The Prolific And The Devourer

by W.H. Auden

W.H. Auden is unquestionably one of the most fascinating and influential literary figures of the twentieth century. His formal innovations in poetry and drama have immeasurably affected modern literary consciousness, as have his reactive views about political and literary trends. At the time he wrote The Prolific and the Devourer, Auden was moving away from his vocal Marxism of the 1930s toward a committed Christianity in the 1940s and beyond. The Prolific and the Devourer sheds new light on the personal and public worlds he inhabited, philosophically drawing the line between the position of the artist and that of the politician.
The book takes its title and, in part, its form from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. In Auden's interpretation, the Prolific are those who the farmer; the skilled worker; the scientist; the cook; the innkeeper; the doctor; the teacher; the athlete; the artist. The Devourers are the political types who depend on what is already produced for their the "Judges, Policemen, Critics. These are the real Lower Orders, the low, sly lives, whom no decent person should receive in his house." As in Blake, the sections and subsections of Auden's book are unified and propelled by the oracular need to express the key components of human nature.
The first section contains a series of aphoristic statements and personal reflections that usher us into the enormous territory to be explored. In the second section, Auden chooses examples from politics, religion, and literature to expound his views on human and historical evolution. The third section examines the characters of the Prolific and the Devourer in relation to Catholic, Protestant, and Romantic traditions and to Socialist and Fascist beliefs. The question and answer form employed in the final section allows Auden to reveal his inner struggle to reach some understanding of God, the supernatural, and pacifism.
At a time when spiritual and political values are constantly at odds, with the frequent result of violence, the questions of "being" Auden addresses in this book are highly topical - and his insights, invaluable. The Prolific and the Devourer acts as a tribute to the artistic vocation it describes - remarkable in its visionary breadth and craft.

Genres: Nonfiction, Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Poems, published in such collections as Look, Stranger! (1936) and The Shield of Achilles (1955), established importance of British-American writer and critic Wystan Hugh Auden in 20th-century literature.

In and near Birmingham, he developed in a professional middle-class family. He attended English independent schools and studied at Christ church, Oxford. From 1927, Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship despite briefer but more intense relations with other men. Auden passed a few months in Berlin in 1928 and 1929.

He then spent five years from 1930 to 1935, teaching in English schools and then traveled to Iceland and China for books about his journeys. People noted stylistic and technical achievement, engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and variety in tone, form and content. He came to wide attention at the age of 23 years in 1930 with his first book, Poems ; The Orators followed in 1932.

Three plays in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood in 1935 to 1938 built his reputation in a left-wing politics.

People best know this Anglo for love such as "Funeral Blues," for political and social themes, such as "September 1, 1939," for culture and psychology, such as The Age of Anxiety , and for religion, such as For the Time Being and "Horae Canonicae." In 1939, partly to escape a liberal reputation, Auden moved to the United States. Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship to 1939. In 1939, Auden fell in lust with Chester Kallman and regarded their relation as a marriage.

From 1941, Auden taught in universities. This relationship ended in 1941, when Chester Kallman refused to accept the faithful relation that Auden demanded, but the two maintained their friendship.

Auden taught in universities through 1945. His work, including the long For the Time Being and The Sea and the Mirror , in the 1940s focused on religious themes. He attained citizenship in 1946.

The title of his long The Age of Anxiety , a popular phrase, described the modern era; it won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. From 1947, he wintered in New York and summered in Ischia. From 1947, Auden and Chester Kallman lived in the same house or apartment in a non-sexual relation and often collaborated on opera libretti, such as The Rake's Progress for music of Igor Stravinsky until death of Auden.

Occasional visiting professorships followed in the 1950s. From 1956, he served as professor at Oxford. He wintered in New York and summered in Ischia through 1957. From 1958, he wintered usually in New York and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria.

He served as professor at Oxford to 1961; his popular lectures with students and faculty served as the basis of his prose The Dyer's Hand in 1962.

Auden, a prolific prose essayist, reviewed political, psychological and religious subjects, and worked at various times on documentary films, plays, and other forms of performance. Throughout his controversial and influential career, views on his work ranged from sharply dismissive, treating him as a lesser follower of William Butler Yeats and T.S. Eliot, to strongly affirmative, as claim of Joseph Brodsky of his "greatest mind of the twentieth century."

He wintered in Oxford in 1972/1973 and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria, until the end of his life.

After his death, films, broadcasts, and popular media enabled people to know and ton note much more widely "Funeral Blues," "Musée des Beaux Arts," "Refugee Blues," "The Unknown Citizen," and "September 1, 1939," t

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an extremely interesting book. It supplies much of that shaggy old friend of the reader, food for thought.
I believe a complete understanding of this book requires a knowledge of the life of Auden, a deep understanding of Marxism and of Christian theology, both Catholic and Protestant, and a thorough knowledge of the world as it was when the book was originally written in 1939. Lacking these things, I still very much enjoyed the book. Auden's ideas are certainly accessible and the presentation lends itself to at least a surface understanding of what is being presented. Auden is primarily concerned here with two (if not THE two) aspects of society: religion and politics. While a theologian or political theorist might find the discussion here to be one of basic principles, I found the concepts to be fascinating. This seems to be a very personal book; it rather gives the impression of Auden working through his own beliefs without attempting to be at all didactic. Here are two quotations from the book that particularly caught my attention:
"To do evil is to act contrary to self-interest. It is possible for all living creatures to do this because their knowledge of their self-interest is false or inadequate. Thus the animals whose evolution is finished, i.e., whose knowledge of their relations to the rest of creation is fixed, can do evil, but they cannot sin."
"Only our corruption prevents us from realising that money is, in essence, only a technique for the extension of love in space and time."

[M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una lectura densa, el pensamiento de Auden es claro y da mucho para meditar.
Su forma de abordar el cristianismo es muy lúcida y cuando habla de la política es todo un maestro.
Dice tantas verdades que al reconocerlas en uno mismo es un acto de valentía.

[Matthew Hinman · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look into Auden's views in the period between his Marxism and Christianity.

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a brief yet illuminating book filled with various haphazardly organized aphorisms, maxims, and miscellaneous opinions on theology, philosophy, marxism, education, and nonsense. Coming from anyone else but an established poet, much of this book would sound like the unconsciously pretentious friend that everyone seems to have. *cough cough I am that friend*

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

A deep thinker assembles his wisdom into aphorisms and insights. The kind of book I would like to write some day extracting pearls from 30 years of journals, except mine would be a much thinner volume.

[Travis Culley]

"under certain circumstances, like actual wartime, it may well be that it is unwise to publish anything, and better to concentrate upon actions which have nothing to do with writing."

-Auden P& D p90