WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.220 Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, prevent 00:00:03.220 --> 00:00:05.480 the dog from barking with a juicy bone. You know 00:00:05.480 --> 00:00:07.759 exactly where that's from. I do. And if you're 00:00:07.759 --> 00:00:09.759 listening, you probably do too. You're picturing 00:00:09.759 --> 00:00:12.359 a very, very specific scene in a movie. It has 00:00:12.359 --> 00:00:13.919 to be four weddings and a funeral, right? It 00:00:13.919 --> 00:00:17.160 has to be. The character reading that devastating 00:00:17.160 --> 00:00:20.940 poem. It just it tears your heart out. It's one 00:00:20.940 --> 00:00:23.219 of those cinematic moments that really, really 00:00:23.219 --> 00:00:25.940 sticks with you forever. It absolutely is. And 00:00:25.940 --> 00:00:29.079 for millions of people, that was their front 00:00:29.079 --> 00:00:32.189 door into the world of W. H. Auden. It actually 00:00:32.189 --> 00:00:36.350 sparked this massive resurgence in his popularity 00:00:36.350 --> 00:00:39.210 back in the mid -90s. Which is incredible for 00:00:39.210 --> 00:00:41.429 a poet who'd been dead for 20 years at that point. 00:00:41.509 --> 00:00:44.450 It's unheard of. But here's the thing about Auden, 00:00:44.450 --> 00:00:45.750 and this is what we're going to get into today. 00:00:45.890 --> 00:00:49.350 That poem, Funeral Blues, is just the tiniest, 00:00:49.350 --> 00:00:52.450 tiniest tip of a very large and very complicated 00:00:52.450 --> 00:00:55.530 iceberg. Right. And honestly, the man who wrote 00:00:55.530 --> 00:00:58.630 it... Might have been surprised and maybe even 00:00:58.630 --> 00:01:00.689 a little bit annoyed that it became his defining 00:01:00.689 --> 00:01:03.289 pop culture moment. That's what I find so fascinating, 00:01:03.369 --> 00:01:05.129 because when you actually look at the stack of 00:01:05.129 --> 00:01:07.349 research we have here and it's, you know, it's 00:01:07.349 --> 00:01:11.150 pretty substantial. You realize that W .H. Auden 00:01:11.150 --> 00:01:14.250 wasn't just a guy who wrote beautiful, sad poems. 00:01:14.409 --> 00:01:17.950 Not at all. He was a figure just defined by these 00:01:17.950 --> 00:01:21.409 massive radical contradictions. We are talking 00:01:21.409 --> 00:01:24.109 about someone who contains multitudes. And I 00:01:24.109 --> 00:01:26.269 mean that in the most literal sense. He really 00:01:26.269 --> 00:01:30.349 was a 20th century giant, but a giant with two 00:01:30.349 --> 00:01:32.989 heads, you could say. Metaphorically speaking, 00:01:33.129 --> 00:01:35.650 of course, do heads. I like that. You've got 00:01:35.650 --> 00:01:37.670 the Englishman who becomes a passionately American 00:01:37.670 --> 00:01:40.870 citizen. You've got the left wing political icon 00:01:40.870 --> 00:01:44.769 of the 1930s who later in life rejects politics 00:01:44.769 --> 00:01:47.469 almost entirely for religion. And my favorite 00:01:47.469 --> 00:01:50.560 detail. The man who lived in absolute squalor. 00:01:50.579 --> 00:01:52.700 Oh, the stories are incredible. We're talking 00:01:52.700 --> 00:01:55.840 physical chaos, cigarette ash everywhere, just 00:01:55.840 --> 00:01:59.019 a complete mess. But he was obsessively, rigidly 00:01:59.019 --> 00:02:01.439 punctual. To the minute. It's a paradox that 00:02:01.439 --> 00:02:04.019 tells you so much about him. It really is. It's 00:02:04.019 --> 00:02:06.019 the kind of character detail that a novelist 00:02:06.019 --> 00:02:08.659 would invent. And, you know, usually when we 00:02:08.659 --> 00:02:10.639 do these deep dives, we try to simplify things 00:02:10.639 --> 00:02:13.340 to find a single thread. But today, I think our 00:02:13.340 --> 00:02:14.780 mission is a little different. We're going to 00:02:14.780 --> 00:02:16.879 lean into the complexity. We want to figure out 00:02:16.879 --> 00:02:20.419 how a boy from York who started out wanting to 00:02:20.419 --> 00:02:23.259 be a mining engineer of all things became the 00:02:23.259 --> 00:02:28.270 enfant de rube of English poetry. and then eventually 00:02:28.270 --> 00:02:31.310 the undisputed master. And we have to get into 00:02:31.310 --> 00:02:33.509 the controversies. We can't avoid them. We're 00:02:33.509 --> 00:02:35.990 going to unpack what was called the Great Betrayal 00:02:35.990 --> 00:02:39.030 of 1939. Which sounds like a spy thriller. It 00:02:39.030 --> 00:02:41.650 does, doesn't it? But it was a literary scandal 00:02:41.650 --> 00:02:43.990 that nearly broke his reputation in Britain. 00:02:44.210 --> 00:02:47.189 And we also have to understand why, later in 00:02:47.189 --> 00:02:49.870 life, he tried to delete his own most famous 00:02:49.870 --> 00:02:52.979 poems from history. He literally wanted to erase 00:02:52.979 --> 00:02:55.340 them. It's an incredible thing. The poet Joseph 00:02:55.340 --> 00:02:58.900 Brodsky, a Nobel laureate himself, said Auden 00:02:58.900 --> 00:03:01.639 had the greatest mind of the 20th century. And 00:03:01.639 --> 00:03:03.500 I think by the end of this, we'll start to see 00:03:03.500 --> 00:03:06.000 why that isn't just hyperbole. I can't imagine 00:03:06.000 --> 00:03:08.520 that in the Internet, AIDS trying to delete something 00:03:08.520 --> 00:03:11.400 that's already gone viral. But OK, before we 00:03:11.400 --> 00:03:13.080 get to the deletion of history, let's start with 00:03:13.080 --> 00:03:15.460 the making of it. Let's go all the way back to 00:03:15.460 --> 00:03:20.500 the beginning. 1907, York, England. What did 00:03:20.500 --> 00:03:23.319 the world look like for a young Wyston Hugh Auden? 00:03:23.379 --> 00:03:26.039 Well, to really get Auden, you have to start 00:03:26.039 --> 00:03:28.819 with the atmosphere of his home. His father, 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:31.080 George Augustus Auden, was a very distinguished 00:03:31.080 --> 00:03:34.419 physician, a professor. His mother, Constance, 00:03:34.460 --> 00:03:36.300 had trained as a missionary nurse. So you have 00:03:36.300 --> 00:03:38.000 medicine and service right there at the center. 00:03:38.969 --> 00:03:41.530 Respectable middle class background. Very. But 00:03:41.530 --> 00:03:44.389 the key here isn't just their professions. It's 00:03:44.389 --> 00:03:47.449 the spiritual texture of the household. It was 00:03:47.449 --> 00:03:49.990 a high Anglican household. OK, let's unpack that 00:03:49.990 --> 00:03:52.689 term high Anglican. For people who aren't, you 00:03:52.689 --> 00:03:54.669 know, steeped in the nuances of English church 00:03:54.669 --> 00:03:56.550 history, does that just mean they were very devout? 00:03:56.610 --> 00:03:59.090 It's more specific than that. It refers to a 00:03:59.090 --> 00:04:02.289 particular style of worship. High Anglicanism 00:04:02.289 --> 00:04:05.469 or Anglo -Catholicism places a huge emphasis 00:04:05.469 --> 00:04:08.969 on ritual, on liturgy, on the whole aesthetic 00:04:08.969 --> 00:04:11.069 experience of the service. So less about the 00:04:11.069 --> 00:04:14.199 sermon and more about the show. In a way. You're 00:04:14.199 --> 00:04:17.920 talking about incense, chanting, elaborate robes 00:04:17.920 --> 00:04:20.379 or vestments. It's a very sensory, very theatrical 00:04:20.379 --> 00:04:24.040 experience. Auden himself traced his love of 00:04:24.040 --> 00:04:26.480 music and language directly back to those childhood 00:04:26.480 --> 00:04:28.939 church services. I can see that. That solemn 00:04:28.939 --> 00:04:31.360 chanting, the rhythm of the liturgy, it gets 00:04:31.360 --> 00:04:34.339 into your bones when you're a child. He said 00:04:34.339 --> 00:04:36.560 later that to understand his poetry, you have 00:04:36.560 --> 00:04:39.100 to understand that he grew up thinking of the 00:04:39.100 --> 00:04:42.279 church service as a form of... high drama, it 00:04:42.279 --> 00:04:44.939 trained his ear. It trains your ear for meter 00:04:44.939 --> 00:04:46.740 and cadence before you even know what poetry 00:04:46.740 --> 00:04:49.319 is. And I saw something in the notes about an 00:04:49.319 --> 00:04:52.040 Icelandic connection. He believed his family 00:04:52.040 --> 00:04:54.620 was from Iceland. Yes, that was his father's 00:04:54.620 --> 00:04:57.199 pet theory. George Auden was convinced the name 00:04:57.199 --> 00:04:59.879 Auden came from the old Norse name Auden. Was 00:04:59.879 --> 00:05:02.079 it true? Probably not. The evidence is pretty 00:05:02.079 --> 00:05:05.060 thin. But it didn't matter. For a young, imaginative 00:05:05.060 --> 00:05:07.680 boy like Whiston, it gave him this whole personal 00:05:07.680 --> 00:05:10.040 mythology to latch onto. He's a secret Viking. 