W.H. AUDEN

By: Michelle Paredes and Aaron Padilla

• Both of his parents had a major impact on his poetry.

• At the age of 15 he realized that he wanted to become a poet and studied English at England's Oxford University.
• Member of the "Oxford Group" or "Auden Generation".
• Influenced by Old English Verse.
• Influenced by many other writers including: Thomas Hardy, Robert Frost, William Blake and Emily Dickinson.
• After moving to the U.S. in 1939, Auden met poet Chester Kallman in New York.
• Kallman became his lover and a major source of inspiration for the rest of his works.

• Poems (London, 1930: dedicated to Christopher Isherwood).
• The Orators: An English Study (London, 1932: dedicated to Stephen Spender).
• The Dance of Death (London, 1933, play: dedicated to Robert Medley and Rupert Doone).
• Poems (New York, 1934; contains Poems [1933 edition], The Orators [1932 edition], and The Dance of Death).
• The Dog Beneath the Skin (London, New York, 1935; play, with Christopher Isherwood: dedicated to Robert Moody).
• The Ascent of F6 (London, 1936; 2nd edn., 1937; New York, 1937; play, with Christopher Isherwood: dedicated to John Bicknell Auden).
• Look, Stranger! (London, 1936, poems; US edn., On This Island, New York, 1937: dedicated to Erika Mann).
• Letters from Iceland (London, New York, 1937; verse and prose, with Louis MacNeice: dedicated to George Augustus Auden).

• On the Frontier (London, 1938; New York 1939; play, with Christopher Isherwood: dedicated to Benjamin Britten).
• Journey to a War (London, New York, 1939; verse and prose, with Christopher Isherwood: dedicated to E. M. Forster).
• Another Time (London, New York 1940; poetry: dedicated to Chester Kallman).
• The Double Man (New York, 1941, poems; UK edn., New Year Letter, London, 1941: dedicated to Elizabeth Mayer).
• For the Time Being (New York, 1944; London, 1945; two long poems: "The Sea and the Mirror: A Commentary on Shakespeare's The Tempest", dedicated to James and Tania Stern, and "For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio", in memorial to Constance Rosalie Auden [Auden's mother]).
• The Collected Poetry of W. H. Auden (New York, 1945; includes new poems: dedicated to Christopher Isherwood and Chester Kallman).
• The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (New York, 1947; London, 1948; verse; won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: dedicated to John Betjeman).

• Collected Shorter Poems, 1930–1944 (London, 1950; similar to 1945 Collected Poetry: dedicated to Christopher Isherwood and Chester Kallman).
• The Enchafèd Flood (New York, 1950; London, 1951; prose: dedicated to Alan Ansen).
• Nones (New York, 1951; London, 1952; poems: dedicated to Reinhold and Ursula Niebuhr).
• The Shield of Achilles (New York, London, 1955; poems, won the 1956 National Book Award for Poetry: dedicated to Lincoln and Fidelma Kirstein).
• Homage to Clio (New York, London, 1960; poems: dedicated to E. R. and A. E. Dodds).
• The Dyer's Hand (New York, 1962; London, 1963; essays: dedicated to Nevill Coghill).
• About the House (New York, London, 1965; poems: dedicated to Edmund and Elena Wilson).
• Collected Shorter Poems 1927–1957 (London, 1966; New York, 1967: dedicated to Christopher Isherwood and Chester Kallman).
• Collected Longer Poems (London, 1968; New York, 1969).

• Secondary Worlds (London, New York, 1969; prose: dedicated to Valerie Eliot).
• City Without Walls and Other Poems (London, New York, 1969: dedicated to Peter Heyworth).
• A Certain World: A Commonplace Book (New York, London, 1970; quotations with commentary: dedicated to Geoffrey Gorer).
• Epistle to a Godson and Other Poems (London, New York, 1972: dedicated to Orlan Fox).
• Forewords and Afterwords (New York, London, 1973; essays: dedicated to Hannah Arendt).
• Thank You, Fog: Last Poems (London, New York, 1974: dedicated to Michael and Marny Yates).

• Coal Face (1935, closing chorus for GPO Film Unit documentary)
• Night Mail (1936, narrative for GPO Film Unit documentary).
• Paul Bunyan (1941, libretto for operetta by Benjamin Britten; not published until 1976).
• The Rake's Progress (1951, with Chester Kallman, libretto for an opera by Igor Stravinsky).
• Elegy for Young Lovers (1956, with Chester Kallman, libretto for an opera by Hans Werner Henze).
• The Bassarids (1961, with Chester Kallman, libretto for an opera by Hans Werner Henze based on The Bacchae of Euripides).
• Runner (1962, documentary film narrative for National Film Board of Canada)
• Love's Labour's Lost (1973, with Chester Kallman, libretto for an opera by Nicolas Nabokov, based on Shakespeare's play).

