Volume 21, Number 20 · December 12, 1974
W.H. Auden (1907–1973) Under Tom Tower
By Richard Ellmann
Thank You, Fog: Last Poems
by W.H. Auden
Random House, 61 pp., $6.00
The ceremonious unveiling of Auden's memorial stone in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey on October 2 mantled the poet in an atmosphere of propriety that befitted his age and reputation at death. It might have been the serene conclusion of a life spent endorsing English culture. But, as Stephen Spender intimated in his tribute on that occasion, Auden had lived rambunctiously enough. In the Abbey itself, some years ago, he delivered a sermon in which he edified the devout, for the first time in ecclesiastical history, by using the word 'tightarsed.' Then there had been his pursuit of a lover across the Atlantic just before war broke out, his naturalization as an American citizen, his extraordinary 'marriage' to Erika Mann, his sexual wound to which he wrote the famous Letter in The Orators, and in general an array of experience, not discreditable but not suited to press releases, which made him leery of biographers and eager that his friends destroy his letters. I hope that none have.
Review, 1989 words
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