Wystan hugh auden biography definitions

Wystan Hugh Auden (21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a Anglo-Americanpoet. He was born in York and moved to Harborne, Birmingham in 1908, then to New York City in 1939. He wrote several famous poems such as Funeral Blues, and As I Walked Out One Evening. He signed his works W. H. Auden. He died in Vienna, Austria and is buried in Kirchstetten.

Auden was an Anglican and was gay. He married Erika Mann in 1935 to enable her to escapeNazi Germany. His partner from 1946 until his death was Chester Kallman (1921–1975).

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References

1. ↑ Poets' Graves
2. ↑W. H. Auden's wisdom, faith and humor

British-American poet (1907–1973)

Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry is noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form, and content. Some of his best known poems are about love, such as "Funeral Blues"; on political and social themes, such as "September 1, 1939" and "The Shield of Achilles"; on cultural and psychological themes, such as The Age of Anxiety; and on religious themes, such as "For the Time Being" and "Horae Canonicae".

Auden was born in York and grew up in and near Birmingham in a professional, middle-class family. He attended various English independent (or public) schools and studied English at Christ Church, Oxford. After a few months in Berlin in 1928–29, he spent five years (1930–1935) teaching in British private preparatory schools. In 1939, he moved to the United States; he became an American citizen in 1946, retaining his British citizenship. Auden taught from 1941 to 1945 in American universities, followed by occasional visiting professorships in the 1950s.

Auden came to wide public attention in 1930 with his first book, Poems; it was followed in 1932 by The Orators. Three plays written in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood between 1935 and 1938 built his reputation as a left-wing political writer. Auden moved to the United States partly to escape this reputation, and his work in the 1940s, including the long poems "For the Time Being" and "The Sea and the Mirror", focused on religious themes. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 1947 long poem The Age of Anxiety, the title of which became a popular phrase describing the modern era. From 1956 to 1961, he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford; his lectures were popular with students and faculty and served as the basis for his 1962 pr

WH Auden  ©Auden was an Anglo-American poet and one of the leading literary figures of the 20th century.

Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York on 21 February 1907. His father was a doctor and academic. Auden was educated at Oxford University, graduating in 1928. He went to live in Berlin for a year, returning to England to become a teacher. His early poetry made his reputation as a witty and technically accomplished writer. He collaborated with Christopher Isherwood, who he had met at school, on a number of plays.

In 1935, Auden married Erika Mann, the daughter of the German novelist Thomas Mann. It was a marriage of convenience to enable her to gain British citizenship and escape Nazi Germany - Auden was himself homosexual.

Auden's political sympathies inspired him to go to Spain in 1937 to observe the Spanish Civil War. In 1939, Auden and Isherwood emigrated to the United States. This was a controversial move, regarded by some as a flight from danger on the eve of war in Europe. In New York, Auden met poet Chester Kallman who would be his companion for the rest of his life. Auden taught at a number of American universities and, in 1946, took US citizenship.

He continued to publish poetry including 'The Age of Anxiety' (1947) for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He collaborated with Kallman on the libretto for Stravinsky's opera 'The Rake's Progress' (1951). From 1956 to 1961 he was professor of poetry at Oxford University.

In 1972, with his health declining, Auden left America. He moved to live in Oxford, in a cottage belonging to his old college, Christ Church. In the late 1950s, Auden had bought a house in Austria, where he spent six months of every year. He died in Austria on 29 September 1973.

Entry updated 15 April 2024. Tagged: Author, Critic, Theatre.

Working name of Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973), UK poet, playwright, librettist and critic; he was Oxford Professor of Poetry 1956-1961. His verse combined wide-ranging technical brilliance with an early fascination for modern Technology, especially that associated with mining and Transportation: aviation is sinisterly glamourized in "Journal of an Airman" (in The Orators, coll 1932) (see also Pax Aeronautica; Rex Warner). The play On the Frontier: A Melodrama in Two Acts (first performed October 1938 Cambridge Arts Theatre; 1938) with Christopher Isherwood is set against the outbreak of war between the Ruritania-like European countries of Ostnia and Westland. Auden's poems make infrequent but unembarrassed use of fantastic tropes, such as the sardonically implied Dystopia dominated by a Bureau of Statistics which celebrates the eponym of "The Unknown Citizen" (6 January 1940 The New Yorker; in Another Time coll 1940) for his exemplary because utterly average life as a model consumer. The long sequence "The Sea and the Mirror" (in For the Time Being, coll 1944) is a remarkable meditation on William Shakespeare's The Tempest (performed circa 1611; 1623) in which all the speaking characters plus some theatre personnel give voice, each in their own verse form except for the supposed Monster Caliban, who orates in highly mannered prose recalling the finical later style of Henry James (1843-1916). "The Shield of Achilles" (October 1952 Poetry) effectively contrasts Homer's classical vision of glorious War and peace with altogether bleaker modern views of depersonalized Future War and a looming Post-Holocaust world. The much later "Moon Landing" (6 September 1969 The New Yorker; in Epistle to a Godson coll 1972) sees the recent Apollo mission to the Moon not in terms of Sense of Wonder but, dismissively, as "a phallic triumph". Auden's love affair with technology was clearly