00:05:10.389 --> 00:05:13.610 Exactly. He became obsessed with Norse sagas, 00:05:13.610 --> 00:05:16.610 with the Eddas, with the stark, cold, mythical 00:05:16.610 --> 00:05:19.089 landscapes of the North. It added this layer 00:05:19.089 --> 00:05:22.990 of ancient heroic mystery to his very proper 00:05:22.990 --> 00:05:25.949 English upbringing. I love that. But here's the 00:05:25.949 --> 00:05:27.709 part that really surprised me in the research. 00:05:27.930 --> 00:05:31.029 Yeah. He didn't set out to be a poet. Not at 00:05:31.029 --> 00:05:34.800 all. Until he was about 15, he was dead set on 00:05:34.800 --> 00:05:36.980 becoming a mining engineer. It's such a specific, 00:05:37.079 --> 00:05:39.560 gritty ambition, isn't it? It seems completely 00:05:39.560 --> 00:05:41.740 at odds with the man we think we know. It does. 00:05:41.860 --> 00:05:43.139 I mean, what's the connection between writing 00:05:43.139 --> 00:05:46.160 sonnets and digging for lead? It makes a strange 00:05:46.160 --> 00:05:48.279 kind of sense when you look at what he called 00:05:48.279 --> 00:05:51.699 his sacred landscape. He spent his holidays in 00:05:51.699 --> 00:05:54.019 the Pennines in northern England. This is a rugged 00:05:54.019 --> 00:05:56.660 limestone area. And at the time, the lead mining 00:05:56.660 --> 00:05:59.100 industry there was in its final stages of decline. 00:05:59.420 --> 00:06:02.100 Okay. And he was obsessed with it. The decaying 00:06:02.100 --> 00:06:04.579 machinery, the abandoned mine shafts, the strange 00:06:04.579 --> 00:06:07.420 names of the villages like Rookhope. He didn't 00:06:07.420 --> 00:06:09.639 just see them as industrial ruins. He saw them 00:06:09.639 --> 00:06:12.000 as emotionally resonant. He felt something spiritual 00:06:12.000 --> 00:06:14.660 there. So while other kids are dreaming of being, 00:06:14.699 --> 00:06:17.560 I don't know, train conductors or soldiers, he's 00:06:17.560 --> 00:06:20.699 dreaming about rusty pit winding gear. Precisely. 00:06:20.699 --> 00:06:23.240 He found something numinous in it. A word he 00:06:23.240 --> 00:06:26.100 used a lot, meaning spiritually charged. There 00:06:26.100 --> 00:06:28.779 is a later poem of his, Amor Losi, which means 00:06:28.779 --> 00:06:31.480 love of place, where he revisits this obsession. 00:06:31.800 --> 00:06:33.839 It's almost as if he took that fascination with 00:06:33.839 --> 00:06:35.980 the underground, with digging into the earth 00:06:35.980 --> 00:06:38.000 for hidden things, and just transferred it from 00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:40.339 mining rocks to mining the human subconscious. 00:06:40.920 --> 00:06:43.319 That is a perfect analogy, digging into the earth 00:06:43.319 --> 00:06:45.839 versus digging into the mind. And speaking of 00:06:45.839 --> 00:06:48.699 the mind, his father's library was a huge influence 00:06:48.699 --> 00:06:51.379 too. Auden was reading psychoanalytic literature 00:06:51.379 --> 00:06:53.959 from a very early age, wasn't he? He was. His 00:06:53.959 --> 00:06:56.600 father was a physician, remember, and very intellectually 00:06:56.600 --> 00:06:59.259 curious for a provincial doctor. He had books 00:06:59.259 --> 00:07:02.959 by Freud, by Groddick, by other early psychoanalysts. 00:07:03.000 --> 00:07:05.100 So you have this young boy steeped in high church 00:07:05.100 --> 00:07:08.360 ritual, obsessed with industrial decay, and reading 00:07:08.360 --> 00:07:11.019 about the Oedipus Complex. It's a unique cocktail, 00:07:11.160 --> 00:07:13.220 isn't it? That's the formula that makes Auden. 00:07:13.379 --> 00:07:16.199 He was diagnosing the neuroses of the human condition 00:07:16.199 --> 00:07:18.360 before he could even vote. So when does this 00:07:18.360 --> 00:07:21.079 switch? finally flip? When does he go from I 00:07:21.079 --> 00:07:23.980 want to design mine shafts to I want to write 00:07:23.980 --> 00:07:27.540 poetry? It happened at his boarding school, Gresham 00:07:27.540 --> 00:07:31.199 School. It's 1922. He's about 15 years old. And 00:07:31.199 --> 00:07:34.500 it wasn't some grand dramatic moment. A friend 00:07:34.500 --> 00:07:37.319 of his, a boy named Robert Medley, just casually 00:07:37.319 --> 00:07:40.500 asks him one day, do you write poetry? And that 00:07:40.500 --> 00:07:42.779 was it. Just a simple question. According to 00:07:42.779 --> 00:07:44.939 Auden, that was the catalyst. He said that until 00:07:44.939 --> 00:07:47.139 that moment, the thought had never seriously 00:07:47.139 --> 00:07:49.879 crossed his mind. But as soon as Medley asked, 00:07:50.100 --> 00:07:52.740 he knew instantly that his true vocation was 00:07:52.740 --> 00:07:55.620 poetry. Wow. It's one of those strange moments 00:07:55.620 --> 00:07:57.860 where someone else sees something in you that 00:07:57.860 --> 00:08:00.360 you haven't quite admitted to yourself yet. Exactly. 00:08:00.360 --> 00:08:02.579 And once that damn broke, he just started writing 00:08:02.579 --> 00:08:04.819 voraciously. Yeah. And interestingly, around 00:08:04.819 --> 00:08:07.240 the same time, another major shift happens. He 00:08:07.240 --> 00:08:09.720 loses his religious faith. Was it a dramatic, 00:08:09.800 --> 00:08:12.810 angry rebellion? You know, storming out of the 00:08:12.810 --> 00:08:15.310 chapel, denouncing God. Not at all. And this 00:08:15.310 --> 00:08:17.449 is so typically Auden. It wasn't a crisis. It 00:08:17.449 --> 00:08:18.810 wasn't a rebellion. He just sort of realized 00:08:18.810 --> 00:08:21.149 he'd lost interest. He drifted away. It was a 00:08:21.149 --> 00:08:23.589 gradual realization, as he put it. The church 00:08:23.589 --> 00:08:25.750 of his childhood just didn't seem relevant to 00:08:25.750 --> 00:08:27.430 his new intellectual and emotional interests. 00:08:27.689 --> 00:08:29.790 He was discovering science. He was discovering 00:08:29.790 --> 00:08:33.309 his sexuality. And he was also discovering his 00:08:33.309 --> 00:08:35.750 flair for performance. But we have to talk about 00:08:35.750 --> 00:08:39.070 the school play, The Taming of the Shrew. 1922. 