Peter Ackroyd’s biography of the raucous life of W.H. Auden, a scholar, playwright, polemicist, and consequential poet reflecting the complexities of an increasingly perilous world. He was also an uncloseted gay man for most of his life, in Britian where he could have been incarcerated.
He was first a biology student at Christ Church Oxford, where he would later be a star lecturer. By the 1930s Auden’s was living in Weimar Germany and he convinced his contemporary Christopher Isherwood to escape British sex laws and move to Berlin where the gay underground, from drag to dive trade, thrived as well as the demimonde allied arts. Isherwood chronicled the scene in his gay ‘Goodbye to Berlin.’
Auden and Isherwood were vilified for leaving England even though they had already planned to emigrate before Britian was at war with Germany in 1939. As expats in the US, Auden and Isherwood volunteered to return to serve in non-combatant duty during WWII, but the British military said that wouldn’t be advisable.
Ackroyd doesn’t dwell on Auden’s sex life, but he doesn’t avoid it either. His decades long relationship writer and artist Charles Kallman is as loving, rocky and co-dependent as it gets. Over the year they collaborated on projects and maintained an open relationship. Over the years they moved frequently around Europe and the State on retreats, to escape pressures or for specific collaborative projects.
Literature students flocked to Auden’s classes and his public lectures throughout his career he garnered seasonal gigs at universities in England and especially the States.
His teaching gigs didn’t interrupt his output as a poet, travel writer, and collaborator with another ex-pat Isherwood after they had some rocky times working together but the bond held throughout their divergent lives.
When Auden was hired to teach at Michigan State University he was forthright about his life. Ackroyd reports he told the Dean. “you know I’m queer.” Everyone knew, but Auden was ballsy enough to clear that air right at the outset, and he was hired anyway.
Ackroyd chronicles his teaching stints at Oxford, a favorite among students, however wayward his lectures. He was also known for his affairs and sexual encounters with undergraduates, but was nonetheless invited to teach for several semesters at Oxford, although not completely embraced by the British people for not returning to England during the war.
He also collaborated on lyrics and librettos with British composer Benjamin Britten. some successful, some failures, artistically and commercially. Auden was used to being slammed by some critics, which he just took in stride. As Ackroyd chronicles, Auden himself could be his own worse critic. His books of poetry remained popular and were reprinted in collections. In many instances Auden would evaluate his early poems with such a critical eye that he would omit them from reprinted collections. This included, in one instance perhaps his most famous poem ‘September 1, 1939’.
Intolerant to the wayward manners of others, Auden was himself known for his sloppy appearance, and drinking. He veered from meticulous lectures on literature and culture, but could also just stumble through them unprepared or ramble off-subject to the bewilderment of his audience.
Auden was in perpetual motion, even as an elder man of letters, on the lecture circuit in the US and abroad. He garnered fellowships and gig teaching seasons at universities. His poetry drew mixed reactions at both ends of the critical spectrum (in some cases), ultimately the sign of a true literary classic. His poem ‘The Age of Anxiety’ was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1948.
Auden would be obsessive about academic standards as a teacher and lecturer, and just as often lax in putting the effort for some of his paid appearances. As he aged, he went through periods of labored perfection, high praise and award-winning work but also periods of bad notices for both his poetry, opera librettos, and literary essays.
At times his was considered haughty, dated or irrelevant. But he continued to branch out with collaborative works. Igor Stravinsky was one of his admirers and invited him to write the libretto for his opera ‘The Rake’s Progress’ and Stravinsky even paid for Auden’s plane to Los Angeles so they could organize the project.
Auden continued to get mixed reviews later in life, after his opus ‘The Age of Anxiety’ won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948, and inevitably had its detractors. Poet Delmore Schwartz wrote in Partisan Review that it was “the most self-indulgent book Auden has written.” Another critic called it an “a desert with scarcely an oasis, with great stretches which seem pointlessly repellent.” Leonard Berstein composed an oratorio to it.
In 1946, the US government asked Auden to be part of a special envoy surveying the massive destruction and civilian conditions in post-war Germany. For this he was given a uniform and military rank, and the poet signed on, knowing he probably didn’t know what he was doing. He made some outrageous off the cuff statements that were particularly abrasive, at one point questioning whether the London Blitz had actually occurred.
He was a heavy smoker and drinker, was noted for his sloppy appearance and he didn’t change his ways even when invited to stay at the apartments of colleagues when on lecture tours, or house-sit for friends who were on extended vacationers. Sometime with Chester, but mostly alone, but he repeatedly left his host houses a total mess. He lost friends that way and in one case was sued for damages after one of his stays.
Ackroyd’s masterfully unpacks Auden’s dichotomous persona in all of its complexities, dualities and solipsistic nature. As much as he was admired as one of the great poets and thinkers of his generation, he was alternately viewed as unorganized, arrogant, rude or dismissive of others. When needed, he could be equally, smartly groomed, polite and utterly charming. Akroyd’s biography of Auden is altogether a fine-line, dimensional portrait of the man, his work and his tumultuous times.
