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Auden
Auden's dedication as a writer was matched only by his commitment to challenging the received view of political and personal life. The definitive biography goes beyond a study of the great poet to create a vibrant and masterful commentary on Auden's work, ideas and life within the context of the wars, ideologies, spiritual quests and sexual attitudes of this century.
569 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 16, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
September 5, 2022
Unfortunately, I wouldn't recommend this biography. It probably deserves only one star, in my opinion. It was just so disappointing!
Richard Davenport-Hines, the author, admits that "thanks to the existence" of Humphrey Carpenter's biography, which he describes as a "detailed chronological study", he "was free to write a biography that is more thematic, or selectively emphatic". Well, then. What aspects of Auden's life does Davenport-Hines choose to focus on? What themes are given emphatic treatment? Auden's sexual life is one of the themes. The "problem" of his homosexuality. His relationship with Chester Kallman, his lover for many years. His apparently revolting manners. Lots and lots of gossip of all sorts, mostly related to sexual matters.
Just a couple of quotes to give you an idea of the sort of thing you might encounter if you read this book:
"Auden seems to have considered his excretory interests as an alternative to talking to himself"
He quotes Auden: "What worries me most is that, since the accident, I have been constipated - I who was always the most regular of men."
"The roughness of his men friends went beyond schoolboy rowdiness. 'Wystan liked being beaten up a bit', Layard claimed of their time in Berlin."
"When in February 1930 he underwent an operation for a rectal fissure be interpreted this as a symbol of buggery ..., though he himself seldom practised anal intercourse, which he disliked."
Davenport-Hines points out that "Auden distrusted biographies of poets because they were so often studies in personality." This biography is precisely that: a study of Auden's personality and love/sex life. There is very little literary analysis, mostly he deals with gossip.
It took me three months to read this text. It's not a long book (considering it's a biography), but I read it until the end to see if the author relented a bit on these issues and focused on new and richer subjects. I'm sad to say it is a boring, unbearable book until the end. Poor Auden, what a humiliating biography!
Richard Davenport-Hines, the author, admits that "thanks to the existence" of Humphrey Carpenter's biography, which he describes as a "detailed chronological study", he "was free to write a biography that is more thematic, or selectively emphatic". Well, then. What aspects of Auden's life does Davenport-Hines choose to focus on? What themes are given emphatic treatment? Auden's sexual life is one of the themes. The "problem" of his homosexuality. His relationship with Chester Kallman, his lover for many years. His apparently revolting manners. Lots and lots of gossip of all sorts, mostly related to sexual matters.
Just a couple of quotes to give you an idea of the sort of thing you might encounter if you read this book:
"Auden seems to have considered his excretory interests as an alternative to talking to himself"
He quotes Auden: "What worries me most is that, since the accident, I have been constipated - I who was always the most regular of men."
"The roughness of his men friends went beyond schoolboy rowdiness. 'Wystan liked being beaten up a bit', Layard claimed of their time in Berlin."
"When in February 1930 he underwent an operation for a rectal fissure be interpreted this as a symbol of buggery ..., though he himself seldom practised anal intercourse, which he disliked."
Davenport-Hines points out that "Auden distrusted biographies of poets because they were so often studies in personality." This biography is precisely that: a study of Auden's personality and love/sex life. There is very little literary analysis, mostly he deals with gossip.
It took me three months to read this text. It's not a long book (considering it's a biography), but I read it until the end to see if the author relented a bit on these issues and focused on new and richer subjects. I'm sad to say it is a boring, unbearable book until the end. Poor Auden, what a humiliating biography!
December 25, 2023
Auden seems to have considered his excretory interests as an alternative to talking to himself
This effort was a mess. I promise a swift return to Auden studies/criticism, likely the Mendelson. This bio spent an inordinate amount of time detailing the neuroses of the poet and his less-than-ideal lifestyle. His antipathies are duly noted and then there's an endeavor to detail his accomplishments, but only just.
This effort was a mess. I promise a swift return to Auden studies/criticism, likely the Mendelson. This bio spent an inordinate amount of time detailing the neuroses of the poet and his less-than-ideal lifestyle. His antipathies are duly noted and then there's an endeavor to detail his accomplishments, but only just.
