“Alexander McCall Smith’s voice in this splendid book is instantly recognizable as the calm, sympathetic, psychologically shrewd, and morally generous one that narrates his novels. This is not only a convincing account of W. H. Auden’s poetry and life. It is also a self-portrait of McCall Smith himself and a testimony to the wisdom and courage he has found in Auden’s poems. This is a valuable and memorable book.”–Edward Mendelson, author of Early Auden and Later Auden

“The attraction of this charming book lies in its author as much as its subject. It will appeal both to readers interested in the novelist Alexander McCall Smith and to anyone who wants an introduction to the poet W. H. Auden. McCall Smith gives a vivid portrait of his personal encounters with Auden’s poetry and, in the process, illuminates some of its key themes and traits.”–Alan Jacobs, author of The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

“Entertainingly dense yet poetically informative, I found What W.H. Auden Can Do For You a more than inspiring read, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone remotely interested in poetics and the sometimes shameful ways of the world.”–David Marx

Alexander McCall Smith is the internationally best-selling author of numerous novels, including the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, the Isabel Dalhousie series, the Portuguese Irregular Verbs series, and the 44 Scotland Street series. His books have been translated into forty-six languages. Formerly a professor of medical law, he now devotes himself to writing. He lives in Scotland.

What W. H. Auden Can Do for You

By Alexander McCall Smith

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2013 Alexander McCall Smith
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-14473-3

Contents

Author’s Note……………………………………………………..vii1. Love Illuminates Again ………………………………………….12. Who Was He?…………………………………………………….73. A Discovery of Auden…………………………………………….194. Choice and Quest………………………………………………..335. The Poet as Voyager……………………………………………..396. Politics and Sex………………………………………………..457. If I Could Tell You I Would Let You Know…………………………..558. What Freud Meant………………………………………………..659. A Vision of Agape……………………………………………….7510. That We May Have Dreams and Visions………………………………9111. And Then There Is Nature………………………………………..9912. Auden as a Guide to the Living of One’s Life………………………123

CHAPTER 1

Love Illuminates Again …

In the early months of 1940, with Europe embarkingon what was to prove the greatest conflictof the twentieth century, W. H. Auden, acelebrated—and controversial—English poet whohad recently moved to the United States wrote agravely beautiful poem. It took him some time, asthis was no brief ode dashed off in a moment ofinspiration—this was over one thousand lines,carefully and studiously constructed. Its titlewas “New Year Letter,” and it was addressedto Elizabeth Mayer, a refugee from the depredationsof Nazi Germany, a translator, and aclose friend. Like many of his works, this poemis conversational in tone but contains within ita complex skein of ideas about humanity andhistory, about art, civilization, and violence. Atthe end of the letter, though, there occur linesthat are among the most beautiful he wrote. Addressinghis friend, he draws attention to whatshe brings to the world through her therapeuticcalling:

    We fall down in the dance, we make
    The old ridiculous mistake,
    But always there are such as you
    Forgiving, helping what we do.
    O every day in sleep and labour
    Our life and death are with our neighbour,
    And love illuminates again
    The city and the lion’s den,
    The world’s great rage, the travel of young men.

These lines are about the person to whom thepoem is addressed but when we read them todaycould be about Auden himself. He would nevercompliment himself, of course, but I believe thathe is clearly one who is forgiving, who helps whatwe do, and if there is anything to be learned fromhis own work, it is precisely this message: that everyday in sleep and labor, our life and death areindeed with our neighbor. And yes, in readinghis poetry we see love illuminating our world.It is this view of Auden’s work that has promptedme to write an entirely personal book about thepoet, about the influence he has had on my life,and about what this poet can mean for somebodywho comes fresh to his work. I believe thatif you read this poet, and think about what he hasto say to you, then in a subtle but significant wayyou will be changed. This happened to me, and itcan happen to you.

