Nuclear war is a possibility at any time. The possibility of a better world arose, and as Che Guevara wrote, the possibility of a new human being governed by the spirit of cooperation and regard for fellow beings, by love instead of war.īut, though the struggle goes on, the present reality is a return to universal anxiety. Liberation movements arose against all the imperialist countries, supported by the socialist nations. The entire period, from 1914 until today, has been an age of anxiety created by our common experience of life in the dominant economic, social, and political system that atomises the individual, reduces them to fragment of themselves and constantly threatens them with annihilation.Ī tortured humanity cried out for something better and, for a time, during the rise of socialism, during and after the First World War and through to the counter-revolution in what was the Soviet Union, a new human spirit appeared and created conditions that made people aware of their own possibilities and taught them that the other was not an enemy or a competitor, but a friend, a brother, a sister, who, together, could do anything, for when you can do things and know it, anxiety transforms into confidence and calm, into resoluteness and courage. He described the faces in the bars, the people trying to cling to average days that no longer existed, all hoping that the lights wouldn’t go out, that the music would always play, that they could avoid looking at where they were, lost in the dark, “children afraid of the night, who have never been happy or good.” Auden, published a long poem he titled, The Age of Anxiety, in which four characters express their anxiety about their place in a world that has been destroyed by two world wars and was threatened by a third, and nuclear, world war. Letters from Iceland (Random House, 1937) The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays (Random House, 1962) Auden (Random House, 1945)įorewords and Afterwords (Random House, 1973) The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (Random House, 1947) The Shield of Achilles (Random House, 1955)Ĭollected Shorter Poems 1930-1944 (Faber and Faber, 1950) Thank You, Fog: Last Poems (Random House, 1974)Įpistle to a Godson (Faber and Faber, 1972)Īcademic Graffiti (Faber and Faber, 1971)Ĭity Without Walls and Other Poems (Random House, 1969)Ĭollected Longer Poems (Random House, 1968)Ĭollected Shorter Poems 1927-1957 (Faber and Faber, 1966) Auden served as a c hancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1954 to 1973, and divided most of the second half of his life between residences in New York City and Austria. Generally considered the greatest English poet of the twentieth century, his work has exerted a major influence on succeeding generations of poets on both sides of the Atlantic. A prolific writer, Auden was also a noted playwright, librettist, editor, and essayist. His own beliefs changed radically between his youthful career in England, when he was an ardent advocate of socialism and Freudian psychoanalysis, and his later phase in America, when his central preoccupation became Christianity and the theology of modern Protestant theologians. He visited Germany, Iceland, and China, served in the Spanish Civil war, and in 1939 moved to the United States, where he met his lover, Chester Kallman, and became an American citizen. His poetry frequently recounts, literally or metaphorically, a journey or quest, and his travels provided rich material for his verse. He had a remarkable wit, and often mimicked the writing styles of other poets such as Dickinson, W. In 1928, his collection Poems was privately printed, but it wasn't until 1930, when another collection titled Poems (though its contents were different) was published, that Auden was established as the leading voice of a new generation.Įver since, he has been admired for his unsurpassed technical virtuosity and an ability to write poems in nearly every imaginable verse form the incorporation in his work of popular culture, current events, and vernacular speech and also for the vast range of his intellect, which drew easily from an extraordinary variety of literatures, art forms, social and political theories, and scientific and technical information. At Oxford his precocity as a poet was immediately apparent, and he formed lifelong friendships with two fellow writers, Stephen Spender and Christopher Isherwood.
As a young man he was influenced by the poetry of Thomas Hardy and Robert Frost, as well as William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Old English verse.
He moved to Birmingham during childhood and was educated at Christ Church, Oxford. Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York, England, on February 21, 1907.