00:08:39.250 --> 00:08:42.110 Yes. Where he played Katharina. A fiery female 00:08:42.110 --> 00:08:44.789 lead. That's the one. And there's this wonderful 00:08:44.789 --> 00:08:46.870 review from the school newspaper at the time 00:08:46.870 --> 00:08:50.889 that noted that despite wearing a poor wig, Auden 00:08:50.889 --> 00:08:55.169 managed to infuse considerable dignity into Katharina's 00:08:55.169 --> 00:08:57.750 passionate outbursts. I love that detail. Poor 00:08:57.750 --> 00:08:59.950 wig. It's a funny little anecdote, but it's actually 00:08:59.950 --> 00:09:02.269 quite telling. It foreshadows something important 00:09:02.269 --> 00:09:05.259 in his work. Auden always had this ability to 00:09:05.259 --> 00:09:08.179 mix the absurd, the bad wig, the chaotic apartment 00:09:08.179 --> 00:09:11.980 with absolute seriousness and dignity. He was 00:09:11.980 --> 00:09:13.960 never afraid to look a little bit ridiculous 00:09:13.960 --> 00:09:16.740 in the pursuit of a deeper truth. OK, so he graduates 00:09:16.740 --> 00:09:18.720 from Gresham's. He's found poetry. He's lost 00:09:18.720 --> 00:09:21.039 his religion. And now it's off to Oxford. This 00:09:21.039 --> 00:09:22.519 is where the legend of the Auden group really 00:09:22.519 --> 00:09:24.340 begins, right? This is where we have to be a 00:09:24.340 --> 00:09:26.519 bit careful with the history because the Auden 00:09:26.519 --> 00:09:29.820 group is half fact, half media invention. OK. 00:09:29.899 --> 00:09:33.149 So he goes to Christchurch, Oxford. And there 00:09:33.149 --> 00:09:35.929 he meets Stephen Spender, Cecil Day -Lewis, and 00:09:35.929 --> 00:09:38.289 Louis McNeice. Basically the Mount Rushmore of 00:09:38.289 --> 00:09:42.169 1930s English poetry. Essentially, yes. And the 00:09:42.169 --> 00:09:46.309 media and later literary critics absolutely loved 00:09:46.309 --> 00:09:48.970 lumping them all together. They were seen as 00:09:48.970 --> 00:09:52.110 the single entity. There was even a mocking portmanteau 00:09:52.110 --> 00:09:56.710 for them later on. McSponday? McSponday? That 00:09:56.710 --> 00:09:58.590 sounds like a terrible brand of Scottish whiskey. 00:09:58.789 --> 00:10:00.509 It does, doesn't it? It was a blend of their 00:10:00.509 --> 00:10:04.110 names. McNeese, Spender, Auden, Day -Lewis. And 00:10:04.110 --> 00:10:06.470 the idea was that they were this monolith of 00:10:06.470 --> 00:10:09.450 left -wing, anti -establishment, modernist views. 00:10:09.830 --> 00:10:11.769 But they weren't. Well, they did share certain 00:10:11.769 --> 00:10:13.850 left -wing sympathies, especially as the 30s 00:10:13.850 --> 00:10:16.049 went on. But their actual politics and their 00:10:16.049 --> 00:10:17.990 poetic styles were really quite different. Louis 00:10:17.990 --> 00:10:20.149 McNeese, for instance, was always much more skeptical 00:10:20.149 --> 00:10:22.769 of hardline communist dogma than the others were. 00:10:23.210 --> 00:10:25.629 But Auden, Auden was undoubtedly the center of 00:10:25.629 --> 00:10:27.929 gravity. He was the leader. What was he like 00:10:27.929 --> 00:10:30.360 socially? I get the sense he was a bit of a character 00:10:30.360 --> 00:10:33.080 even back then. Oh, absolutely. His friends described 00:10:33.080 --> 00:10:36.580 him as incredibly extravagant, very funny, and 00:10:36.580 --> 00:10:39.799 very generous, but also incredibly dogmatic. 00:10:39.940 --> 00:10:42.279 A bit of a bully. In an intellectual sense, maybe. 00:10:42.379 --> 00:10:45.179 In a group setting, he could be quite overbearing, 00:10:45.179 --> 00:10:47.220 holding court, telling everyone what was what. 00:10:47.419 --> 00:10:49.340 He would issue these pronouncements, tell his 00:10:49.340 --> 00:10:50.659 friends who they should date, what they should 00:10:50.659 --> 00:10:53.200 read, and exactly what was wrong with their latest 00:10:53.200 --> 00:10:55.539 poem. But that was in public. What about in private? 00:10:56.059 --> 00:10:58.019 That's the other side of the coin. In private, 00:10:58.200 --> 00:11:00.940 he was often shy and diffident. And according 00:11:00.940 --> 00:11:02.940 to his own letters, he was often incredibly lonely. 00:11:03.200 --> 00:11:06.419 It's that contradiction again. The loud, confident 00:11:06.419 --> 00:11:10.059 leader of the group who, deep down, felt isolated. 00:11:10.440 --> 00:11:12.840 And it's at Oxford that he reconnects with Christopher 00:11:12.840 --> 00:11:14.860 Asherwood, which is a key relationship in his 00:11:14.860 --> 00:11:17.000 life. The key relationship of his early life, 00:11:17.080 --> 00:11:19.629 certainly. They had met briefly at a prep school, 00:11:19.769 --> 00:11:22.710 but they properly reconnected in 1925 at Oxford, 00:11:22.909 --> 00:11:25.490 and it became what they called a sexual friendship 00:11:25.490 --> 00:11:27.909 that lasted for years, even while they were involved 00:11:27.909 --> 00:11:29.710 with other people. But it was more than just 00:11:29.710 --> 00:11:32.289 a romance. Oh, much more. They were collaborators 00:11:32.289 --> 00:11:34.909 in every sense of the word. Isherwood was the 00:11:34.909 --> 00:11:37.110 burgeoning novelist. Auden was the poet. And 00:11:37.110 --> 00:11:39.129 they critiqued each other's work brutally and 00:11:39.129 --> 00:11:41.929 intimately. Isherwood was the one who famously 00:11:41.929 --> 00:11:44.509 told Auden to stop being so obscure to clear 00:11:44.509 --> 00:11:47.389 up his language. Auden, even though he was the 00:11:47.389 --> 00:11:49.409 more famous one, often referred to Isherwood 00:11:49.409 --> 00:11:52.470 as his literary mentor. It sounds like this really 00:11:52.470 --> 00:11:55.269 intense creative and personal incubator. It was. 00:11:55.350 --> 00:11:58.009 So they leave Oxford. The roaring 20s are winding 00:11:58.009 --> 00:12:00.799 down. and the much darker decade of the 30s is 00:12:00.799 --> 00:12:03.460 looming. And Auden makes a crucial decision. 00:12:03.899 --> 00:12:07.139 He decides to go to Berlin. Now, why Berlin? 00:12:07.440 --> 00:12:10.240 At that time, wasn't Paris the traditional spot 00:12:10.240 --> 00:12:14.279 for young artistic expats? It was. Paris was 00:12:14.279 --> 00:12:16.980 for the romantics, for the lost generation. But 00:12:16.980 --> 00:12:19.559 this was 1928, and Berlin was for the realists. 00:12:19.720 --> 00:12:22.340 Berlin was the place to be if you wanted to escape 00:12:22.340 --> 00:12:25.320 what Auden saw as English repressiveness. In 00:12:25.320 --> 00:12:27.559 what way? Well, in a sexual sense, certainly. 00:12:28.039 --> 00:12:30.500 Auden was gay and the Berlin of the Weimar Republic 00:12:30.500 --> 00:12:32.940 was famously liberal and experimental. It was 00:12:32.940 --> 00:12:35.440 far more open than London. But it was also a 00:12:35.440 --> 00:12:38.440 place of intense political and economic unrest. 00:12:38.700 --> 00:12:40.480 Right. This is the Weimar Republic on the verge 00:12:40.480 --> 00:12:42.559 of collapse. Yeah. The Nazis are on the rise. 00:12:42.820 --> 00:12:45.580 Exactly. This is where the political Auden is 00:12:45.580 --> 00:12:49.419 truly born. He sees the chaos firsthand. He sees 00:12:49.419 --> 00:12:51.919 the poverty, the street fighting between the 00:12:51.919 --> 00:12:54.419 communists and the Nazis, the decadence that 00:12:54.419 --> 00:12:57.120 comes with desperation. It's a massive wake up 00:12:57.120 --> 00:13:00.779 call. He realizes that the polite, orderly English 00:13:00.779 --> 00:13:03.840 society he came from was living in a bubble, 00:13:03.980 --> 00:13:06.639 ignoring this massive storm gathering on the 00:13:06.639 --> 00:13:09.120 horizon. It's interesting that he had to leave 00:13:09.120 --> 00:13:10.899 England to really understand what was happening 00:13:10.899 --> 00:13:13.179 in the world. And yet one of the most profound 00:13:13.179 --> 00:13:15.639 spiritual moments of his early 30s happens back 00:13:15.639 --> 00:13:19.149 in England at a school. The vision of agape. 00:13:19.330 --> 00:13:21.610 Yes. Can you unpack that for us? Because agape 00:13:21.610 --> 00:13:24.210 is a Greek word, isn't it? It is. It refers to 00:13:24.210 --> 00:13:27.070 a kind of selfless, unconditional, brotherly 00:13:27.070 --> 00:13:29.830 love. It's distinct from eros, which is romantic 00:13:29.830 --> 00:13:32.629 or sexual love. And the story is really quite 00:13:32.629 --> 00:13:36.129 simple. It's 1933. And Auden is a schoolmaster 00:13:36.129 --> 00:13:38.450 at the Downs School. He's sitting on the lawn 00:13:38.450 --> 00:13:40.129 one evening with three of his fellow teachers. 