This small book does not purport to be a workof criticism. It does not claim to shed new lighton a body of work that has already been extensivelyexamined. It is simply an attempt to sharean enthusiasm with others who may not have yetdiscovered, or may not have given much thoughtto the work of, Wystan Hugh Auden, generallyknown as W. H. Auden, the man whom manyconsider to be one of the greatest poets of thetwentieth century. It is not a hagiography—itrecognizes that Auden has been taken to task fortrying to be too clever, for using words for effectand without real regard to their meaning, and forbeing juvenile. There are other charges againsthim: in particular, he was famously criticized bythe poet Philip Larkin for turning his back onpolitical and social engagement in favor of theself-indulgent and the frivolous—a criticism thathas lingered and is still occasionally encountered.

Some of these charges—particularly the onesthat accuse him of using language for effect—havesome basis, but those of frivolity are certainlynot justified. It is true that he deliberatelyturned his back on the leadership role to whichEnglish intellectuals had elected him in the yearsbefore the Second World War—the Auden age,as some called it—but he by no means soughtrefuge in private reflection. His later poetry,although not overtly political, was very muchconcerned with the question of how we are tolive and by no means evades profound issues.Of course some of the poems are better thanothers, and we can all agree that there are somethat should never have seen the light of day, butwhat poet or novelist has not done at least somethingthat is best forgotten? “We fall down inthe dance….” Some writers have written wholebooks over which they, and sometimes theirreaders, would prefer to draw a veil. None ofus is perfect, and Auden was a self-critical manwho was in many cases his own severest judge,describing some of his poems as meretriciousand worthless. Interestingly enough, even poemshe rejected have, in the minds of his readers, survivedthis disowning. He wrote a poem called”Spain” that he considered dishonest, and yet it isstill read—and appreciated—in spite of its exclusionfrom the official canon. Similarly, “September1, 1939,” has survived its author’s judgment that itwas a poem that he was ashamed to have written.This raises complex questions about aestheticsand the genuine. If a work of art gives pleasurein spite of the insincerity—at the time—of itsmaker, then does that detract from its value?

That question arises only in relation to a smallnumber of Auden’s poems, but it illuminates alarger point about Auden’s work. Auden was apoet who changed. It may seem trite to say thathis life was a journey—whose life isn’t?—but inhis case we can see his poetry respond to the salientchallenges of his times. This is enlightening,not the least for anybody who feels—as many ofus perhaps do—that we are living in a time ofheightened flux and crisis. How should we respondto the challenges that this provokes? Mostof us want to lead a good life—however that isdefined. Auden wanted that too, and the solutionhe found might help us today. But what was it?

CHAPTER 2

Who Was He?

Many of us can point, I believe, to a particularartist—whether he or she be an author, a painter,or a musician—and say: This person’s work meansa very great deal to me. Sometimes, indeed,we might go further and say: This person haschanged my life. Alain de Botton has written abook called How Proust Can Change Your Life,a title that I suspect was devised with at leastsome tongue in cheek but that speaks, nonetheless,to a very real possibility of personal transformation.The title of this book is in a way lightheartedhomage to de Botton’s remarkable book.But something that is lighthearted can be veryserious in its intention. I believe that readingthe work of W. H. Auden may make a differenceto one’s life. Of course we can be changed byreading or listening to something that moves usdeeply, that makes us see ourselves or the worldin a different light. It may be a poem that hasthis effect, or it may be the contemplation of agreat painting; it may even be the great Proustainnovel itself. In any event the work of art we areconfronted with unlocks within us the recognitionof something that had escaped us before. Weare changed because we now understand somethingthat we did not understand before.

