Part of the Classics Network , a leading provider of online resources for the humanities. Literature Classics.com Philosophy Classics.com Advertisement Home Help Login Contact
Wystan H. Auden English-born American poet, whose varied poetic work is some of the most outstanding of the 21st century
Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York, England in February 1907 into an upper class family. Eldest of three sons, Auden's father was a physician and his mother a former nurse. Auden enjoyed a warm relationship with his father, and the medical and scientific influence became a motif of his early poetic work, which is filled with recurrent images of disease, healing and the bodily functions.
After Auden's college graduation in 1928, he spent a year abroad in Berlin. This came at a time of his life when Auden was becoming increasingly concerned about his homosexuality. Homosexuality was condemned by the standards of his religious upbringing and was a activity was a criminal offence in England. Furthermore, Freud, who Auden read regularly during his college career, suggested that it was indicative of immaturity. In Berlin, Auden was exposed to lifestyle much freeer than that of England and decided to acknowledge his sexual orientation and live by its restrictions and demands.
His year abroad was complimented by a variety of other new experiences which had marked influences on the poet's works. He traveled extensively, spending several months in Japan and China, and he served briefly in the Spanish Civil War as an ambulance driver. By the mid 1930s, Auden had witnessed the First World War and numerous other conflicts over ideology. In the Spanish Civil War, he observed first hand the death and destruction that such conflicts could bring, and was appalled at the thought that an entire nation could become indoctrinated with the victor's ideologies. His poem 'In Time of War' shows a detachment from the events of the war, suggesting that Auden considered war objectively and deliberated on its consequences. | |
|
