Paper 107: The Twentieth Century Literature: From World War 2 to the end of the Century

Paper No: 107 (W.H.Auden)

This blog is part of assignment of Paper 107:The Twentieth Century Literature: From World War 2 to the end of the Century

 Topic:W.H.Auden 

Table of Contents: 

Personal Information

Assignment Details

Abstract 

Keywords

The Poetry of the Thirties 

Political Camps

About W.H.Auden 

Personal Information: -

Name: - Manasi Joshi

Batch: - M.A. Sem 2 (2024-2026)

E-mail Address: -mansijoshi202@gmail.com

Roll Number: - 15

Assignment Details: -

Topic: T.S. Eliot and his major Works

Paper & subject code: - The Twentieth Century Literature: From World War 2 to the end of the Century.

Submitted to: - Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, MKBU, Bhavnagar

Date of Submission: - April 17,2025

Abstract:

Wystan Hugh Auden (1907–1973) was a major Anglo-American poet known for his technical virtuosity, intellectual depth, and moral engagement. His poetry reflects a wide range of themes including politics, love, religion, identity, and the human condition. Auden's early works, written in the 1930s, were influenced by Marxism and psychoanalysis, while his later poetry became more philosophical and spiritual, especially after his emigration to the United States. He experimented with various poetic forms, and his style combined modernist innovation with classical structure. Auden also wrote plays, essays, and criticism, contributing significantly to 20th-century literature. His poem "September 1, 1939" remains iconic for its timely reflection on war and human responsibility. Throughout his career, Auden balanced the public role of a poet with a private search for meaning, leaving behind a rich and influential body of work.

Keywords:

W.H. Auden, Modernist poetry, Anglo-American literature, Political poetry, Love and loss, Religion and faith, September 1, 1939, Technical innovation, Moral responsibility,20th-century poetry

Introduction:

Wystan Hugh Auden, commonly known as W. H. Auden, was one of the most important poets of the 20th century. Born in 1907 in York, England, and later becoming an American citizen, Auden's work is known for its intelligence, technical skill, and deep exploration of human nature, love, politics, and society. He was not only a poet but also a playwright, critic, and essayist. Auden's poetry is marked by its wide range of themes and forms, often blending the personal with the political, the emotional with the philosophical.

Auden’s early poetry focused on the social and political issues of the 1930s, reflecting his concern with war, industrialization, and human suffering. His later works, however, became more spiritual and philosophical, reflecting on love, faith, and the search for meaning in a complex world. Some of his most famous poems include "Funeral Blues", "Musee des Beaux Arts", and "September 1, 1939". Through his powerful language, emotional depth, and sharp observation of the world, W. H. Auden remains a timeless voice in English literature.

The Poetry of the Thirties:

The poetry of the 1930s in Britain was significantly shaped by a group of writers often referred to collectively as “the Auden generation,” after the influential poet W. H. Auden (1907–1973). Alongside Auden, his contemporaries—Stephen Spender (1909–1995), Louis MacNeice (1907–1963), and Cecil Day-Lewis (1904–1972)—were associated with leftist political ideologies, at least temporarily during their early careers. These poets, many of whom had been educated at Oxford, experienced a rapid rise to literary prominence. Their collective involvement in progressive politics and modernist aesthetics led the South African poet Roy Campbell to satirize them under the composite name “MacSpaunday,” a portmanteau derived from the syllables of their surnames.

Unlike the generation that endured World War I, these poets came of age in a period between the two world wars. As such, they had neither experienced the trauma of the battlefield nor the risk of losing stable employment during a time of political agitation. Instead, their literary voice was shaped by a sense of dislocation, a recognition of socio-economic inequality, and a moral discomfort with their own social privilege. This led to an attraction toward the ideals of socialism and, for some, even revolutionary change, as they sought to reconcile their privileged backgrounds with their desire for social justice.

Political Camps:

A brief political overview is necessary here, as ideological positions on Nazism and Communism continue to shape interpretations of the literature produced during this period. At the time, progressive intellectual opinion tended to support the Soviet experiment, often overlooking the atrocities committed under Stalin's regime. By contrast, the brutality of Nazi Germany, particularly its persecution of Communists, was more widely acknowledged, especially among writers such as W. H. Auden and his contemporaries Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986) and Stephen Spender. Both Isherwood and Spender had spent time in Berlin during the Weimar Republic, whose chaotic and decadent atmosphere is vividly depicted in Isherwood’s novel Mr Norris Changes Trains—a text dedicated to Auden. This novel remains notably accomplished in its portrayal of a specific cultural moment, rendering Berlin as a city rife with moral decay, duplicity, and various forms of sexual transgression. Like much fiction of the 1930s, including that of Graham Greene, it borrows from the cinematic style of film noir and blends irony with emotional detachment and melancholy. The novel’s protagonist, Mr Norris, is depicted as a fraudster, blackmailer, and spy, while moral admiration is directed toward a Communist activist who is ultimately executed by the Nazis.