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April 16, 2012"Auden rightly mistrusted this outlook that reduces aesthetics to gossip," writes this biographer in his prologue. "He loathed the trivialisation of literary biography . . . [and] was particularly shrewd to mistrust sexual tale-telling."
If this be true of Auden, I fear he would have shrunk from this particular account of his own life--an unfortunate and frequently graphic commentary on his sexuality. Nearly every page I read or skimmed (and I stopped reading once this became apparent) was almost obsessive on that point--and to a degree that seems both unnecessary and distasteful to the reader, and I believe, dishonoring to the poet.
I don't say this merely because I have deep appreciation and love for Auden's work, and whether Davenport-Hines's portrayal and emphases are true and justified is beside the point. A biographer takes up the tremendous and grave challenge of truthfully representing the full-orbed life and personality of a fellow human, tastefully including quirks and sins, while at the same time honoring the areas of sacredness or privacy--including dirty laundry that just doesn't need to be aired. This particular account exposes and glorifies all the dirty laundry at the expense of large parts of Auden's story that are much more important and lovely to tell and hear.
If this be true of Auden, I fear he would have shrunk from this particular account of his own life--an unfortunate and frequently graphic commentary on his sexuality. Nearly every page I read or skimmed (and I stopped reading once this became apparent) was almost obsessive on that point--and to a degree that seems both unnecessary and distasteful to the reader, and I believe, dishonoring to the poet.
I don't say this merely because I have deep appreciation and love for Auden's work, and whether Davenport-Hines's portrayal and emphases are true and justified is beside the point. A biographer takes up the tremendous and grave challenge of truthfully representing the full-orbed life and personality of a fellow human, tastefully including quirks and sins, while at the same time honoring the areas of sacredness or privacy--including dirty laundry that just doesn't need to be aired. This particular account exposes and glorifies all the dirty laundry at the expense of large parts of Auden's story that are much more important and lovely to tell and hear.
December 18, 2025
Reading the literary biography of Auden by Richard Davenport-Hines from 1995 it strikes me what a broad knowledge of his work the author had, and needed to have, to write this book.
Auden came from a line of high Anglican ministers and when his mother married a doctor, later professor, she was told by her sister that 'no one will come to call if you marry him'. How things have changed status-wise over the decades. The author says that 'Medicine had a precarious social status. A physician took his standing from the class of his patients. Doctors who operated on King Edward VII had been rewarded with baronetcies. If they were less lucky, physicians ended as sawbones on a level with the slum-dwellers whom they treated'. Auden's elder brother Bernard loved animals and wanted to be a vet, but his parents thought this unsuitable so they insisted that he study commerce. After he failed the first year he went to Canada and began farming, becoming engaged to a schoolmistress, but his mother tried to forbid the marriage saying his fiancee 'wasn't out of the top drawer'. She travelled there and insisted that all of her clothes were inappropriate so they were given to charity and substitutes bought. Bernard submitted to his mother initially but then rebelled and married, however eventually he was persuaded to sell up in Canada and he ended up spending the rest of his life in Britain as a farmworker, a discomfort to his snobbish family, after which they all tended to avoid him. What a dreadful period of control and cruelty existed in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, something that only slowly altered after the First World War.
I mention these early experiences related in the book because this excessive control seems to have had a deleterious effect on Auden's personality and I must say that I didn't like him very much as a person, and liked him less the more I read.
However the book gives us a feeling for the mores of him and his associates as well as a feeling for the times in which they lived. I can't say I loved the book but it gave me some insights into the man.
Auden came from a line of high Anglican ministers and when his mother married a doctor, later professor, she was told by her sister that 'no one will come to call if you marry him'. How things have changed status-wise over the decades. The author says that 'Medicine had a precarious social status. A physician took his standing from the class of his patients. Doctors who operated on King Edward VII had been rewarded with baronetcies. If they were less lucky, physicians ended as sawbones on a level with the slum-dwellers whom they treated'. Auden's elder brother Bernard loved animals and wanted to be a vet, but his parents thought this unsuitable so they insisted that he study commerce. After he failed the first year he went to Canada and began farming, becoming engaged to a schoolmistress, but his mother tried to forbid the marriage saying his fiancee 'wasn't out of the top drawer'. She travelled there and insisted that all of her clothes were inappropriate so they were given to charity and substitutes bought. Bernard submitted to his mother initially but then rebelled and married, however eventually he was persuaded to sell up in Canada and he ended up spending the rest of his life in Britain as a farmworker, a discomfort to his snobbish family, after which they all tended to avoid him. What a dreadful period of control and cruelty existed in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, something that only slowly altered after the First World War.
