Презентация (Уистен Хью Оден)

W.H. Auden  (1907-1973)

«In terms of English and American poets, it would be quite just to call this The Age of Auden. Not only because Auden was such a dominant and successful poet, but because he went through all the contradictory ideological phases, from Marx to God. He really is representative in that sense.» (Karl Shapiro )

Synopsis

• Was born in York, England, on February 21, 1907.
• Auden was a leading literary influencer in the 20th century.
•   Won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948.
•   Auden's travels in countries torn by political strife influenced his early works.

Early Life

• Raised by a physician father and a strict, Anglican mother, Auden pursued science and engineering at Oxford University before finding his calling to write and switching his major to English.
• Auden pursued his love of poetry, influenced by Old English verse and the poems of Thomas Hardy, Robert Frost, William Blake and Emily Dickinson. 

Education

• Auden's first boarding school was St Edmund's School, Hindhead, Surrey
• In 1925 he went up to Christ Church, Oxford with a scholarship in biology, but he switched to English by his second year. 

Early works

• in 1928, his collection Poems  was privately printed.
• In 1930, with the help of T.S. Eliot, Auden published another collection of the same name ( Poems ) that featured different content. 
• His early poems from the late 1920s and early 1930s, written in an intense and dramatic tone

Britain and Europe (1928–1938)

• In the autumn of 1928 Auden left Britain for nine months in Berlin
•   In 1937 he went to Spain intending to drive an ambulance for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War
• Spent six months in 1938 visiting the Sino-Japanese War

United States and Europe (1939–1973)

• Auden and Isherwood sailed to New York City in January 1939
• In America he met his other true calling—his lifelong partner, fellow poet Chester Kallman
• Auden left America in 1972 and moved back to Oxford. 

Reputation and influence

•   In the 1930s he was both praised and dismissed as a progressive and accessible voice
• In the US the detached, ironic tone of Auden's regular stanzas set the style for a whole generation of poets
• 1948 Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Anxiety.

Their lovely betters

As I listened from a beach-chair in the shade To all the noises that my garden made,  It seemed to me only proper that words Should be withheld from vegetables and birds. A robin with no Christian name ran through The Robin-Anthem which was all it knew,  And rustling flowers for some third party waited To say which pairs, if any, should get mated.

Not one of them was capable of lying,  There was not one which knew that it was dying Or could have with a rhythm or a rhyme Assumed responsibility for time.

Let them leave language to their lonely betters Who count some days and long for certain letters;  We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep:  Words are for those with promises to keep.

Когда ловлю я, садом окружен,  Все те шумы, что порождает он,  Мне справедливым кажется, что слов  Нeт у пернатых или у кустов.

Вот безымянный воробей пропел  Псалом свой воробьиный, как умел,  и ждут цветы, когда из отдаленья  К ним кто-нибудь слетит для опыленья.

Никто из них о лжи не помышляет,  Не ведает никто, что умирает,  и ни один, звук рифмы полюбя,  Груз времени не взвалит на себя.

Пуст речь оставят лучшим, одиноким,  Кто писем ждет, или считает сроки.  Мы тоже, плача и смеясь, шумим;  Слова - для тех, кто знает цену им.

The theme

• the differences between ‘ natural’ beings in the garden – the “vegetables and birds” – and humans with all their artifice.

1 st stanza

• «Robin with no Christian name» / Only people have names.

• «Robin anthem which was all it knew» / It is the sound of pure instinct – the essence of life un-muddled by thought.

• «To say which pairs, if any, should get mated» / These creatures, living wholly in nature, neither celebrate the wisdom nor lament the folly of their choices, for they have no choices to make.

2 nd stanza

• «Not one of them was capable of lying,  There was not one which knew that it was dying» / they have no awareness of their mortality.

• «Assume responsibility for time» / they are not responsible for time.

3 rd stanza

• «Let them leave language to their lonely betters» / this line sums up the whole poem.

Question? Who are the lonely betters?

Main idea

Auden ends the piece with a lovely rhyme, remarking that we need language because we communicate; we make promises; we bargain and negotiate with each other. Animals do not do this. But STILL!!! We have everything, but animals are not so lonely as we are.

Thank you for attention