Auden Criticism Flashcards
Mendelson on aesthetics vs truth in his art
‘to Auden, a work of art is both a source of pleasure and a reminder of those aspects of reality that we prefer to ignore’
John Bayley
‘Auden is the rarest kind of poet in a post-romantic age: interested not in himself but in the plural aspects and manifestations of the world which he turns into his art…’
Isherwood on Auden’s style
sees it as analytical or scientific
Connolly on Love in ‘Lullaby’
‘Auden’s non-pamphleteering love lyric was by far the best thing in his recent work, and utterly without political purpose’
Stan Smith on the ‘Self’ in Auden
‘the dualistic self occupies an interface between freedom and necessity, self-fashioning and biological and cultural determinism’
Auden on the ‘Self’
‘man became self-conscious; he began to feel, I am I, and you are not I; we are shut inside ourselves and apart from each other’
Ricks on the playful poet
points out the need to recall the etymology of ‘silly’ as ‘blessed, fortunate’
F.R Leavis on the playful poet
‘mental idiosyncrasies… extravagantly indulged’ ‘fails to make living contact with us’
Stan Smith
‘to speak of the poet’s linguistic virtuosity was usually to level… superficiality, immaturity, narcissism and ultimately moral failure and degenracy’
Seamus Perry on tragicomedy
‘at once impressive and comical, as though acting out of some great running joke about authority or seriousness’
Spender on tragicomedy
‘the incarnation of a serious joke’
Larkin QUOTE 1 on Auden’s later poetry
‘too verbose to be memorable and too intellectual to be moving’
Larkin other quotes on Auden’s later poetry
‘a wilful jumble… with a lisping archness that sets the teeth on edge’ ‘a loss of vividness’
Donald Davie 1955 Review of Auden’s later poetry
‘facetious diction’ ‘ponderously coy’ (Plains: ‘reams of edifying and unreadable verse’
Perry on Rhetoric
‘the capacity of his voice to charm’
