was considered to be the most religious poet during his age and the most anxious writer with the idea of existentialism.
Wystan Hugh Auden who was born on the 21st of February 1907 was an Anglo- American poet, who used love, morals and religion, politics and citizenship, the uncongenial world of nature and the relationship between the unknown and the exceptional persons were mostly his theme for writing. The poet grew up in Birmingham and belongs to a kind of middle-class family. Auden experienced reading English literature at Christ Church, Oxford. The early poems of Auden were written during the late 1920s and 1930s (Fussell, 1981). His style interchanges between the telegraphic modern styles and fluent conventional ones.
Mostly, Auden’s tone of writing was on a dramatic side and possessed an image of a left-wing political poet and seer. He became uneasy with that style after the 1930s and decided to shift to another kind of style when he moved to the United States in 1939. Auden’s poems during the 1940s included the religious aspects and some ethical issues in a lesser emotional tone compared to his works before.
However, he incorporated a lot of his own styles into his works together with the traditional forms and styles to be able to express his own craft freely. In later years, a lot of his poems were directed through the style of using firm words to express his strong emotions and to depict the ideas of revealing and concealing the tone of his theme. With that in mind, Auden started writing for opera librettos which have been a perfect way of conveying his styles in writing (Fussell, 1981).
Obviously, Auden has been a very profound and creative writer of his time. He has been an excellent writer of prose essays and reviewed literary works on, political psychological and religious subjects. Auden has also worked on documentary films, poetic plays and many other forms of performances. He has been an influential and controversial writer in his entire career as a writer. After he died in the year 1973, some of his poems were made known in the course of broadcasts, films and some famous media most especially the “Funeral blues”.
Discussion
Musée des Beaux-Arts and In memory of W.B. Yeats were two of the poems included in his writings before he moved to America in the year 1939. This was aligned with the ironic ballads about the failure of each individual. However, the funeral song for Yeats partly denoted the anti-heroic theme of Auden and Auden being a leftist, wherein great and major deeds was done though not by only one of its kind intelligence whom other people can not try to be like. Auden has tried emphasizing his arguments about the so-called awe-inspiring heroes which appeared to be another political issue he had in his poems (Gopnik, 2002).
The poem of W.H. Auden entitled In Memory of W.B. Yeats was one of the greatest poems in the modern world and considered as a major figure dedicating to the Celtic Twilight. It was only eight months then before the occurrence of the whole Europe was in the frame of the war when William Butler Yeats died in January 1939. During that time, there were revolutions within the Continent and all people were alarmed as they considered themselves in a war. In the poem of Auden, he used a funeral song to position the reality of the death of a great poet and depict the issues about the political content of his poetry as it became effectual in the midst of pandemonium.
The poem In Memory of W. B. Yeats was made after his death in 1939. It looks a lot like the formal aspects of the poems of Yeats from the start of his career to his later years although it was shown in a reversed manner. This kind of poem begins with a free verse that was actually practised by Yeats in his later life, the middle part mostly described Yeats and the final part was like a formal interpretation of Yeats’ poems in his young days (Gopnik, 2002).
Analyzing the poem of Auden gives you an idea of banal poetry in the world. Consequently, we can attach the idea of being irrelevant to poetry in any happenings. What Auden wanted to convey with this poem is about your freedom of expressing yourself. Although Auden talked a lot about politics, it did not mean to have an adverse effect on the totality of the system of the political matters of his country. Ideas should be segregated from reality or actual practice though poetry could mean so much for each individual. This poem concludes that one artist should be able, to be honest to what the reality brings even on the techniques of exaggerating one’s masterpiece because poets can never alter the facts but to disagree with the reality only.
On the other hand, the poem “Musee des Beaux-Arts” weighs up to the nature of anguish and transcendence in relation to the painting of Pieter Breughel which was The Fall of Icarus, where Auden saw on one of his trips to Brussels. The poem is somewhat an answer to tragedy. He began considering the nature of pain and recalled the Dutch religious painters who illustrated sacred events in the grab of modern Antwerp or Brussels.
He elaborated upon this reality and tried to mildly shock his readers by using earthy words. Thus, in this poem, the status of Auden remained to be confusing and in the middle of his own nausea for the insensitivity of people to sufferings (Gopnik, 2002).
The cultural and literary context of the works of Auden primarily centres on his style of being an honest writer who visualizes his ideas in a dramatic way. The substance was somehow from his background of education and culture as to how he was thought to express himself through a pen. In school, some of his colleagues suggested he write poems and express his ideas about losing his faith in the religion. Auden has played Caliban on one of the productions in school and there started his career. He has first published his poems in their school magazine in 1923.
As for how his colleagues described Auden through his years from Oxford until his time during the 1940s, Auden was said to be comedic, sympathetic, generous, profligate and somehow loner by choice. If he was with a group, he was a frequently inflexible and domineering person in a slapstick comedian way while in his private life, he was more of a shy and hesitant person. He had self-direction and did not procrastinate as he was obsessed with meeting deadlines (Lissner, 1956).
