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Richard Davenport-Hines - Auden
Posted by Michael Sympson on 19/9/2001, 21:54:37
Like all of us, a writer of imaginative literature interfaces with the world through his language. What sets him apart from the reader is his specific style, the medium through which an author communicates his temperament, and all art is nature filtered and transformed by a temperament. Which makes the writer's language the defining element of his experiences and insights. Therefore the "New Criticism's" approach to "the text alone and nothing but the text" (the way I had been taught) is a tat too narrow, because it leaves out an extra dimension to explain and understand a text. In its isolation it easily leads to unsubstantiated techno-babble, or worse, substitutes for the specific pattern of a text the kind of meaningless generalizations and mythologizing cabala in the vein of Northrop Frye, which has turned academic criticism into a sort of intellectual masturbation for the initiate. Kafka is an example for this sort of thing: his
international reputation coincided with the advent of Existentialism and spiritual and religious
revivals and this has become the reader's main angle on his work ever since. A closer look on
his life could have nipped this nonsense in the bud.
True enough, it means more work, and we may hate the extra effort to specifically investigate the facts, but an author has a say in this equation, it won't do to ignore him altogether. However this opens a whole new can of worms. Every author is something like a conduit to specific concerns and experiences in his upbringing and to the culture of his learning, and to the circumstances which motivated him to become who he is. Concerns, experiences, and motives which a reader not necessarily shares. It is the good critics job to sort out which part of the writer's personal package is essential for properly understanding his product. Every author addresses a specific context, and he has his own reasons for going public. The part the author prefers to keep to himself, is of importance too, but it is here where the critic's discretion is called upon. It is alright to make explicit the artist's public persona, his act is part of the performance, but once the real person shuts the door into our faces and switches off the lights on the bedside table, an author has the right to privacy like the rest of us and should be left alone.
After such introduction, it becomes clear why I detest Mr. Davenport-Hines biography of the leading poet of the 20th century. Of course a biography is not exactly meant to be criticism, but this is not just anybody's biography, it is the life of a writer and poet. In other words if the thing is supposed to be more than merely another journalistic heist on an unsuspecting person's privacy, the highlights and analytical elements have to concern Auden's qualities as a writer and the circumstances that made him the writer he became - which brings us full circle back to criticism. It is not quite the same as a monograph on a politician or Jack the Ripper. It is worth mentioning that Auden was homosexual, because it sheds light on the ambiguities in his expositions on the topic of love, but do we really need to know that he picked his nose in public and wore no undies in his pants? Leave the man alone, for crying out loud. What has this to do with anything Auden has written?
In a free society it is part of our liberties to make an ass of ourselves if and when we feel like it, but it is not (yet) enshrined in the constitution, that the first amendment includes the right to snoop in everybody's private affairs, though libel laws seem to be a bit soft in this country. Mr. Davenport-Hines, the biographer does have important things to say which not only give us a better understanding of Auden the person, but explain Auden the poet. But when this Mr. Davenport- Jeckyll turns into Mr. Davenport-Hyde then the journalist won't give it a rest till he has sniffed out every whiff and stain on the sheets from Auden's romps with underage teens in Berlin. Is that supposed to be an explanation for Auden's literacy and erudition in German literature?
Auden certainly had a problem to accommodate his by and large Christian conscience with his sexual orientation. Apparently it didn't cause him too much trouble though. And given the legal situation which the aftermath of Oscar Wilde's trial had created in England, Auden was fortunate enough not only to avoid the attention of the law, but to have the helpful excuse to see the exercise of his nature as an act of defiance against an utterly stupid legislation. (Whether I as a parent would have felt comfortable to leave my teenage son to the care of this schoolmaster is a different issue. But for all we know it was always a matter of mutual consent.) But this makes Auden neither a hero nor a martyr and especially not a better talent.
And this talent was exceptional. In my poetry classes I could divide my students roughly in two groups: admirers of T.S. Eliot and such of Auden. In most cases, I found the imitators of Eliot coming across as rather unremarkable. Auden on the other hand always produces a following with at least a modicum of competence. Over the years I have become accustomed to read a poem more for skill than content. If someone absolutely thinks he must put in verse how to sodomize a dog, that's ok with me, but please do it with grace. Auden's poetry has power and grace and is extremely versatile in the prosodic department. One may not like his stuff, but it is always instructive. And nobody in the language has written better elegiac obituaries ever!
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