For me, the person who has had this effect isAuden. Who was he? One of his poems begins: “Ashilling life will give you all the facts.” Well, hereare the facts, in even less detail than one mightexpect from a shilling life. Auden was the sonof an English doctor. The family tradition wasthat the name was of Icelandic origin, althoughthis has been the subject of dispute. When youlook at a photograph of the poet as a young boy,though, he looks the part—large-boned, witha shock of light-colored hair, and that almosttranslucent skin that one sees in many Scandinavians.He was born into a comfortable home inwhich scientific inquisitiveness was always present.He grew to like rocks and old machinery,and the words that went with such things. Theatmosphere in the home was one of tolerance—atleast on his father’s side. His mother was lessaccepting of her son’s ways, complaining of hisuntidiness and, in one splendid attack on his “intemperateways,” his habit of eating any food hecame across. She herself was described by somewho knew her as an unattractive and domineeringpersonality in contrast to the milder andmore accepting nature of Dr. Auden. There maybe no book on the mothers of poets, or artistsin general, but it might one day be written andwould be, I think, an enlightening read.

As was common in those days—and still is, to anextent, in his particular class of English society—hewas sent off to boarding school. Gresham’sSchool is in a small town called Holt, inNorfolk, a remote part of rural England. Unlikemany boarding schools of the day, the regime inthis school was reasonably liberal and did notinvolve the cruelties in which the English educationalsystem of the time excelled. These could beprofoundly distorting: how many lives were ruinedby a harsh regime of relentless conformity,enforced by physical punishment; how manyyoung men were sent out into the world emotionallycrippled by a system designed to produce astiff upper lip and an acceptance of hierarchy. TheEnglish were unwittingly cruel to their children,which is something the Italians, to think of oneexample, have never been. Auden did not haveto contend with the traditional boarding schoolethos—Gresham’s was no Eton—even if he feltthat the Gresham’s honor-culture had the curiouseffect of creating what he considered an atmosphereof distrust. It was a good atmosphere,perhaps, for the production of spies, and indeedAuden was a near contemporary at Gresham’s ofDonald Maclean, one of the so-called Cambridgespies (along with Blunt, Burgess, and Philby).Another contemporary was the composer BenjaminBritten, with whom Auden was later tocollaborate. Both of those names—Maclean andBritten—can be seen today on the boards in thehall at Gresham’s that list those who won prizes.Auden’s name was added much later, recordingthe fact of his appointment as professor of poetryat Oxford.

It was while he was at school that he began towrite. He had gone for a walk in the countrysidewith a boy called Robert Medley, an independentspirit for whom Auden felt undeclared love. Theyhad become involved in a discussion about religionwhen Medley suddenly said to Auden: “Tellme, do you write poetry?” We can picture thescene: two boys walking in a Norfolk field, whenone asks the other whether he writes poetry, andthe other suddenly realizes that this is what hewants to do. This may reasonably be seen as oneof the great, crucial moments in the arts, akin,perhaps, to the moment when it was suggestedto Shakespeare—as it might well have been—thathe might care to write a play about a prince ofDenmark; or when Picasso’s attention was drawnto the bombing of a small Spanish village calledGuernica; or when Leonardo da Vinci asked hismodel to smile—enigmatically, if you wish, butplease smile. Fortunately, Auden acted upon thesuggestion, and shortly afterward he had a poemaccepted for Public School Verse, his first publicationand the beginning of an output that was toproduce numerous volumes over the years.

He went on to university, to Oxford, to ChristChurch, where he was the clever undergraduate,the center of a circle of like-minded bright youngmen impatient with their elders—as bright youngmen have to be—and eager to become part ofthe new intellectual climate that was emergingin post–First World War Europe. It was a timeof intellectual and artistic ferment, and in theeyes of his contemporaries at Oxford, Auden wasvery much in the vanguard of all this. He wasalso extremely promiscuous, picking up otheryoung men with undisguised enthusiasm, evensucceeding, as one of his biographers reports,in making conquests on the short train journeybetween Oxford and London. But if the worldseemed bright and full of possibilities, there wasa snake in the garden, and this would soon makeits presence known in an unambiguous fashion.

