In 2006, as lovers of poetry became aware that the 100th anniversary of W. H. Auden’s birth was coming up, some of them began to fret that the event wouldn’t receive the attention it deserved. No major celebrations seemed to be forthcoming, in pronounced contrast to the festivals for John Betjeman’s centenary that were going on throughout England in the second half of 2006. The BBC gave Betjeman a whole month of festivities, and wasn’t Auden a much greater poet, worthy of far more honor?
Yes, but ”¦ Betjeman was an enormously popular and beloved poet in England. (Almost the only person who didn’t love him was his tutor at Oxford, a young don named C. S. Lewis””not yet a Christian, by the way””who told his diary “I wish I could get rid of the idle prig,” and later wrote his pupil a letter which began, “Dear Betjemann [sic], You called the tune of irony from the first time you met me, and I have never heard you speak of a serious subject without a snigger.” Betjeman responded, in a book he published when he was twenty-seven, by offering effusive thanks to Lewis, “whose jolly personality and encouragement to the author in his youth have remained an unfading memory for the author’s declining years.”) And it was not just Betjeman’s poetry but also his deep love of Englishness””English architecture, English history, the traditional forms of English society, and the Church of England””that endeared him to his countrymen. As Richard Jenkyns has recently written, “Betjeman was not always sure that Christ was the Son of God, but he was absolutely sure that the Church of England was the true church”””an epistemological condition that for many an Englishman indicates well-ordered priorities.
Auden, by contrast, left England for America in January of 1939 and never returned for anything more than an extended visit. Though only thirty-one at the time, he was one of the most famous writers in England””he was twenty-six when the phrase “the Auden generation” entered the language””and his failure to return to his native land when war broke out later that year was denounced by angry MPs in the House of Commons. And if his wartime detachment cost him the respect of British conservatives, his conversion to Christianity two years later alienated, dramatically and permanently, the political Left, for whom he had been a hero.
Reading Betjeman when younger, I enjoyed his quips and humour and for this reason considered his verse light. This is unfortunate as I think I and many others, while enjoying him enormously for his acute characterisation of the English, did not always take him too seriously. His teddy-bear at Oxford was the model for Flyte’s Aloysius in Brideshead Revisited. It is a shame because quite apart from being popular he was an accomplished poet.
Auden’s poetry I found much more difficult, although I thoroughly enjoyed his travelogue around Iceland with Louis MacNeice exploring the Icelandic sagas and poetry. These date back in a fairly pure form, like the people, to the Viking settlers – a direct link back to the past. On a few occasions I realised that as a craftsman and a poet he could be outstanding but at the time could not be bothered with the effort.
Both apparently Christians; both I hope to return to…someday.
I did remember one particular thing of value in Auden’s book ‘Letters from Iceland’ – the Icelandic ceremony of Peace-making from which perhaps one can learn something even as a Christian. It is described in a modern context in this article:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1075197-1,00.html
I don’t think it’s right to say that Auden never returned to England after 1939 “for anything more than an extended visit”.
Whilst always retaining his US base, he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford 1956-1961 (not a very onerous commitment, it is true, but he did give lectures). And in 1972 he left the US altogether and moved permanently to Oxford, although it is true that he died in 1973.
He was something of a genius, a bundle of paradoxes, and since part of the paradox was his deeply felt Anglicanism, of great interest I dare say to all of us on these Boards.
He once wrote: “Though I believe it sinful to be queer, it has at least saved me from becoming a pillar of the Establishment, and it might not even have done that if I hadn’t bolted to Americaâ€
See http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2007/04/09/070409sh_shouts_alford for a laugh-out-loud piece about Auden’s centenary .
One of the piece’s cockney-ed selections had been used in the movie “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” Another was used by the ABC this past Good Friday in his meditations broadcast on BBC Radio.