W. H. Auden
1907-1973
Mr Auden wrote to us a few days ago, saying that he would be back in England on October 4. We now know that he has died in Austria, his summer retreat, at the age of 66, and that he died quickly and' with little fuss. It is perhaps fitting that Auden should die outside this country, since he spent so much of his creative life abroad. Although his work had a formative effect upon his own generation, and has continued to have upon those who succeeded it, he remained at a forbidding distance from the cultural tea-party of England. He lived for more than thirty years in the East Village of New York, down a rather grimy and windy street, and he eventually took American citizenship. He had recently returned to England and to Oxford, neither of which he found more lovable than before. He was, in a sense, the quintessential ' poet of exile' and his poetry acquired an almost scriptural force at greater remove. But Auden himself would perhaps have cavilled at any .description of his ' exile ', since the distance from his birthplace only seemed to increase his perception of a distinctively English Tradition. His poetry has all the peculiar virtues of the English spirit, whether we care to trace it in Kipling, Dryden or Herrick. It was a conversational ease combined with a strength of emphasis, and instinctive rightness of tone. Auden was the last great English traditionalist. He had a respect for literary form and history which he did his utmost to bequeath in his many essays and lectures. His poetry was equally spare and unpretentious. Its unique voice stamped the English cultural climate of the 'thirties and 'forties, and it grew in reputation as it enlarged in range. It became, finally, unmistakable and could only be imitated or quoted. Auden did. much to restore the nerve and spirit of. English poetry during this period, and his political commitment has always offered a• flawed but necessary example. For this, and. for his encouragement to the generations of writers which followed him, we owe him a, debt which cannot be easily repaid. Auden, was the last of his kind.
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