Auden was not involved in politics at Oxford—hisinterest in the subject was really kindledonly after he left the university and went to Berlin.But many of his contemporaries were becomingdeeply involved in political debate: thefuture they envisaged was one in which justiceand freedom would be secured by the enlightenedreform of society on rational principles,while material needs would be catered for byscientific progress. It was a fairly conventionalleft-wing vision, and it had all the confidencethat such views of the world usually have. Forsome, such as the British intellectuals who famouslytraveled to Moscow, the Soviet Unionbecame the embodiment of their hopes (“Wehave seen the future—and it works,” enthusedthe fashionable social theorists Sidney and BeatriceWebb of their carefully stage-managed visitto Russia); for others the battle was a more domesticone, to be fought through unions andinternal reform. For all of them, though, thegreatest threat was fascism, which was threateningthe very basis of European civilization. Itwas against this backdrop of political threat thatAuden spent the years immediately following hisgraduation from Oxford.

In 1928 he went to Berlin, where he stayeduntil the spring of the following year. This wasa very important experience for him in termsof political education and personal discovery—theequivalent, perhaps, of a dramatic gap yeartoday. Christopher Isherwood, his close friend,recorded that period very strikingly in his Goodbyeto Berlin, a book that was so successfully andatmospherically translated to stage and film.Later he went to Spain, another focal point of thebattle between European left and right, intendingto drive an ambulance in the Spanish Civil War.(Auden was not a good driver at all, and thefact that he did not actually drive an ambulancewas probably a good thing for those whom hemight have conveyed.) One of his great poems,subsequently disowned, was “Spain,” in whichhe explores—meretriciously, he later said—thesignificance of Spain to his generation. Therewas a visit to China with Isherwood to recordthe implications of the Japanese invasion, and ajourney to Iceland with the Northern Irish poetLouis MacNeice. Several volumes of poetry werepublished—to considerable critical acclaim. As apoet, Auden was feted. His was a new and excitingvoice that seemed to capture the hopes—andanxieties—of the time.

In January 1939 Auden and Isherwood went tothe United States, leaving behind an England onthe brink of war. Their departure at such a criticaltime was the subject of adverse comment, withsome regarding it as an act of retreat, of personalcowardice. In Auden’s case, it was probably notcowardice: those who knew him are firm in theirrejection of that charge. When war broke out,Auden did contact the British Embassy and offeredto return, to be told that only skilled peoplewere needed. Yet for some reason that remainsunclear, he did not respond to the subsequenturgings of friends who encouraged him to helpwith the British war effort. In his defense, it mustbe said that he did not go to America specificallyto escape Hitler, nor did he preach appeasement.His decision to emigrate was based on a combinationof factors, including the desire to be partof a society that was still in the process of creatingitself. He also wanted to earn his living bywriting—something that he felt would be moreachievable in the United States. And that provedto be the case: Auden always worked hard forhis living and was proud of the fact that he madepoetry pay.

His reputation in the United States grew steadily.He lectured widely and wrote numerous essaysand criticisms. In the decades following thewar, his position as one of the foremost poetswriting in the English language became assured.

He returned to Christianity, to an idiosyncraticform of Anglo-Catholicism, having beeninfluenced by his extensive theological readingand by his own need to find a way forward inlife. He wrote libretti for operas, notably TheRake’s Progress, over which he and his long-termpartner, Chester Kallman, collaborated with IgorStravinsky. He spent summers in Italy and thenin Austria, where he bought a house an hourfrom Vienna. In the United States his home wasin St. Mark’s Place, in Greenwich Village, and helived there, in conditions of famous mess, untilhe decided to return to Oxford, where he wasgiven a cottage on the grounds of his old college.His last years there were spent in an Oxford thathad changed significantly since his own undergraduatedays. He was a lonely figure, sometimessitting alone in a coffee house, untalked to bystudents who were too shy to do so or who weresimply unaware of who this shambling, unkemptfigure was. He was seen in Blackwell’s, the famousOxford bookstore, reading books off the shelfand then replacing them, his clothing covered incigarette ash and assorted stains.
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