Auden and Christianity

Auden and Christianity by Arthur Kirsch, 179 pages

In Auden and Christianity Arthur Kirsch explores the impact of the faith of WH Auden primarily through an analysis of For the Time Being and the "Horae Canonicae".  In the process Kirsch reveals the extent to which Christianity served as a unifying principle in Auden's life and work, bringing together matter and spirit, the present and the past, the individual and society.

This is the kind of literary criticism that is expansive rather than reductive, illuminating one facet of an author's work without denying the existence or value of others.  Although Kirsch's remarkable combination of sensitivity and candor is unlikely to inspire readers to a greater love of God, it is very likely to lead to a greater love of Auden.

As I Walked Out One Evening

As I Walked Out One Evening: Songs, Ballads, Lullabies, Limericks, and Other Light Verse by WH Auden, 204 pages

     I want a form that's large enough to swim in,

          And talk on any subject that I choose,

     From natural scenery to men and women,

          Myself, the arts, the European news:

          And since she's on a holiday, my Muse

     Is out to please, find everything delightful

     And only now and then be mildly spiteful.

As I Walked Out One Evening collects material from moments in Auden's colorful career when he indulged his playful side - something he did frequently.  Not that playfulness excludes profundity.

     The glacier knocks in the cupboard,

          The desert sighs in the bed,

     And the crack in the tea-cup opens

          A lane to the land of the dead.

Or coldly cynical observations.

     When statesmen gravely say - "We must be realistic -"

     The chances are they're weak and therefore pacifistic:

     But when they speak of principles - look out - perhaps

     Their generals are already poring over maps.

Or reflections on the tragedy of life and love.

     The nightingales are sobbing in

          The orchards of our mothers,

     And hearts that we broke long ago

          Have long been breaking others.

Yet it is all delightful, perhaps especially when spiteful.

     Be subtle, various, ornamental, clever,

     And do not listen to those critics ever

     Whose crude provincial gullets crave in books

     Plain cooking made still plainer by plain cooks,

     As though the Muse preferred her half-wit sons;

     Good poets have a weakness for bad puns.

Age of Anxiety

The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue by WH Auden, 108 pages

In The Age of Anxiety Auden produced a worthy successor to Eliot's "The Waste-Land", poetically dressing the cosmopolitan world at the end of the Second World War as Eliot did at the end of the First.  Written with traditional Anglo-Saxon alliteration rather than Romantic rhyme, the poem follows four conversationalists who meet in a New York bar and set out to explore the world as it crawls towards senility.  Only the tiniest bit of consolation is found for this quartet, but perhaps it is enough for the journey.

     The knowledge needed is not special,

     The sole essential a sad unrest

     Which no life can lack.  Long is the way...