Many members of Auden’s literary circle travelled to Spain in support of the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War. However, Auden was unsettled by the Republicans’ decision to close churches, prompting him to question his intuitive sense of moral disapproval. This internal dilemma, along with his deep-seated conviction that Hitler embodied evil, eventually contributed to his re-engagement with Christianity.

In 1939, the year in which the Nazi-Soviet Pact was signed, Auden and Isherwood emigrated to New York—a decision that attracted criticism and mockery. Homosexuality was common among this circle of writers, and Auden wryly referred to their community as the "Homintern," a pun on the Communist International (Comintern). A reflection of the period’s ideological anxieties can be seen in Cecil Day-Lewis’s 1934 sonnet published in Left Review, which opens with the question, "Yes, why do we all, seeing a communist, feel small?" However, by 1936, disillusionment with Communism had begun to take hold. Many writers who had once embraced Marxism shifted toward a more moderate, social-democratic liberalism. Louis MacNeice later recalled the naïve idealism of the early 1930s, likening young men’s enthusiastic adoption of Marxism to Percy Bysshe Shelley’s uncritical embrace of William Godwin’s philosophy (as recorded in his memoir The Strings are False, 1965). Over time, the literary reputations of these writers solidified: Day-Lewis became Poet Laureate in 1968 and was noted for his translations of Virgil; Spender was knighted for his contributions to literature; Isherwood was recognised for his intelligence; MacNeice for his exceptional talent; and Auden was acknowledged as being greater than merely talented—he emerged as a major literary figure.

About W.H.Auden:

W. H. Auden’s poetic career is marked by its extraordinary versatility, intellectual depth, and formal innovation. Often grouped with contemporaries such as Louis MacNeice and Stephen Spender, Auden was part of a generation that sought to engage directly with the political and social crises of the 1930s. MacNeice’s Autumn Journal (1938–1939), for example, stands as a seminal example of verse journalism, capturing contemporary idioms and everyday life while subtly evoking deeper philosophical and emotional concerns. By contrast, Spender and others produced what came to be known as "Pylon poetry"—works infused with industrial imagery such as aerodromes and machinery, reflecting the futuristic aspirations of the time. MacNeice’s modern ballads, however, were particularly effective in critiquing spiritual and social emptiness through ironic and colloquial diction.

Auden distinguished himself by his immense technical command and intellectual range. He described the poem as "a verbal contraption" and emphasized the poet’s duty to "tell the truth." Like John Donne, Auden demonstrated an omnivorous appetite for knowledge, drawing upon disciplines as varied as geology, psychology, theology, and philosophy, as well as classical and medieval literature. This breadth of reference enriched his poetry, though it sometimes resulted in overly sophisticated or didactic verse in his longer works, such as his verse plays and oratorios. Echoing the facility of John Dryden, Auden used the discipline of verse to shape and clarify complex thought, although he found his greatest success in shorter lyrical forms.

Unlike many modernists—Yeats, Eliot, Pound, and Joyce—who lamented a fall from an idealized past, Auden did not idealize a lost golden age. Coming of age after World War I, he accepted the fallen condition of humanity, including his own, and often masked his existential anxieties with wit and irony. His early poetry reveals these tensions through elliptical syntax, private symbolism, and electric energy, though formally these poems often rely on traditional poetic structures. For example, "Sir, no man’s enemy" reads as a prayer, while "Look, stranger" functions as an epitaph. His satirical Letter to Lord Byron demonstrates his light verse capabilities and intellectual playfulness, contrasting Byron’s Romanticism with the modern condition.

Auden's later poetry reveals a shift towards greater clarity, emotional accessibility, and discursive syntax. After 1939—a pivotal year in his personal and artistic development—he achieved a sense of religious and emotional equilibrium, which enabled a more direct and conversational engagement with the reader. He moved away from abstraction and rhetorical density, adopting a more socially grounded and dialogic poetic style.