00:13:40.250 --> 00:13:42.809 They're just talking, joking around. And suddenly 00:13:42.809 --> 00:13:45.990 he has this overwhelming experience, this epiphany. 00:13:46.210 --> 00:13:48.710 He was overcome. the feeling that he loved them 00:13:48.710 --> 00:13:50.809 for themselves. What does it mean exactly? It 00:13:50.809 --> 00:13:53.590 meant their existence subtly had infinite value 00:13:53.590 --> 00:13:56.730 to him, completely independent of what they could 00:13:56.730 --> 00:13:59.149 do for him or how they made him feel. It was 00:13:59.149 --> 00:14:02.789 a moment of pure, selfless connection. He saw 00:14:02.789 --> 00:14:05.330 their intrinsic worth. That sounds almost mystical 00:14:05.330 --> 00:14:08.370 or religious. It was. And even though he was 00:14:08.370 --> 00:14:10.909 an atheist at the time, he later looked back 00:14:10.909 --> 00:14:13.490 on that moment as a crucial turning point. It 00:14:13.490 --> 00:14:16.610 was a seed that years later would blossom into 00:14:16.610 --> 00:14:19.190 his return to the church. It was a break from 00:14:19.190 --> 00:14:21.690 that selfish alter ego kind of love he'd been 00:14:21.690 --> 00:14:23.590 chasing, you know, looking for someone to complete 00:14:23.590 --> 00:14:26.389 him. And it was a glimpse of something universal. 00:14:26.629 --> 00:14:30.230 A very profound experience. But before he fully 00:14:30.230 --> 00:14:32.750 gets back to the church, he's got a war to deal 00:14:32.750 --> 00:14:35.889 with, or a few wars, actually. The 1930s were 00:14:35.889 --> 00:14:38.490 heating up. They were. And Auden had this very 00:14:38.490 --> 00:14:41.470 strong philosophy that An artist had to be, and 00:14:41.470 --> 00:14:43.889 this is his phrase, more than a bit of a reporting 00:14:43.889 --> 00:14:46.549 journalist. Right. He absolutely rejected the 00:14:46.549 --> 00:14:49.350 ivory tower. He believed the poet had to be down 00:14:49.350 --> 00:14:51.269 in the muck of the real world reporting back 00:14:51.269 --> 00:14:53.429 from the front lines of history. And he really 00:14:53.429 --> 00:14:55.590 tried to live that. And that includes his personal 00:14:55.590 --> 00:14:58.509 life, right? In 1935, he does something quite 00:14:58.509 --> 00:15:02.029 extraordinary. He marries Erica Mann. Yes. Thomas 00:15:02.029 --> 00:15:04.340 Mann's daughter. The great German novelist. But 00:15:04.340 --> 00:15:06.580 this wasn't a love match. Not in any conventional 00:15:06.580 --> 00:15:08.980 sense. It was a marriage of convenience, a purely 00:15:08.980 --> 00:15:11.960 political act. The Nazis were in power in Germany 00:15:11.960 --> 00:15:14.299 and they were stripping Erica, who is a vocal 00:15:14.299 --> 00:15:17.799 anti -fascist, of her German citizenship. She 00:15:17.799 --> 00:15:19.860 was in danger of becoming stateless. So she needed 00:15:19.860 --> 00:15:21.980 a passport. She needed the passport. She first 00:15:21.980 --> 00:15:23.960 asked Christopher Itcherwood if he would marry 00:15:23.960 --> 00:15:26.620 her to give her British citizenship. He declined, 00:15:26.779 --> 00:15:29.899 but he suggested Auden. And Auden, without having 00:15:29.899 --> 00:15:32.600 ever met her, show excreed. It's like that. Hey, 00:15:32.700 --> 00:15:34.220 want to get married to save me from the Nazis? 00:15:34.379 --> 00:15:48.070 Sure, why not? Basically. Wow. It really highlights 00:15:48.070 --> 00:15:49.789 that underneath the enfant terrible persona, 00:15:50.190 --> 00:15:53.289 there was this deep well of private charity and 00:15:53.289 --> 00:15:56.289 moral seriousness. He was willing to use his 00:15:56.289 --> 00:15:58.570 privilege as a British citizen to help someone 00:15:58.570 --> 00:16:02.029 in a very tangible, practical way. And then comes 00:16:02.029 --> 00:16:05.809 the Spanish Civil War. Yeah. 1937. This was the 00:16:05.809 --> 00:16:08.509 great cause for the left in the 30s. Everyone 00:16:08.509 --> 00:16:12.230 who was anyone went. Hemingway, Orwell. It was 00:16:12.230 --> 00:16:15.230 the defining political and moral test of that 00:16:15.230 --> 00:16:18.129 generation. And Auden felt he had to go. He went 00:16:18.129 --> 00:16:20.049 to Spain with the intention of driving an ambulance 00:16:20.049 --> 00:16:22.230 for the Republic. He wanted to do something real, 00:16:22.269 --> 00:16:24.850 not just write poems about it. Exactly. But the 00:16:24.850 --> 00:16:27.429 reality was a complete and utter disaster for 00:16:27.429 --> 00:16:30.350 him. Well, he wasn't driving an ambulance. As 00:16:30.350 --> 00:16:32.049 soon as he arrived, the Republican government 00:16:32.049 --> 00:16:34.330 recognized him and basically put him to work 00:16:34.330 --> 00:16:36.769 in their propaganda office. Which he must have 00:16:36.769 --> 00:16:38.990 hated. He just fled a version of that in England. 00:16:39.110 --> 00:16:41.610 He despised it. He felt totally useless. But 00:16:41.610 --> 00:16:43.490 more importantly, he was deeply disturbed by 00:16:43.490 --> 00:16:46.269 what he actually saw in Republican Spain. The 00:16:46.269 --> 00:16:48.409 political realities were not black and white, 00:16:48.490 --> 00:16:50.710 as he had imagined from London. It wasn't just 00:16:50.710 --> 00:16:52.970 the good guys versus the bad guys. Not at all. 00:16:53.320 --> 00:16:55.919 There was brutal infighting among the various 00:16:55.919 --> 00:16:58.500 left -wing factions, and as someone with that 00:16:58.500 --> 00:17:01.539 Anglican background, he was particularly shocked 00:17:01.539 --> 00:17:04.220 by the anti -clerical violence, the burning of 00:17:04.220 --> 00:17:06.900 churches, the execution of priests and nuns. 00:17:07.039 --> 00:17:10.140 It troubled him far more than he expected. He 00:17:10.140 --> 00:17:12.740 left after only about seven weeks. That's a very 00:17:12.740 --> 00:17:15.180 short time for such a major historical event. 00:17:15.400 --> 00:17:18.519 It was a pivotal moment of disillusionment. He 00:17:18.519 --> 00:17:21.559 realized that war wasn't a stage for poetic heroics. 00:17:21.599 --> 00:17:25.039 It was a messy, ambiguous, and morally compromising 00:17:25.039 --> 00:17:28.400 business. He wrote a famous poem, Spain, to raise 00:17:28.400 --> 00:17:31.160 money for the cause, but he later came to absolutely 00:17:31.160 --> 00:17:33.339 hate that poem. We're going to get to his habit 00:17:33.339 --> 00:17:35.700 of hating his own poems. We are. He felt he was 00:17:35.700 --> 00:17:38.440 simplifying a complex tragedy just to score easy 00:17:38.440 --> 00:17:42.059 political points. And he didn't stop there. He 00:17:42.059 --> 00:17:44.660 also went to China, right? to document the Sino 00:17:44.660 --> 00:17:47.559 -Japanese War. Yes, that was in 1938, shortly 00:17:47.559 --> 00:17:50.299 after Spain. He went with Isherwood. They co 00:17:50.299 --> 00:17:52.099 -wrote a book called Journey to a War. So you 00:17:52.099 --> 00:17:53.839 can see he was really trying to live up to this 00:17:53.839 --> 00:17:57.099 ideal of the journalist poet. But by the end 00:17:57.099 --> 00:17:59.460 of that year, something had clearly shifted in 00:17:59.460 --> 00:18:02.240 him. He and Isherwood came back from China. They 00:18:02.240 --> 00:18:04.220 stopped in New York on their way home, and they 00:18:04.220 --> 00:18:06.400 made a decision, a decision that would change 00:18:06.400 --> 00:18:09.640 their lives and Auden's reputation forever. And 00:18:09.640 --> 00:18:13.160 this brings us right to part three. January 1939. 