W.H. Auden

W.H. Auden

Known for: Acting
Biography: 1907-02-21
Deathday: 1973-09-29 (66 years old)

Check on Amazon

Biography

Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form, and content. Some of his best known poems are about love, such as "Funeral Blues"; on political and social themes, such as "September 1, 1939" and "The Shield of Achilles"; on cultural and psychological themes, such as The Age of Anxiety; and on religious themes such as "For the Time Being" and "Horae Canonicae".He was born in York and grew up in and near Birmingham in a professional middle-class family. He attended various English independent (or public) schools and studied English at Christ Church, Oxford. After a few months in Berlin in 1928–29, he spent five years (1930–35) teaching in British private preparatory schools, then travelled to Iceland and China to write books about his journeys.

In 1939 he moved to the United States and became an American citizen in 1946, retaining his British citizenship. He taught from 1941 to 1945 in American universities, followed by occasional visiting professorships in the 1950s. From 1947 to 1957 he wintered in New York and summered in Ischia; from 1958 until the end of his life he wintered in New York (in Oxford in 1972–73) and summered in Kirchstetten, Lower Austria.

He came to wide public attention with his first book Poems at the age of 23 in 1930; it was followed in 1932 by The Orators. Three plays written in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood between 1935 and 1938 built his reputation as a left-wing political writer. Auden moved to the United States partly to escape this reputation, and his work in the 1940s, including the long poems "For the Time Being" and "The Sea and the Mirror", focused on religious themes. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 1947 long poem The Age of Anxiety, the title of which became a popular phrase describing the modern era. From 1956 to 1961 he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford; his lectures were popular with students and faculty, and served as the basis for his 1962 prose collection The Dyer's Hand.

Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual relationship from around 1927 to 1939, while both also had briefer but more intense relations with other men. In 1939, Auden fell in love with Chester Kallman and regarded their relationship as a marriage, but this ended in 1941 when Kallman refused to accept the faithful relations that Auden demanded. However, the two maintained their friendship, and from 1947 until Auden's death they lived in the same house or apartment in a non-sexual relationship, often collaborating on opera libretti such as that of The Rake's Progress, to music by Igor Stravinsky.

Auden was a prolific writer of prose essays and reviews on literary, political, psychological, and religious subjects, and he worked at various times on documentary films, poetic plays, and other forms of performance. Throughout his career he was both controversial and influential, and critical views on his work ranged from sharply dismissive—treating him as a lesser figure than W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot—to strongly affirmative, as in Joseph Brodsky's statement that he had "the greatest mind of the twentieth century". After his death, his poems became known to a much wider public through films, broadcasts, and popular media.

Advertisement

Ratings

Average 4.13
Based on 5.53 Thousand movie and tv ratings over time
1934
1962
1995
2000
2017
Advertisement

Information

Known For
Acting

Gender
Male

Birthday
1907-02-21

Deathday
1973-09-29 (66 years old)

Birth Name
Wystan Hugh Auden

Birth Place
York, United Kingdom

Religion
Anglicanism

Height

Relationships
Erika Mann (1935-06-15 - 1969-08-27)

Father
George Augustus Auden

Mother
Constance Rosalie Bicknell

Siblings
[George] Bernard Auden, John Bicknell Auden

Citizenships
United Kingdom, United States of America

Residences
Austria, Austria, Oxford, United Kingdom

Awards
Feltrinelli Prize, Bollingen Prize, Austrian State Prize for European Literature, Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, Golden Wreath, Guggenheim Fellowship, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, National Book Award for Poetry, St. Louis Literary Award, United Nations Peace Medal


This article uses material from Wikipedia.
Advertisement
Benjamin Britten
W.H. Auden
Benjamin Britten worked together with W.H. Auden in:
5 Movies
Chester Kallman
W.H. Auden
Chester Kallman worked together with W.H. Auden in:
3 Movies
Allen Ginsberg
W.H. Auden
Allen Ginsberg worked together with W.H. Auden in:
2 Movies
1 TV Show
  • W.H. Auden
    W.H. Auden
  • Filmography
  • Information
  • Related Persons
Social Media
X
Facebook
Pinterest
Telegram
Download
iOS Application
Made in Ukraine 🇺🇦
Copyright © MovieFit 2018 – 2024
All external content remains the property of its respective owner.