Critics generally divide Auden’s oeuvre into three distinct phases. The first is characterized by early lyricism and political engagement, with poems like “Lullaby,” “Out on the lawn I lie in bed,” and “Spain” demonstrating psychological and Marxist concerns. The second phase reflects his engagement with Christian existentialism and his adoption of a more meditative and moralistic tone, evident in works such as Musée des Beaux Arts and The Shield of Achilles. Finally, his later poetry, such as Thanksgiving for a Habitat, reveals a more relaxed, Horatian voice—a poet at ease with discursive reflection and philosophical irony.

Auden’s departure from England to the United States marked both a physical and intellectual transition, as he distanced himself from his earlier role as a voice for the political Left. His poem “September 1, 1939” poignantly captures the disillusionment of the era: “I sit in one of the dives / On Fifty-Second Street / Uncertain and afraid / As the clever hopes expire / Of a low dishonest decade.” This line exemplifies his deep sense of personal and collective disillusionment at the outbreak of the Second World War.

The elegy Auden wrote for Yeats, who died in January 1939, marks another significant moment in his poetic journey. The stanza:

He disappeared in the dead of winter.

The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,

And snow disfigured the public statues,

The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.

reflects Auden’s gift for embedding historical and personal grief in a mythic and timeless landscape, blending emotional depth with formal precision.

Auden’s death in Vienna in 1973 brought to a close the life of a poet whose work consistently engaged with the major philosophical, theological, and political questions of the twentieth century. His career illustrates a remarkable capacity to evolve in style, tone, and intellectual ambition while remaining grounded in the moral responsibilities of the poet.

the formation and consolidation of the modern poetic canon through anthologies, with specific reference to Michael Roberts's The Faber Book of Modern Verse (1936). Sponsored by T. S. Eliot’s publishing firm, the anthology played a pivotal role in defining "modern" poetry for subsequent decades. It begins with Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose posthumous inclusion (he died in 1889) retroactively positioned him as a precursor to modernism, alongside figures such as Yeats, Pound, and Eliot himself. Notably absent from the collection are poets of the "Georgian" tradition, including Edward Thomas and Edwin Muir, whose stylistic and thematic orientations were perhaps perceived as outmoded or insufficiently avant-garde.

The anthology reflects a curatorial ideology that aligns literary value with perceived progressiveness. The inclusion of Stephen Spender illustrates this point: his poem "I think continually of those who were truly great" echoes a Romantic idealism and lyricism that, despite its anachronistic tone, is elevated due to its political orientation. Without the ideological commitment that marked much of 1930s poetry, the passage suggests, Spender might have been relegated to the status of a "neo-Romantic" like Dylan Thomas, who emphasized emotion, rhetoric, and autobiography—traits less aligned with the modernist ethos.

The passage also underscores the strategic function of anthologies in shaping literary history. From Ezra Pound's Imagist anthologies onward, the anthology has operated as a tool for institutionalizing particular poetic modes and displacing others. These collections do not merely reflect literary taste; they actively construct it through inclusion and omission. Even literary historians, the passage suggests, cannot fully escape the influence of these "groups and movements," though they might strive to prioritize textual analysis over institutional framing. Ultimately, the passage argues for aesthetic merit—"a ten-dency to write good poems"—over allegiance to movements or ideological camps.

In contrast to these codified categories, Stevie Smith is presented as a poetic outlier. Debuting in 1936 with Novel on Yellow Paper, she resists easy classification. Her poetry, marked by tonal shifts from naive candour to existential gravitas and whimsical absurdity, gained recognition only in her later years. Smith’s distinctive voice is best exemplified in her most famous poem, "Not Waving but Drowning", which encapsulates her thematic preoccupation with spiritual and emotional alienation, rendered through deceptively simple diction and structure. The poem’s concluding couplet—“I was much further out than you thought, / And not waving but drowning”—has become emblematic of her oeuvre, reflecting the ironic fusion of despair and comic detachment that defines much of her work.

Conclusion: 

W. H. Auden emerges as a profoundly influential figure in twentieth-century literature, whose poetic vision bridges the personal and the political, the lyrical and the intellectual. His ability to blend traditional forms with modern concerns allowed him to engage with the anxieties of his time while maintaining a deeply philosophical and humanistic tone. Auden’s exploration of themes such as love, morality, identity, and the responsibilities of the individual in a collective society continues to resonate in contemporary critical discourse. Ultimately, his work invites readers to reflect not only on the condition of the world but also on their own ethical position within it, affirming his enduring relevance in literary and cultural studies.

Reference: 

Alexander, Michael. A History of English Literature. Palgrave MacMillan, 2000.