00:18:13.859 --> 00:18:16.700 The year of the so -called Great Betrayal. That's 00:18:16.700 --> 00:18:18.859 what the British press called it, yes. In January 00:18:18.859 --> 00:18:21.559 of 1939, as war clouds are gathering over Europe, 00:18:21.839 --> 00:18:24.680 Auden and Isherwood sail for New York. They decide 00:18:24.680 --> 00:18:27.569 to leave Britain for good. And the timing. I 00:18:27.569 --> 00:18:29.210 mean, you can't overstate how bad the timing 00:18:29.210 --> 00:18:32.109 looked. January 1939. Hitler is on the march. 00:18:32.269 --> 00:18:34.509 The Munich Agreement has already happened. War 00:18:34.509 --> 00:18:36.450 is seen as inevitable. It's just a matter of 00:18:36.450 --> 00:18:38.990 months away. And England's most famous, most 00:18:38.990 --> 00:18:41.910 politically engaged young poet. Yeah. Packs his 00:18:41.910 --> 00:18:44.730 bags and leaves. Exactly. It was seen as a profound 00:18:44.730 --> 00:18:47.630 act of cowardice, of abandoning the ship just 00:18:47.630 --> 00:18:49.910 as it was about to hit the iceberg. It created 00:18:49.910 --> 00:18:52.849 a massive scandal. It was even debated in Parliament. 00:18:53.440 --> 00:18:56.160 In Parliament, politicians were actually discussing 00:18:56.160 --> 00:18:58.799 a poet's travel plan. They were, which tells 00:18:58.799 --> 00:19:01.359 you how central a figure he was. He was seen 00:19:01.359 --> 00:19:03.700 as a voice of his generation, a voice of the 00:19:03.700 --> 00:19:06.420 nation. And for him to leave at that precise 00:19:06.420 --> 00:19:09.259 moment was seen as an unforgivable betrayal. 00:19:09.500 --> 00:19:12.039 His reputation in the UK must have taken a massive 00:19:12.039 --> 00:19:15.329 hit. It was devastated. The writer Evelyn Waugh 00:19:15.329 --> 00:19:18.630 mercilessly satirized them as two cowardly poets 00:19:18.630 --> 00:19:22.029 named Parsnip and Timpernell. The general consensus 00:19:22.029 --> 00:19:24.470 was that they were rats fleeing a sinking ship. 00:19:24.670 --> 00:19:26.529 But what was Auden's perspective? Why did he 00:19:26.529 --> 00:19:29.269 feel he had to leave? For him, it was a matter 00:19:29.269 --> 00:19:31.869 of artistic survival. He felt that Europe was 00:19:31.869 --> 00:19:34.509 creatively and spiritually dead. He believed 00:19:34.509 --> 00:19:36.150 that if he stayed in England, he would inevitably 00:19:36.150 --> 00:19:38.529 be co -opted by the war effort, forced to become 00:19:38.529 --> 00:19:40.329 a propaganda writer, something he'd already had 00:19:40.329 --> 00:19:43.309 a taste of and hated in Spain. He needed a new 00:19:43.309 --> 00:19:45.829 start to find his own authentic voice again. 00:19:46.109 --> 00:19:49.529 And crucially, in New York, he found a reason 00:19:49.529 --> 00:19:51.829 to stay. He met someone who anchored him there. 00:19:51.990 --> 00:19:55.640 He met Chester Coleman. A young, aspiring poet 00:19:55.640 --> 00:19:58.779 from Brooklyn. And this relationship was fundamentally 00:19:58.779 --> 00:20:01.180 different from any that Auden had experienced 00:20:01.180 --> 00:20:03.480 before. How so? Remember we talked about him 00:20:03.480 --> 00:20:06.900 looking for an alter ego? Before Kalman... Auden's 00:20:06.900 --> 00:20:09.339 relationships tended to be with younger men or 00:20:09.339 --> 00:20:11.920 people he could mentor. They were often unequal. 00:20:12.220 --> 00:20:14.720 With Kalman, for the first time, he viewed it 00:20:14.720 --> 00:20:17.619 as a marriage between equals. He actually used 00:20:17.619 --> 00:20:19.859 the word marriage. He did. They exchanged rings. 00:20:20.039 --> 00:20:22.160 They went on a honeymoon trip across the country. 00:20:22.200 --> 00:20:25.099 For Auden, this was it. This was the real thing. 00:20:25.380 --> 00:20:29.200 But it hit a major crisis very quickly. In 1941, 00:20:29.640 --> 00:20:31.700 Kalman ended the sexual side of their relationship. 00:20:31.960 --> 00:20:34.420 What happened? Auden demanded total monogamy. 00:20:34.440 --> 00:20:36.549 He wanted a traditional... faithful marriage 00:20:36.549 --> 00:20:38.890 dynamic, and Kalman, who was much younger and 00:20:38.890 --> 00:20:41.470 more adventurous, simply couldn't or wouldn't 00:20:41.470 --> 00:20:44.490 accept that. Kalman was unfaithful, Auden discovered 00:20:44.490 --> 00:20:47.509 it, and he was completely heartbroken. There 00:20:47.509 --> 00:20:49.609 are accounts of him literally weeping in the 00:20:49.609 --> 00:20:51.809 streets of Ann Arbor. But, and this is the really 00:20:51.809 --> 00:20:54.589 remarkable part, they didn't break up? No, they 00:20:54.589 --> 00:20:56.970 didn't. And this is where that vision of Agape 00:20:56.970 --> 00:21:00.009 comes back into play. Auden made a conscious, 00:21:00.130 --> 00:21:03.170 painful decision to love Kalman anyway. Their 00:21:03.170 --> 00:21:05.630 relationship transformed. They remained companions, 00:21:06.009 --> 00:21:08.730 sharing homes and collaborating on work for the 00:21:08.730 --> 00:21:11.170 rest of Auden's life. That's an incredible commitment. 00:21:11.450 --> 00:21:14.970 It is. He supported Kalman financially. He co 00:21:14.970 --> 00:21:17.769 -wrote several famous opera librettos with him, 00:21:17.789 --> 00:21:20.289 and he dedicated both editions of his collected 00:21:20.289 --> 00:21:23.869 poetry to two people, Christopher Isherwood and 00:21:23.869 --> 00:21:26.799 Chester Kalman. It became this model of lifelong 00:21:26.799 --> 00:21:30.140 companionship that defied any easy categorization. 00:21:30.400 --> 00:21:32.660 It sounds like he was consciously building a 00:21:32.660 --> 00:21:35.609 new kind of family for himself in exile. Which 00:21:35.609 --> 00:21:38.750 brings us to the famous February House. I just 00:21:38.750 --> 00:21:40.490 love the mental image of this place. It's the 00:21:40.490 --> 00:21:42.809 ultimate bohemian artist commune. It was a house 00:21:42.809 --> 00:21:44.750 at 7 Midder Street in Brooklyn Heights. And the 00:21:44.750 --> 00:21:46.849 list of residents is just unbelievable. It's 00:21:46.849 --> 00:21:49.069 a fantasy dinner party lineup. You have Auden, 00:21:49.170 --> 00:21:51.410 the composer Benjamin Britten, the novelist Carson 00:21:51.410 --> 00:21:54.369 McCullers. And Gypsy Rose Lee, the famous burlesque 00:21:54.369 --> 00:21:56.349 entertainer, all living under the same roof. 00:21:56.589 --> 00:21:59.109 Can you just imagine the breakfast table conversation? 00:21:59.569 --> 00:22:02.710 A world -famous stripper, an avant -garde poet, 00:22:02.950 --> 00:22:05.599 and an opera composer. all passing the toast. 00:22:05.799 --> 00:22:09.960 It was this incredible, chaotic hub of creativity. 00:22:10.319 --> 00:22:12.500 And Auden was the ringleader. He was a self -appointed 00:22:12.500 --> 00:22:15.299 housemother. He was the one organizing the finances 00:22:15.299 --> 00:22:18.180 and trying, mostly failing, to get people to 00:22:18.180 --> 00:22:20.640 do their chores. But while he was living this 00:22:20.640 --> 00:22:24.700 very bohemian, very public life, a profound internal 00:22:24.700 --> 00:22:28.019 shift was happening. In 1940, Auden formally 00:22:28.019 --> 00:22:30.900 returned to the Anglican Communion. He was confirmed 00:22:30.900 --> 00:22:33.299 into the Episcopal Church in America. So the 00:22:33.299 --> 00:22:35.200 seed that was planted with the vision of agape 00:22:35.200 --> 00:22:38.559 finally bloomed. It did. But it was also heavily 00:22:38.559 --> 00:22:41.079 influenced by his reading of the existentialist 00:22:41.079 --> 00:22:43.500 theologian Kierkegaard and his friendship with 00:22:43.500 --> 00:22:46.019 the writer Charles Williams. Auden's newfound 00:22:46.019 --> 00:22:48.140 Christianity wasn't retreat from the world, though. 00:22:48.200 --> 00:22:50.220 It was what you'd call an existential faith. 