I mention these early experiences related in the book because this excessive control seems to have had a deleterious effect on Auden's personality and I must say that I didn't like him very much as a person, and liked him less the more I read.
However the book gives us a feeling for the mores of him and his associates as well as a feeling for the times in which they lived. I can't say I loved the book but it gave me some insights into the man.
November 11, 2020
I probably read this too close to the time I read the Carpenter biography. That book is more detailed than this one about many of the biographical details. And this one might have even been more gossipy than the Carpenter, and that bothered me there. Here I felt he was trying to convince me about how dirty, how gross, the elder Auden could be. Picking his nose and telling fart jokes. Etc.
BUT while reading this, I found myself going back to the poems more often than I did while reading the Carpenter book, and that is always the test of a poet's biography. Davenport-Hines occasionally gives more space to a close reading of the poems, and that was very helpful. Of course, I would have enjoyed more of that, but, still, I found new things. For instance, Auden's late poem "Partition" about the creation of India and Pakistan -- why did I not know this poem!? Here the old man dusts off his anti-colonialist cred and does a fabulous retelling of the bureaucrat who was forced (in 7 weeks!) to redraw the borders of the subcontinent! I might never have given that poem the time it deserves without this biography.
BUT while reading this, I found myself going back to the poems more often than I did while reading the Carpenter book, and that is always the test of a poet's biography. Davenport-Hines occasionally gives more space to a close reading of the poems, and that was very helpful. Of course, I would have enjoyed more of that, but, still, I found new things. For instance, Auden's late poem "Partition" about the creation of India and Pakistan -- why did I not know this poem!? Here the old man dusts off his anti-colonialist cred and does a fabulous retelling of the bureaucrat who was forced (in 7 weeks!) to redraw the borders of the subcontinent! I might never have given that poem the time it deserves without this biography.
October 8, 2024
I read this years ago, but I still think back to it every so often. It made me feel like I knew Auden better as a person even though I haven't really read his poetry.
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December 26, 2010Chronological biography, tracing themes, influences, techniques and periodic changes in Auden's work. Things I learned: his fascination with industrial landscape, Freud, and Christianity; he wrote plays and librettos, collaborating with Stravinsky and Brecht; his antagonism to subjective, "confessional" poetry--ironically enough, the biography (necessarily) details some of the less savory decisions, positions, and attitudes Auden took, but usually with the purpose of investigating how he'd re-interpret, analyze, and represent those experiences through verse. At the very best, this book motivates me to seek out more of Auden's work (especially his critical essays); at very worst, Davenport-Hines proscribes general ideologies (as in "All poets should do X").
August 21, 2012
A really fascinating portrait of one of my favorite poets, it made me return to my Collected Works, which is always fun, and illuminated a lot of the relationships that Auden alludes to in his work, without feeling like an extended gossip column (which must have been hard.) Not a fluff peice at all it gave me the impression that though I adore his writing and his philosophy, I probably would not have enjoyed spending any extended period of time with Auden the man. Also hilariously highlights the pitfalls of relying too heavily on a literal interpretation of Freud.
February 9, 2016
A well researched biography of Auden that looks at his life and his work.
"We imitate our loves: well, neighbours say
I grow more like my mother every day." 31
"Neither parents nor physicians foresaw the effect on some middle-class Englishmen of Auden's generation, whose frantic hunting for rough trade was related to their pleasure in foreskins, and their identification of them with real men rather than the effete and circumcised of their own class." 31
"We imitate our loves: well, neighbours say
I grow more like my mother every day." 31
"Neither parents nor physicians foresaw the effect on some middle-class Englishmen of Auden's generation, whose frantic hunting for rough trade was related to their pleasure in foreskins, and their identification of them with real men rather than the effete and circumcised of their own class." 31
June 4, 2013
Civilized gossip, cursory literary analysis. To be fair, that is probably all that would fit into 350-ish pages. In order to satisfy me, an Auden biographer would have to embody the best qualities of Robert Caro and Helen Gardner.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews