W.H. Auden: In the Autumn of the Age of Anxiety

150 Pages·1983·1.96 MB·English

by  Alan Levy

W. H. Auden
In the Autumn of the Age of Anxiety
Alan Levy
New York
A PREFACE TO THE FIRST
THREE PORTRAIT BOOKS
When my profiles-in-depth of W. H. Auden, Vladimir Nabokov, and Ezra Pound
first appeared in the New York Times Magazine in the early 1970s, I received
many letters and a few transatlantic calls from editors and publishers who all
voiced the same regret: that these articles must die the natural deaths of
yesterday’s paper or last week’s Sunday supplement.
Their solutions, no matter how winningly phrased did not grab me—for I had
heard their gists and piths before. Basically, these proposals boiled down to two.
The Vertical Approach: “Why don’t you paste them up, together with some
others you’ve done, and we’ll publish a collection?” To which my response was:
“For whom?” … The Horizontal Approach: “How about expanding this one [or
that one] into a definitive biography?” The answer came particularly easily in
Pound’s case: “It took me two weeks to get two hundred words of quotes from
him, so I don’t think I’ll live long enough to do a full-length biography.” At the
time, Pound was eighty-six and I was thirty-nine.
I also recognized that, from each of the three writers, I had drawn all or almost
all that personal contact was going to elicit. And yet I wasn’t ready to let go of
them.
The solution dawned when one editor, Howard Greenfeld, began by
reminding me: “These are all old men. For one or more of them, this may be the
last public appearance before the obituary notices.” Howard went on to stress my
obligation to students and others who were just starting to discover and read
these authors: to put my work, their output, and their lives into some solid,
useful order. I realized that, when I had been an undergraduate at Brown
University and a graduate student at Columbia, and just starting to read Pound
and Auden (Nabokov was still “too new” then), I certainly would have
welcomed an informed introduction to them as living men rather than assigned
authors.
Howard Greenfeld being an American editor living in Europe in the next
country to mine, he and I were able to continue the discussion over many months
—and out of it has come this small cottage industry of PORTRAIT BOOKS:
published for library, critical, gift-giving, student, and general use. These first
three are—and the Portrait Books to come in future years will be—works of
enthusiastic journalistic scholarship researched and written, firsthand, by one
man who knew his subjects well and intensely … who read everything by them
… and who likes and cares for what he is writing about. These books have a
uniform format—though the lengths and styles of the components can be as
different as Pound is from Auden is from Nabokov.
Part 1: THE MAN. A biographical portrait, drawn from my initial magazine
interviews. They are never padded, though sometimes they are fleshed out with
material that was omitted or lost to the magazine’s editorial, puritanical, or space
needs. Nor are the magazine profiles drastically reworked, except to fit the needs
of each book and bring it up-to-date. All of the first three heroes have died in the
interim between article and book, but each first chapter remains a meeting with
the living man in the context of his living word.
Part 2: QUOTES. A mosaic of words by and about the man you’ve just met.
This section is organized with an ear to the rhythm as well as the flavor of
whatever he has done to merit your attention.
Part 3: An essay on EXPERIENCING him, not just reading him or reading
about him. Written conversationally, this is a verbal map, with a few guidelines,
for a voyage of discovery in which you share some of What It’s Like and How It
Feels to be reading Pound or Nabokov or Auden, hearing him on records, and
perhaps attending his plays or movies. It is narrated with my own personal
insights and affection for the works. I must emphasize that this is NOT a critical
essay. At my most waspish, I may warn you off a redundant lesser work or vent
my outrage at the kind of critical study that erects barriers of boredom and trivia
between you and the artist—so I never want to feel guilty of the same crime
against literature. And this chapter should be read NOT as a substitute for
actually experiencing the artist, but as an appetizer or as a companion to the
essential experience.
Part 4: A comprehensive BIBLIOGRAPHY that does what most
bibliographies I’ve seen don’t do: it takes cognizance of paperbacks and
hardcover reissues, instead of merely listing all the relevant details of the
original 1910 or 1967 edition, now out of print, by a publisher who is now out of
business. And it contains Library of Congress catalog listings as well as Dewey
decimal shelf numbers. This will tell you where to look in your own library’s
alphabetical card file and may even enable you to go directly to the specific shelf
where you’ll find a certain book or related works. In this effort, I was blessed in
the 1970s by the heroic labors of Joseph H. Podoski of Washington, D.C., a
retired Librarian of Congress and in the 1980s with the assistance of my
daughter Monica and my wife Valerie on visits to the Library of Congress.
Part 5: A simple factual CHRONOLOGY of the man’s life and career for
compact easy reference. For this common-sense suggestion, I am grateful to
Prof. Alden Todd (author of Finding Facts Fast), who had the common sense to
suggest it.
These books are illustrated with photos by the man I consider the best portrait
photographer working in Europe today: Horst Tappe of Montreux, Switzerland.
A photographer of rare cultural and personal sensitivity as well as talent, Horst
has often been the key who opened the doors to my audiences with great men.
Ezra Pound died in 1972, W. H. Auden in 1973, and Vladimir Nabokov in
1977. All three of them long ago earned their immortality, but it is my hope that
these small books of mine will ease the path for your understanding and
enjoyment of WHY they will live on.
PORTRAIT BOOKS: The First Trilogy
1. EZRA POUND: The Voice of Silence
2. W. H. AUDEN: In the Autumn of the Age of Anxiety
3. VLADIMIR NABOKOV: The Velvet Butterfly

Dedication:
To the Memories of
C.S.K. and W.H.A.
May The Brothered-Ones, The Not-Alone
live on in the Good Place, the Just City of God.

CONTENTS
A Preface to the First Three Portrait Books
Part 1: The Man: Afternoons on Audenstrasse
Scene 1: In Kirchstetten 1971
Interlude: On the Afternoon Train
Scene 2: Toward the Death of W. H. Auden in the Autumn of 1973
Part 2: “Show an Affirming Flame”: A Portrait in Quotes
Part 3: Experiencing W. H. Auden
Part 4: Bibliography: “All I Have is a Voice”
Part 5: Chronology: 1907 to 1973