Words and the Word: Art and Christianity in W.H. Auden's Later Poetry

Abstract

<p>This thesis focuses on W.H. Auden's last four major volumes of poetry: About the House (1965), City Without Walls (1969), Epistle to a Godson (1972) and the posthumous Thank You, Fog (1974). The later poetry has not drawn much scholarly attention or praise, and my study should go part way to redressing the balance.</p> <p>My thesis is that Auden's Christianity profoundly affected every aspect of his later poetry, though most of it is not overtly religious. Many features peculiar to this poetry--the giving of praise for even the simplest things, the delight in words from the slangiest to the most esoteric, the love of challenging prosodic difficulties, and the comic and playful exuberance --are all influenced by (or are actually the result of) the practice of a form of Christianity known as the Affirmative Way. Two main elements of this Way are a concentration on the goodness of all creation and an attempt to see every aspect of existence in its relation to God. Auden manifests a counterbalancing asceticism in aesthetic matters, however, in his rejection of mellifluousness for its own sake, of the pleasures and self-indulgence of 11 Confessional 11 writings, of the excitements of hierophantic utterance, and of any idea or element of style he felt to be subversive of the truth.</p> <p>The attempt to find the dynamic and necessary link between an expansive vision of life and the guidance of a vigorous discipline is the keynote to Auden's career. It extends into all the antinomies around which his thought was organized, and for which he attempted to discover reconciliations --the "Spirit" of Christian love and the "Letter" of Mosaic law; freedom and necessity; history and nature; the subject ego and the predicate self within each person; soul and body; and, though hardly exhausting what could be a very long list, the words of man and the Logos, the Word of God. All this is reflected in Auden's love of writing within the restrictions of formal verse patterns, and Auden takes the idea of patterning one step further by organizing three of his later volumes into fairly complex, overall structures. These are all designed to frame a particular element of the Christian story, and again reveal the extent of Auden's desire to make his words bear witness to the Word. (</p>