W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden married only once in his life and that too was to help a friend, Erika Mann, get British Citizenship so that she could escape from the clutches of the Nazi Germans. The marriage remained unconsummated and the couple parted ways soon after.

After shifting to the US from Britain in 1939 he met the love of his life – Chester Kallman. Kallman too was a poet and the couple remained as lovers for the next two years. As Kallman feared commitment she eventually distanced herself from the relationship but remained a lifetime friend of Auden and shared a house with him till his demise on 29 September 1973.

W. H. Auden was born on February 21, 1907 in York, England as the third son to George Augustus, who was a physician, and Constance Rosalie, a trained missionary nurse and a strict Anglican.

He had two elder brothers; George Bernard who became a farmer and John Bicknell who grew up to be a geologist. Auden realized that he had lost his faith during his teens.

His first went to the St. Edmund’s School in Surrey and when he was 13 joined the Gresham’s School in Norfolk where his first poems were published in 1923. He eventually graduated with a third-class degree in 1928 from Christ Church, Oxford University.

Auden’s first book titled ‘Poems’ featured an approximate 20 poems and was published privately by his friend, Stephen Spender, in 1928.

After graduation W. H. Auden went to Berlin for a few months and there he fell in love with the German language and poetry. He returned, and in 1930 became a schoolmaster in Scotland and England for the next five years.

In 1930 Auden published another collection by the same name ‘Poems’ which included a drama and 30 short poems. The book featured his first dramatic work ‘Paid on Both Sides: A Charade’ which was a fascinating amalgam of Icelandic sagas and English school life.

In several of his works he constantly highlighted the difference between the biological and the psychological evolution of individuals and their cultures, and maintained a certain obsession with unseen psychological effects (or his so-called family ghosts).

In the 1930s he was regarded as a political poet as his work expressed left-wing views and he continuously analyzed the evils of Capitalist society. In many poems he dwells on bringing a revolutionary change in the society through a change in the hearts of the people.

W. H. Auden wrote the poem ‘The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue’ in 1947 and a year later won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for it. The writing style is a modernized version of Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse and the poem revolves around four characters. The theme of the poem is the quest of human beings to find the real reason and purpose of their existence in this ever changing world.