Basically, the standing of Auden in modern literature has been in doubt because of the opinions that it got from an Obituarist, Hugh MacDiarmid who considered him as a mere disappointment, as he wrote the lines of saying “W.H. Auden, for long the enfant terrible of English Poetry… emerges as its undisputed master” (Lissner, 1954). In spite of the criticisms he got, he was still viewed by his readers as a good writer of his every masterpiece.
It is said that Auden was the modern poet indeed and his manner was so invasive and persistent to the poetry of Americans though the rapturous style of the Beat Generation was a kind of a stroke against his influence thus, he can be considered as a rebel. However, some of the writers such as Philip Larkin and Randall Jarrell, who happened to make some versions of Auden’s works, expressed grief that the literary of Auden had taken a rain check from its earlier pledge.
When Auden died, he got the image of an elder statesman who was widely expected. As the Encyclopedia Britannica noted, Auden was considered as the child or successor of Elliot. After the death of Yeats in 1939, it was said that Elliot had claimed the supremacy of Yeats and now it was passed to Auden.
Of course, it comprises with some exceptions just like the different views of American critics from the British critics such that the latter favoured on the early works while the Americans favoured on his middle and later works. Compared to other up-to-the-minute poets, the standing of Auden did not decline after he passed away and according to Joseph Brodsky, Auden was the greatest mind of the twentieth century.
Accordingly, a continuing theme in the early poems of Auden was somehow the effect of family ghosts, which was the poet’s term for any powerful, invisible psychological effects of the past generations on each life, and had become a title of the poem. A contradictory idea between the biological evolution or the not chosen and unintentional one and the psychological evolution of cultures and individuals or those intentional and premeditated though in a subliminal aspect is depicted in his theme.
The frequent themes and style of Auden during the death of Yeats gave a picture of a particular enticement of an artist to use another persona to be the subject of his literary arts to a certain extent of recognizing the person for their own sake. The analogous moral responsibility to make and keep assurance while knowing the persuasion to shatter them is also one of Auden’s principles on using a definite persona in his account.
Conclusion
The formal and thematic concerns for the works of Auden can be characterized as an encyclopedic literary in scope and method, that ranges in style from incomprehensible modernism of the twentieth century up to the logical conventional forms like the ballads and limericks. Even from doggerel all the way through haiku and an extravagant eclogue in the meters of Anglo- Saxon. The tone and context of the poems of Auden varied from pop-song clichés up to the complexities of philosophical meditations, from dust to the massive comets, from crises of the modern-day to the development and advancement of the society (Fussell, 1981).
Thus, it is sensed that the style of Auden can be determined as a technical literary because the poet made it to a point that he only writes according to what is true and disregard dishonesty in his works. In fact, Auden controversially revised or perhaps trashed some of his famous literary poems during the time when he did his soon after editions. He said that he discarded the poems that he thought uninteresting and deceitful in the way they expressed some views that he actually had never held and experienced in reality but they had only used because he thought they would effectively convince and amuse the readers.
Many of his works also exposed his views about being a leftist. Because of that, Auden had become widely known as a political poet though for a fact that he possessed a vague idea on his reviews for portraying the issues in two minds or some kind of a hesitant representation than on other widely recognized reviewers during his time. Auden normally wrote about the revolutionary shift in terms of change of heart or an alteration of society from closed off the psychology of apprehension to an open psychology of love and peace. Auden’s themes in his shorter poems have included the vulnerability and humanity of personal love.
In addition, Auden was said to be gay as he got a different feeling of sexuality from his mentor Isherwood. Auden married a woman though but it did not mean to have affirmative sexuality as what can be determined. Auden’s recognition of his gayness, as a result, led him to innovative approaches to the universal urge and desire to love and widened his understanding of all kinds of relationships.
But of course, the poet is responsible for knowing his limitations on eroticism so it did not make a big deal. The impact of his feminine side on his writings was illustrated on his love poems. As such, one of his earliest love poems talked about his need for sexual success but on his later poems like the “may with its light behaving” grieved over a melancholic isolation which had a little intimacy in a physical way.
Thus, W. H. Auden is a poet who strongly influenced a lot of people through his writings which focused primarily on the themes of honesty, political issues, religious and moral aspects and being compassionate with his dramatic influences in his early works. Auden had many criticisms but still he prevailed to be hailed by other writers and poets during his time until the present day by the people who recognizes his literary works.
Reference
Fussell, P. (1981). “The Poet Himself”. New York Times, 1.
Gopnik, A. (2002). “The Double Man: Why Auden is an indispensable poet of our time”, The New Yorker.
Lissner, W. (1956). “Poet and Judge Assist a Samaritan.” New York Times, pp. 1, 39.