00:22:50.440 --> 00:22:52.480 What do you mean by that? It wasn't about pie 00:22:52.480 --> 00:22:55.019 in the sky when you die. It was about the here 00:22:55.019 --> 00:22:57.799 and now. It was about grappling with sin, with 00:22:57.799 --> 00:23:00.660 doubt, with the challenge of how to live a moral 00:23:00.660 --> 00:23:03.339 life in a fundamentally flawed fallen world. 00:23:03.619 --> 00:23:06.559 And this pivot from the political concerns of 00:23:06.559 --> 00:23:09.279 the 30s to the spiritual and theological concerns 00:23:09.279 --> 00:23:12.220 of the 40s completely changed the focus and tone 00:23:12.220 --> 00:23:14.950 of his poetry. Let's unpack that change in the 00:23:14.950 --> 00:23:17.210 work itself, because the critics definitely noticed, 00:23:17.269 --> 00:23:19.329 right? And they weren't all happy about it. Oh, 00:23:19.390 --> 00:23:22.269 they noticed. And the critical world was completely 00:23:22.269 --> 00:23:24.950 divided. Many of his old admirers in England 00:23:24.950 --> 00:23:28.250 felt he'd gone soft. They missed the angry, urgent, 00:23:28.390 --> 00:23:30.930 political Auden of the 30s. But his style was 00:23:30.930 --> 00:23:32.829 evolving, right? It wasn't just the subject matter. 00:23:33.029 --> 00:23:35.829 Exactly. He moved away from that clipped, obscure, 00:23:36.089 --> 00:23:38.509 almost telegraphic style of his early poems, 00:23:38.609 --> 00:23:40.930 what some people called his secret agent style. 00:23:41.250 --> 00:23:43.960 He started using different... forms like syllabic 00:23:43.960 --> 00:23:46.460 verse, which he was inspired to use by the American 00:23:46.460 --> 00:23:49.000 poet Marianne Moore. He wanted to communicate 00:23:49.000 --> 00:23:51.660 more clearly. He wanted to be understood, not 00:23:51.660 --> 00:23:53.920 just admired for his cleverness. And this is 00:23:53.920 --> 00:23:56.519 when he writes The Age of Anxiety, which is just 00:23:56.519 --> 00:23:58.839 a great title. It's such a great title that it's 00:23:58.839 --> 00:24:00.900 become the shorthand for the entire post -war 00:24:00.900 --> 00:24:04.480 era. He wrote that long poem in 1947, and it 00:24:04.480 --> 00:24:06.539 won him the Pulitzer Prize. It's set in a bar 00:24:06.539 --> 00:24:09.200 in New York during the war, and it just perfectly 00:24:09.200 --> 00:24:12.240 captures that feeling of dislocation, of loneliness, 00:24:12.460 --> 00:24:15.119 of spiritual uncertainty. It was the poem that 00:24:15.119 --> 00:24:17.599 really solidified his status as a major American 00:24:17.599 --> 00:24:20.140 poet. But this is also the period where he starts 00:24:20.140 --> 00:24:23.059 turning against his own earlier work. This is 00:24:23.059 --> 00:24:25.380 the whole controversy over the dishonest poems. 00:24:26.119 --> 00:24:28.380 He literally started rejecting some of his biggest 00:24:28.380 --> 00:24:30.980 hits. This is one of the most fascinating and 00:24:30.980 --> 00:24:33.240 I think admirable things about him. Imagine a 00:24:33.240 --> 00:24:35.400 rock star refusing to play their number one smash 00:24:35.400 --> 00:24:37.799 hit because they've decided they no longer agree 00:24:37.799 --> 00:24:39.779 with the lyrics. That would never happen today. 00:24:39.920 --> 00:24:42.970 Never. But Auden did it. He specifically targeted 00:24:42.970 --> 00:24:45.930 two of his most celebrated political poems, Spain 00:24:45.930 --> 00:24:50.089 and September 1st, 1939. And September 1st, 1939 00:24:50.089 --> 00:24:52.269 is the one that contains probably his most famous 00:24:52.269 --> 00:24:55.170 line. We must love one another or die. That's 00:24:55.170 --> 00:24:58.150 the one. It's a beautiful, powerful, incredibly 00:24:58.150 --> 00:25:01.369 moving line. It was quoted everywhere. And Auden 00:25:01.369 --> 00:25:04.869 grew to absolutely hate it. But why? It sounds 00:25:04.869 --> 00:25:07.369 so profound. It sounds like the ultimate moral 00:25:07.369 --> 00:25:09.789 truth. Because, as he later pointed out with 00:25:09.789 --> 00:25:12.710 his relentless, obsessive logic, it's a lie. 00:25:12.890 --> 00:25:16.549 A lie, how? He said, we must die anyway. Whether 00:25:16.549 --> 00:25:19.150 we love one another or not, death is the one 00:25:19.150 --> 00:25:22.210 certainty for everyone. He felt that the line 00:25:22.210 --> 00:25:24.789 was, in his words, rhetorically effective, but 00:25:24.789 --> 00:25:27.910 dishonest. He felt he was manipulating the reader 00:25:27.910 --> 00:25:30.549 with a sweet sounding sentiment that wasn't, 00:25:30.549 --> 00:25:33.430 strictly speaking, factually true. So he was 00:25:33.430 --> 00:25:36.369 prioritizing logical truth over emotional resonance. 00:25:36.589 --> 00:25:38.890 He was prioritizing intellectual and moral integrity 00:25:38.890 --> 00:25:41.890 over popular effect. He tried to fix it at one 00:25:41.890 --> 00:25:44.190 point, changing the line to the much more logical, 00:25:44.369 --> 00:25:47.009 we must love one another and die. Which is less 00:25:47.009 --> 00:25:48.970 catchy. It's much less catchy. It's scientifically 00:25:48.970 --> 00:25:51.069 accurate, but it doesn't exactly make for an 00:25:51.069 --> 00:25:53.150 inspiring bumper sticker. So eventually he just 00:25:53.150 --> 00:25:56.309 gave up and scrapped the entire poem. He refused 00:25:56.309 --> 00:25:58.869 to allow it to be reprinted in his later collections. 00:25:59.250 --> 00:26:01.609 That is a level of artistic integrity that is 00:26:01.609 --> 00:26:03.730 almost unheard of, or maybe it's just stubbornness. 00:26:04.029 --> 00:26:07.049 But it shows how deeply he valued the truth of 00:26:07.049 --> 00:26:10.490 poetry. He refused to be a propagandist, even 00:26:10.490 --> 00:26:13.609 for a good cause like love. Precisely. He refused 00:26:13.609 --> 00:26:16.529 to manipulate the reader with pretty lies. For 00:26:16.529 --> 00:26:19.029 him, poetry had a moral obligation to be truthful. 00:26:19.250 --> 00:26:21.470 And if he felt he had written something just 00:26:21.470 --> 00:26:23.450 to get an emotional response or to get applause, 00:26:23.769 --> 00:26:26.390 he felt it was dirty. So he's scrubbing his past. 00:26:26.509 --> 00:26:28.430 He's living in New York. And then he discovers 00:26:28.430 --> 00:26:30.690 a new landscape that changes his work again. 00:26:30.769 --> 00:26:33.910 Italy. Yes. In 1948, he begins spending his summers 00:26:33.910 --> 00:26:36.809 on the Italian island of Ischia. And this brings 00:26:36.809 --> 00:26:39.750 a new warmth, a new sensuousness to his poetry. 00:26:39.970 --> 00:26:42.569 The Mediterranean light and landscape seep into 00:26:42.569 --> 00:26:44.750 his work. And he starts writing about new themes. 00:26:44.930 --> 00:26:47.039 He does. He starts writing about the body. not 00:26:47.039 --> 00:26:49.579 as a sexual object or as a political tool for 00:26:49.579 --> 00:26:52.599 the state, but as a sacred, ordinary thing. Eating, 00:26:52.819 --> 00:26:55.819 sleeping, breathing. The mundane miracle of having 00:26:55.819 --> 00:26:58.380 a body. And he writes, in praise of limestone, 00:26:58.579 --> 00:27:00.500 which is an absolute masterpiece connecting the 00:27:00.500 --> 00:27:02.759 physical landscape of Issyria to the human condition. 00:27:03.039 --> 00:27:05.299 What's the connection there? Why limestone specifically? 00:27:05.920 --> 00:27:08.460 Well, think about what limestone is. It's a soft 00:27:08.460 --> 00:27:11.839 rock. It's porous. It's easily eroded by water. 00:27:12.059 --> 00:27:15.910 It creates caves and underground springs. Auden 00:27:15.910 --> 00:27:18.049 saw it as a metaphor for a certain kind of human 00:27:18.049 --> 00:27:21.369 nature. We are changeable. We are influenced 00:27:21.369 --> 00:27:24.529 by our environment. We're not rigid and unyielding 00:27:24.529 --> 00:27:27.230 like granite. We're messy. We're messy and soluble. 