• Love cannot conquer time.
• This poem tells the story of a man who goes out for a walk when he hears two lovers expressing their love for each other. He also hears them say that their love has no ending and that they will love each other till the end of their days.
• However, this man has another point of view.
• Auden wrote this poem when going through times in which people rejected his idea of love. For this reason...

• 15 rigidly structured quatrains.
• Use of masculine end rhyme, following a pattern of ABCB (except in fifth stanza).
• Repetition of certain phrases for extra emphasis and stress.
• Divided in two distinctive parts.

The first one consists of the first five quatrains and mainly focuses on the lovers' dialogue.

The second part of the poem starts in the sixth stanza, when time itself is personified and gives its reply to the lovers (intervention of time).

• Literary ballad.
• Contains elements of the dramatic dialogue.
• Clear influence of the sonnets dualistic division of content and concluding couplet.

As I walked out one evening, A

Walking down Bristol Street, B

The crowds upon the pavement C

Were fields of harvest wheat. B

And down by the brimming river D

I heard a lover sing A

Under an arch of the railway: E

'Love has no ending. A

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you F

Till China and Africa meet, B

And the river jumps over the mountain G

And the salmon sing in the street, B

'I'll love you till the ocean H

Is folded and hung up to dry I

And the seven stars go squawking A

Like geese about the sky. I

'The years shall run like rabbits,

For in my arms I hold

The Flower of the Ages,

And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city

Began to whirr and chime:

'O let not Time deceive you,

You cannot conquer Time.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare

Where Justice naked is,

Time watches from the shadow

And coughs when you would kiss.

'In headaches and in worry

Vaguely life leaks away,

And Time will have his fancy

To-morrow or to-day.

'Into many a green valley

Drifts the appalling snow;

Time breaks the threaded dances

And the diver's brilliant bow.

'O plunge your hands in water,

Plunge them in up to the wrist;

Stare, stare in the basin

And wonder what you've missed.

'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,

The desert sighs in the bed,

And the crack in the tea-cup opens

A lane to the land of the dead.

'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes

And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,

And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,

And Jill goes down on her back.

'O look, look in the mirror?

O look in your distress:

Life remains a blessing

Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window

As the tears scald and start;

You shall love your crooked neighbor

With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,

The lovers they were gone;

The clocks had ceased their chiming,

And the deep river ran on.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone ("Funeral Blues")

O the valley in the summer where I and my John

For the time Being

If I could tell you

In Memory of Sigmund Freud

The Fall of Rome

The Shield of Achilles

The More Loving One

On the Circuit

Lullaby

As I Walked Out One Evening

Epitaph on a Tyrant

In Memory of W. B. Yeats

The Unknown Citizen

September 1, 1939

Writing and Publication Record

Books Published (Continued)

Literary Movements and Culture

Modernism

1928-1933

Books Published (Continued)

• Revolt against the conservative values (realism).
• People wanted to break away from the traditional styles of art.
• Period of experimentation and creation of new things.
• "Make it new."

Books Published (Continued)

Seeking Freedom...

Honors, Awards, and Literary Recognition

• Homosexuals and African Americans were alienated and persecuted.
• Women began to fight for their equal rights in society and were sent to war.

Books Published

Surrealism

Early 1920s

Impact Over His Life

• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry 1948 for The Age of Anxiety.
• Bollingen Prize in Poetry 1954.
• National Medal for Literature in 1967 by the National Book Committee.
• National Book Award for Poetry 1956 for The Shield of Achilles.

Musical Collaborations

• Expressed the imagination of the subconscious.
• Movement in which the artist combined unrelated images or events in a strange and dreamlike way.

• Auden disliked the Romantic movement and helped to develop Modernism by his high level of intelligence, development of his philosophical thought, and fresh ideas.
• Modernists preferred free verse and concrete, or literal imagery.
• Some notable qualities of his poems include: political, social, and psychological elements, as well as analyzing the human condition.

• Our Hunting Fathers (1936, song cycle written for Benjamin Britten).
• An Evening of Elizabethan Verse and its Music (1954 recording with the New York Pro Musica Antiqua, director Noah Greenberg; Auden spoke the verse texts).
• The Play of Daniel (1958, verse narration for a production by the New York Pro Musica Antiqua, director Noah Greenberg).

