Auden / Richard Davenport-Hines

Originally published: London : W. Heinemann/Reed Books, 1995.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [353]-391) and index.

Poet W.H. Auden (1907-1973) scrupulously never kissed and told; very little biographical material made it into his work, and that which did was often later suppressed by him. Davenport-Hines (The Macmillans) here traces many of Auden's poems, plays, essays, reviews and libretti to life events Auden never showed us, mostly notably his charged relationships with men. In brisk, informative readings of the work, Davenport-Hines matches turns in style and subject matter with Auden's experiences. For example, when discussing the poem "Spain 1937,'' he highlights Auden's disillusioning volunteer service with the International Brigade. The emphasis throughout, however, is on the exigencies of love and sex. Auden is shown, in early poems like "The Orators,'' obliquely coming to terms with his homosexuality, exploring and rejecting the fashionable Freudianism of the '30s. He mined his ultimately unsustainable relationship with Chester Kallman for observations about life and love in much of the later work, beginning with "The Sea and the Mirror.'' What is left out is a full account of the basic facts of Auden's life, which may leave one with a taste for earlier biographies that dwell less on the writing.