00:27:27.269 --> 00:27:30.769 And he argues that this weakness, this permeability, 00:27:30.809 --> 00:27:32.930 is actually what makes us capable of forgiveness, 00:27:33.130 --> 00:27:35.670 of love, of art, and ultimately of redemption. 00:27:35.930 --> 00:27:38.309 That's beautiful. And eventually he swaps his 00:27:38.309 --> 00:27:40.670 summer home in Italy for a permanent one in Austria. 00:27:40.890 --> 00:27:43.740 Right. In 1958, he and Chester Coleman buy a 00:27:43.740 --> 00:27:45.859 small farmhouse in a village called Kirchstetten, 00:27:46.039 --> 00:27:48.240 Austria. And there's this very touching detail 00:27:48.240 --> 00:27:51.079 in his biography. When he signed the final papers, 00:27:51.220 --> 00:27:53.460 he shed tears of joy. It was the first time in 00:27:53.460 --> 00:27:55.759 his life at the age of 51 that he had ever owned 00:27:55.759 --> 00:27:58.380 his own home. The great wanderer finally settles 00:27:58.380 --> 00:28:00.920 down. He does. And this is where he becomes the 00:28:00.920 --> 00:28:03.920 curmudgeon in Austria. This is the period of 00:28:03.920 --> 00:28:06.559 his famously rigid routine. He lived his life 00:28:06.559 --> 00:28:09.079 entirely by the clock. The contrast with his 00:28:09.079 --> 00:28:12.400 messy house? Total contrast. He once said that 00:28:12.400 --> 00:28:15.779 cocktails were at 6 .15 and dinner was at 7 .30. 00:28:16.140 --> 00:28:18.660 And if you showed up at 6 .17, he would scold 00:28:18.660 --> 00:28:21.720 you. Punctuality was a moral virtue for him. 00:28:21.859 --> 00:28:24.920 But his actual living space was chaos. Absolute 00:28:24.920 --> 00:28:28.220 chaos. Physical disorder everywhere. Books piled 00:28:28.220 --> 00:28:30.799 to the ceiling, dirty dishes, cigarette ash coating 00:28:30.799 --> 00:28:34.400 every surface. But the time was ordered. It's 00:28:34.400 --> 00:28:36.440 that contradiction again. He needed the external 00:28:36.440 --> 00:28:38.940 structure of a rigid tim table to manage the 00:28:38.940 --> 00:28:42.000 internal chaos of his mind. He once said, routine 00:28:42.000 --> 00:28:44.680 in an intelligent man is a sign of ambition. 00:28:45.059 --> 00:28:47.140 He meant that you need that framework to get 00:28:47.140 --> 00:28:49.259 the real work done. And during the same period, 00:28:49.299 --> 00:28:51.140 he's also the professor of poetry at Oxford, 00:28:51.299 --> 00:28:53.119 right? So he's commuting back and forth. Sort 00:28:53.119 --> 00:28:56.400 of. From 1956 to 1961, he held that prestigious 00:28:56.400 --> 00:28:58.779 post, but it only required him to be in residence 00:28:58.779 --> 00:29:00.920 and give three lectures a year. So he'd pop over 00:29:00.920 --> 00:29:03.140 to Oxford, give these incredibly popular, brilliant 00:29:03.140 --> 00:29:05.670 lectures. which eventually became his great book 00:29:05.670 --> 00:29:08.250 of prose, The Dyer's Hand, and then retreat back 00:29:08.250 --> 00:29:10.410 to his ordered life in Austria. What was he like 00:29:10.410 --> 00:29:13.390 as a professor? The students adored him. He was 00:29:13.390 --> 00:29:16.589 this disheveled, eccentric, chain -smoking, brilliant 00:29:16.589 --> 00:29:20.009 figure. He would sit in a cafe wearing old slippers 00:29:20.009 --> 00:29:22.410 and hold court, just like he did as a young man, 00:29:22.609 --> 00:29:24.730 but now with the authority and wisdom of age. 00:29:25.190 --> 00:29:27.470 There's a line from a poem he wrote in this later 00:29:27.470 --> 00:29:29.950 period that I think just perfectly sums up his 00:29:29.950 --> 00:29:33.630 emotional life. If equal affection cannot be 00:29:33.630 --> 00:29:37.549 in point, let the more loving one be me. That's 00:29:37.549 --> 00:29:39.470 from The More Loving One. It's just a heartbreaking 00:29:39.470 --> 00:29:42.690 and beautiful sentiment. And it really does encapsulate 00:29:42.690 --> 00:29:45.369 his relationship with Coleman and his whole mature 00:29:45.369 --> 00:29:47.670 philosophy on love. It's an acceptance of imbalance. 00:29:48.029 --> 00:29:51.150 It is. He accepted that love is rarely, if ever, 00:29:51.210 --> 00:29:53.730 perfectly balanced. And instead of growing bitter 00:29:53.730 --> 00:29:56.170 or resentful about it, he chose to embrace the 00:29:56.170 --> 00:29:58.289 role of the one who loves more. It's an act of 00:29:58.289 --> 00:30:00.480 choice. An act of grace. It's a commitment to 00:30:00.480 --> 00:30:02.460 love without demanding a perfect return on your 00:30:02.460 --> 00:30:05.140 investment. That is a very long way from the 00:30:05.140 --> 00:30:07.380 young political revolutionary of the 30s who 00:30:07.380 --> 00:30:10.079 wanted to remake the world. It is. It's the full 00:30:10.079 --> 00:30:12.700 arc of a life. The journey from trying to change 00:30:12.700 --> 00:30:14.940 the world to learning how to live in it with 00:30:14.940 --> 00:30:17.920 integrity and love. So we come to the end. September 00:30:17.920 --> 00:30:21.859 1973. He's in Vienna. He's just given a reading 00:30:21.859 --> 00:30:25.279 of his poetry at the Palais Palfi for the Austrian 00:30:25.279 --> 00:30:28.059 Society for Literature. He goes back to his hotel 00:30:28.059 --> 00:30:31.799 with a friend. And that night, he dies in his 00:30:31.799 --> 00:30:34.819 sleep of heart failure. He was 66. That feels 00:30:34.819 --> 00:30:37.339 quite young by modern standards. It was. But 00:30:37.339 --> 00:30:40.059 he had lived a very hard life, decades of heavy 00:30:40.059 --> 00:30:42.799 smoking, heavy drinking, the constant intellectual 00:30:42.799 --> 00:30:45.960 and emotional stress of his work. His face was 00:30:45.960 --> 00:30:48.940 famously incredibly lined. He once compared his 00:30:48.940 --> 00:30:51.539 own face to a wedding cake left out in the rain. 00:30:51.660 --> 00:30:54.240 A great line. A great Auden line. He was buried 00:30:54.240 --> 00:30:56.680 in the village churchyard in Kirsten, which shows 00:30:56.680 --> 00:31:00.220 how much that home meant to him. But, and here 00:31:00.220 --> 00:31:02.339 is that dual identity coming right back at the 00:31:02.339 --> 00:31:05.339 end, a year later, a memorial stone for him was 00:31:05.339 --> 00:31:07.640 placed in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. 00:31:07.740 --> 00:31:09.740 So England claimed him back in the end. They 00:31:09.740 --> 00:31:11.720 did. He belongs to both places. He's both the 00:31:11.720 --> 00:31:14.279 English poet and the American master. So let's 00:31:14.279 --> 00:31:15.920 talk about his legacy, because it really has 00:31:15.920 --> 00:31:17.299 been a roller coaster. You mentioned earlier 00:31:17.299 --> 00:31:19.240 that some critics thought he was a complete washout. 00:31:19.480 --> 00:31:22.200 Oh, the critical battles were fierce. The Scottish 00:31:22.200 --> 00:31:25.220 poet Hugh McDiarmid called him a complete washout. 00:31:25.480 --> 00:31:28.599 The English poet Philip Larkin wrote a famous, 00:31:28.779 --> 00:31:31.660 rather nasty essay called What's Become of Wisdom, 00:31:31.859 --> 00:31:34.400 which basically argued that Auden lost all his 00:31:34.400 --> 00:31:36.400 talent the moment he stepped on the boat to America. 00:31:36.680 --> 00:31:39.440 So there was a real split. A huge split. The 00:31:39.440 --> 00:31:41.859 British critics, by and large, tended to prefer 00:31:41.859 --> 00:31:45.140 the early political English Auden. They felt 00:31:45.140 --> 00:31:48.299 betrayed by the later religious American Auden. 00:31:48.779 --> 00:31:50.960 They thought he became too comfortable, too domestic, 00:31:51.099 --> 00:31:52.940 too philosophical. But what about the Americans? 