Conflicts and Social Unrest

Film Scripts and Opera Libretti

• World War I & II
• Boxer Rebellion
• Holocaust
• Cold War
• Both Spain and Vietnam went through civil wars.

As I Walked Out One Evening

Simile: Refers to time; "the years are running," symbolizing that they are running out of time.

Broken Rhyming Pattern: Second part is introduced (IT'S ALL ABOUT TIME'S RESPONSE TO THEM).

Contradiction use of rural imagery in an urban setting

Onomatopoeia: Indicates (warns) the two lovers about time's arrival.

The river is used as a metaphor for time because of the way it flows and never stops: it goes on endlessly.

Seems to be a conclusive sentence, and yet it is the initiating sentence for the lovers' song.

Image of infinite love

Repetition: Emphasizes the deep nature of love

Auden Metaphorically portrays time in terms that are almost disturbing.

The "[chiming]" of the "clocks" can be compared to church bells announcing that someone has died.

Personification and exaggeration of the idea: "Love makes the impossible, possible."

Alliteration by showing great signs of happiness

Simile: Comparison between the stars and geese, making reference to passionate love.

Seasonal References

• Green: Spring, Summer: Youth
• Snow: Winter: Time in which we all grow old.

Background

Symbolical Image of suicide?

The term "in water" is often associated with drowning.

Drowning is a term associated with dying.

• Also known as ´Clocks and Lovers´
• Written in 1940.
• Other poems written by Auden at this time: Another Time, Some Poems, The Letter, The Double Man.

Theme, Motivation, and Meaning

Poetic Structure

We believe that the man from the story represents Auden himself.

Through this poem we've also realized that the author doesn't believe that love can conquer it all and that time will.

Eventually, time will bring death and the love we once thought that was going to last forever will disappear...

Time and death can infiltrate even in the places that you consider safe (home).

As I Walked Out One Evening

Contradiction:

"To live" is indeed a blessing but life is not equally fair to every person.

Figurative Language

• Personification
• Imagery
• Hyperbole
• Alteration in the order of words
• Allusion
• Use of symbols

Sound Pattern

• Rhyme
• Alliteration
• Repetition

You'll always love those who have left you

Conclusion

Momento Mori:

"You cannot conquer time."

Imagery (Visual and Auditory)

• "Hear a lover sing"
• "See the geese about the sky"
• "Hear the clocks in the city begin to whirr and chime"
• "... running like rabbits"
• "Feel and see the crack in the tea-cup"

Narrative Technique

• Stereotypical opening
• Second Stanza: Positive tone at start
• Third Stanza: Instant rhythm undermines romanticism, surreal imagery
• Sixth Stanza: Change in tone
• Seventh Stanza: Negative imagery, change of tone; overtone
• Eleventh Stanza: Surreal personification: Death will always be there.
• Stanza 15: Main narrative voice: Life goes on but love does not last

Biography and Background

WORKS CITED...

• http://prezi.com/g7yqfyzso2z2/wh-auden/
• http://prezi.com/bxjvvzkuqma3/wh-auden/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._H._Auden
• http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/as-i-walked-out-one-evening-3/
• http://whaudenkc.edublogs.org/2012/02/15/literary-movement/
• https://sites.google.com/site/litb1revisionaudenandmccarthy/auden-1/as-i-walked-out-one-evening
• http://www.lavanet.no/wordpress/?p=5

Wystan Hugh Auden was a poet, author and playwright born in York, England, on February 21, 1907. Auden is considered to be one of the leading literary figures of the 20th century. Known for his chameleon-like ability to write poems in almost every verse form, Auden's travels in countries torn by political strife influenced his early works.

Early Childhood

Influences

General Background

• While Auden's father knew everything about myths and folklore, his mother was a devoted Anglican and nurse. This combination of religion and science is often exhibited in his writing.
• Mythology is prominent throughout his work.
• Most of his poems were derived from his love of philosophy and science.

• Anglo-American Poet.
• Born in February 21, 1907 in York, England.
• Won the Pulitzer prize in 1948.
• Died in 1973 in Vienna, Austria.

• Grew up in an Anglo-Catholic household in Birmingham.
• His pastime and experience as a choirboy provided him with a sensitivity to language.
• Attended to a boarding school at the age of 8.

W.H. AUDEN

Based on Jim Harvey's speech structures