00:31:53.200 --> 00:31:55.480 The next generation of American poets, people 00:31:55.480 --> 00:31:58.339 like John Ashbery and James Merrill, saw him 00:31:58.339 --> 00:32:00.779 as the modern master. His technical skill, his 00:32:00.779 --> 00:32:03.440 formal range, it was just staggering. In fact, 00:32:03.519 --> 00:32:06.039 you could argue that the beat generation, Ginsberg, 00:32:06.180 --> 00:32:09.339 Kerouac, that whole movement, their wild, ecstatic, 00:32:09.420 --> 00:32:12.640 free -verse style, was partly a direct reaction 00:32:12.640 --> 00:32:15.480 against Auden's pervasive formal influence. You 00:32:15.480 --> 00:32:17.359 can't rebel against something unless it's the 00:32:17.359 --> 00:32:20.779 dominant. Exactly. For a time, Auden represented 00:32:20.779 --> 00:32:23.240 the high bar of craftsmanship that everyone else 00:32:23.240 --> 00:32:26.019 had to either measure themselves against or consciously 00:32:26.019 --> 00:32:29.579 reject. And then, years after his death, comes 00:32:29.579 --> 00:32:32.460 the great pop culture resurrection. Four weddings 00:32:32.460 --> 00:32:36.539 and a funeral. 1994. The character Matthew, played 00:32:36.539 --> 00:32:39.319 by John Hanna, reads Funeral Blues, Stop All 00:32:39.319 --> 00:32:42.440 the Clocks. The movie becomes this massive, unexpected 00:32:42.440 --> 00:32:45.859 global hit, and suddenly everyone wants to read 00:32:45.859 --> 00:32:49.099 Auden. A small pamphlet of 10 of his love poems 00:32:49.099 --> 00:32:53.359 sold 275 ,000 copies in the UK alone. That is 00:32:53.359 --> 00:32:55.539 an absolutely staggering number for a book of 00:32:55.539 --> 00:32:57.619 poetry. It's unheard of. It brought him to a 00:32:57.619 --> 00:32:59.599 whole new generation who knew nothing about the 00:32:59.599 --> 00:33:02.519 Spanish Civil War or 1930s politics. They just 00:33:02.519 --> 00:33:04.799 connected with the raw, universal emotion of 00:33:04.799 --> 00:33:07.160 grief. And isn't it ironic that the poem was 00:33:07.160 --> 00:33:09.799 originally written as a piece of satire? It's 00:33:09.799 --> 00:33:12.619 the ultimate irony. The first version was a satiric 00:33:12.619 --> 00:33:14.980 eulogy for a political leader in a play he co 00:33:14.980 --> 00:33:17.779 -wrote called The Ascent of F6. He later rewrote 00:33:17.779 --> 00:33:19.940 it as a cabaret song to be sung by a soprano. 00:33:20.059 --> 00:33:21.960 And then decades later, it becomes the world's 00:33:21.960 --> 00:33:24.079 most sincere and heartbreaking anthem of grief. 00:33:24.279 --> 00:33:26.839 It just shows how art can completely transcend 00:33:26.839 --> 00:33:29.059 an artist's original intention. Once it's out 00:33:29.059 --> 00:33:30.880 in the world, the audience decides what it truly 00:33:30.880 --> 00:33:34.859 means. And then, unbelievably, it happens again. 00:33:35.339 --> 00:33:38.079 Another one of his poems has a huge resurgence 00:33:38.079 --> 00:33:41.630 after a tragedy. September 11th, 2001. And this 00:33:41.630 --> 00:33:44.210 is the eeriest part of his legacy. After the 00:33:44.210 --> 00:33:46.089 attacks on the World Trade Center, that very 00:33:46.089 --> 00:33:48.970 poem he tried to delete September 1st, 1939, 00:33:49.390 --> 00:33:52.049 went viral. Before going viral was even really 00:33:52.049 --> 00:33:54.130 a thing. Right. People started faxing it to each 00:33:54.130 --> 00:33:56.150 other, emailing it, reading it on the radio. 00:33:56.289 --> 00:33:59.849 Lines like, the unmentionable odor of death offends 00:33:59.849 --> 00:34:02.609 the September night, just resonated with a terrifying 00:34:02.609 --> 00:34:05.940 power. It spoke to that specific awful moment 00:34:05.940 --> 00:34:08.579 in a way nothing else could. It captured the 00:34:08.579 --> 00:34:10.900 fear, the confusion, and the sudden desperate 00:34:10.900 --> 00:34:13.480 need for human connection. So the poem he tried 00:34:13.480 --> 00:34:15.900 to kill because he thought it was dishonest ended 00:34:15.900 --> 00:34:17.760 up being the thing that felt most true to people 00:34:17.760 --> 00:34:20.219 in a moment of absolute crisis. Exactly. It's 00:34:20.219 --> 00:34:22.500 the ultimate proof that once a poem is out in 00:34:22.500 --> 00:34:24.119 the world, it doesn't belong to the poet anymore. 00:34:24.280 --> 00:34:26.420 It belongs to us. We needed that poem in that 00:34:26.420 --> 00:34:28.300 moment, even if Auden himself had rejected it. 00:34:28.639 --> 00:34:30.820 So if we step back and try to synthesize this 00:34:30.820 --> 00:34:33.800 whole complicated arc, the clever schoolboy, 00:34:33.960 --> 00:34:36.380 the political firebrand, the spiritual exile, 00:34:36.679 --> 00:34:39.880 the master craftsman, what's the core struggle 00:34:39.880 --> 00:34:43.429 at the heart of Auden's life and work? I think 00:34:43.429 --> 00:34:45.190 Brodsky was right about him having the greatest 00:34:45.190 --> 00:34:47.949 mind of the century, but it was a mind in constant 00:34:47.949 --> 00:34:50.349 conflict with itself. The struggle was always 00:34:50.349 --> 00:34:52.809 between the public role of the poet and the private 00:34:52.809 --> 00:34:55.789 duty of the individual. He came to deeply distress 00:34:55.789 --> 00:34:58.210 the idea of the great poet who could save the 00:34:58.210 --> 00:35:00.550 world with words. He learned that poetry makes 00:35:00.550 --> 00:35:03.369 nothing happen. As he famously wrote, he learned 00:35:03.369 --> 00:35:05.510 that politics are messy and that art ultimately 00:35:05.510 --> 00:35:08.869 can't stop a tank. So he turned his focus inward. 00:35:09.420 --> 00:35:12.019 He turned to the private moral duty of the individual. 00:35:12.440 --> 00:35:15.119 The duty to be truthful, to love your neighbor, 00:35:15.239 --> 00:35:17.699 to create order in your own small corner of the 00:35:17.699 --> 00:35:20.659 world, especially when the larger world is descending 00:35:20.659 --> 00:35:23.440 into chaos. We must love one another and die. 00:35:23.699 --> 00:35:26.719 Yes. Acknowledging the bleak reality of our mortality, 00:35:26.960 --> 00:35:29.079 but choosing the difficult path of love anyway. 00:35:29.320 --> 00:35:31.719 For him, that was the only true, honest form 00:35:31.719 --> 00:35:33.900 of courage. That brings us to a final thought 00:35:33.900 --> 00:35:36.420 for you, our listener. We've talked a lot about 00:35:36.420 --> 00:35:39.079 Auden deleting his most famous work because he 00:35:39.079 --> 00:35:42.480 felt it was rhetorically effective, but ultimately 00:35:42.480 --> 00:35:45.900 dishonest. He chose integrity over popularity. 00:35:46.300 --> 00:35:49.599 Very high bar to set for oneself. It is. So think 00:35:49.599 --> 00:35:52.320 about this in our current age, the age of influencers, 00:35:52.619 --> 00:35:55.940 of viral tweets, of content creators whose careers 00:35:55.940 --> 00:35:58.800 depend on engagement. Imagine this scenario. 00:35:59.650 --> 00:36:02.150 Would any modern creator delete their most popular, 00:36:02.230 --> 00:36:04.849 most shared, most viral post simply because they 00:36:04.849 --> 00:36:07.409 had a crisis of conscience and realized it wasn't 00:36:07.409 --> 00:36:09.969 strictly philosophically true? Would they sacrifice 00:36:09.969 --> 00:36:12.909 the likes, the shares, the ad revenue for the 00:36:12.909 --> 00:36:15.389 sake of intellectual honesty? It's a tough question. 00:36:15.590 --> 00:36:17.829 Auden did. It's something to think about. If 00:36:17.829 --> 00:36:19.809 you want to dive deeper into his world, go and 00:36:19.809 --> 00:36:21.929 read The Shield of Achilles or pick up his book 00:36:21.929 --> 00:36:24.250 of essays, The Dyer's Hand. You won't regret 00:36:24.250 --> 00:36:27.010 it. Absolutely. Time well spent. Thanks for joining 00:36:27.010 --> 00:36:28.809 us on this deep dive. We'll see you next time.