October 1989
In February 1922, just a few days after Auden's fifteenth birthday, an Editorial in the The Gresham called for more poetry submissions:
From our point of view, the School is sadly lacking in budding poets. The Editor is never inundated with manuscripts, but we hope that the near future will produce a much larger mass of matter sent in to the Gresham for publication.
(9.9 (25 Feb. 1922), 135)
In the next issue, in early April, three unsigned poems appeared, including the following with an Editor's note:
Behold the sky
That once was one great glowing sapphire
Begins to die,
And now is but a glinting opal fire,
Smould'ring to a faded scarlet,
O'er the embers of the sunset.
And lo, a soft gossamer-like cloud,
That round the crescent moon, enveils
Its vap'rous shroud,
And passing on its way, reveals
Her, trembling, silvery, rainbow-clad
Silent, frailly sad.
(We publish this in spite of technical errors. Considering the age of the author it shows great promise. - Ed.)
(9.10 (8 April 1922), 147)
Fifteen does not seem all that young, but poetic contributions to the The Gresham may have been mostly by boys in their final year or two, and some of the poems in the magazine were almost certainly contributed by masters.
What makes it seem likely that Auden wrote "A Moment" is that part of the poem's final line reappears in two later adolescent compositions that he sent to Isherwood and which are still with the Isherwood collection. "The Dark Fiddler", probably written in 1924 or 1925, concludes:
Silence at last, the stars
Burn bright and glad
Only a moon climbs slowly,
Frailly sad.
And "Humpty Dumpty", which Auden worked on probably during the autumn and winter of 1926-27, includes the lines:
A moon sailed slowly skyward, frailly sad, to look
Upon a world that glittered and went out.
Of course, Auden could have read the line in the The Gresham and liked it enough to borrow it, or he might have borrowed it from some other earlier poem to which the author of "A Moment" is also in debt. But in any case, March is the month, he tells us in "Letter to Lord Byron", in which he decided to become a poet, and we know from Robert Medley's related account that the year was 1922. In Drawn from the Life: A Memoir (1983) Medley also describes how he and Auden first met "during a visit of the sociological society to a boot factory in Norwich" (38). This visit, on March 22 to Howlett and White's Boot and Shoe Factory, is described in the same issue of The Gresham in which "A Moment" appears (157). After more than 65 years, Medley cannot recall this particular poem, though he says it certainly could be by Auden, commenting "Wystan never wasted a good line".
Further views on the authorship of "A Moment" are welcome.
KATHERINE BUCKNELL
"One of my great ambitions is to get into the OED as the first person to have used in print a new word. I have two candidates at the moment, which I used in my review of J. R. Ackerley's autobiography. They are `Plain-sewing' and `Princeton-First-Year'. . ." (Auden in the Observer Colour Supplement, 7 Nov. 1971).
Auden's wish to be included in the Oxford English Dictionary has been granted, 724 times at least. However not all these citations are for being the first person to have used a new word in print. In most cases his usage merely exemplifies a change or extension of meaning. Only 110 citations are coinages, of which 60 are hyphenated compounds such as "angel-vampire" or "swan-delighting", and which appear in long alphabetical lists of other "angel-" and "swan-" words. A further 22 appearances are under sub-headings, that is, giving an additional definition to a word which already existed. This leaves 28 occasions on which Auden appears at the top of a separate heading as the first person to coin a new word.
It is amusing to consider what his reaction might have been, had he discovered that, rather than the "two candidates" he thought he had in 1972, his earliest citation, for "eutectic", dates from "Thomas Epilogises" printed in Oxford Poetry 1926. The most recent citation is for "orneriness", taken from an interview in The Listener, 22 Feb. 1973.
The Age of Anxiety has the largest number of citations from Auden's single volumes - 64 in all. This is closely followed by For the Time Being and Nones, both with 58, The Dyer's Hand with 57, and The Orators with 56. Other interesting totals are 30 for Poems (1930), 15 for "In the year of my youth . . ." (as printed in The Review of English Studies, August 1978) and 14 for The Magic Flute, translated with Chester Kallman. The latter are taken largely from the Metalogue; indeed, the word "metalogue" itself merits inclusion in the OED as an Auden coinage. Middle to late collections fare reasonably (The Shield of Achilles 17; Homage to Clio 21; About the House 34) but apart from City Without Walls, which has 9 citations, Auden's last collections are almost completely ignored. Epistle to a Godson receives one citation (for "tardy" - adverb as verb) and Thank You, Fog receives none. Auden's systematic transference of parts of speech in his last collection is totally overlooked and poems such as "A Bad Night", perhaps by appearing over-eager to reserve their author a place in the OED, are ignored. It is to be hoped that with the growing recognition of the achievements of Auden's later verse, the OED will one day present a more balanced picture of these collections and therefore of Auden's career as a whole.
Among Auden's more notable citations are: the first pejorative use of "queer", the first printed use of "ponce" to designate an effeminate homosexual, of "toilet-humour", of "agent" in the sense of a secret agent or spy, of "dedicated" to mean a person "single-minded in loyalty to his beliefs or in his artistic or personal integrity", of "shagged" meaning "weary, exhausted", and of "stud" for a person "displaying masculine sexual characteristics". Further curiosities are the first printed appearance in English of the surrealist term "objet trouvé" and the first printed use of "What's yours?" as an invitation given by the person buying the next round of drinks.
A further series of entries deals with Auden's figurative use of technical, geological, and scientific terms. Particularly worthy of note besides "eutectic" are "endurance test", "flow sheet", "fertile crescent", and "hanging valley".
The list of authors who appear with Auden under a particular word suggests possible verbal sources. (However, there is some difficulty in verifying these as, in many cases, Auden's source may have been the OED itself.) For example "videnda", used by Auden in "The Cave of Making", was previously used by Sterne in Tristram Shandy; "pageant-master" in "Spain" was used in the York Mystery Plays; "baldachined" in About the House can be found in Hardy's Satires of Circumstance, while "cheerio" in Poems is previously attributed to P.G. Wodehouse.
I personally regret the omission of words that have taken on Audenesque meanings. For example "lucky", in the sense of "blessed" or "chosen to be blessed" (in such poems as "A Summer Night", "Warm are the still and lucky miles", and "A Lullaby") receives no mention.
A single entry in the OED is attributed to an Auden other than Wystan Hugh. The entry for "peruke-maker" cites T. Auden (1905) - "Brought up at Manchester as a barber and peruke-maker, he adopted the Jacobite principles" - and also seems to be spoken in the voice of the Horatian Mr. W. H.
Auden will be a welcome ghost in the machine of the OED and our language for as long as either exists. I think that calls for some celebration. What's yours?
TOBY LITT
A complete list of the head-words under which Auden is cited in the 2nd Edition of the OED can be obtained from the Newsletter Editor for the price of photocopying and postage.
My wife and I are regular visitors to Kirchstetten and can recommend a visit to members of The W. H. Auden Society. Auden is commemorated in a number of places in the village and the tourist information leaflet about the village includes a picture of the "Haus Wystan Hugh Auden".
It is easy to reach Kirchstetten from England. The Anglo-Austrian Society (of which we are members) organises regular flights from Gatwick to Vienna. A bus from the airport takes travellers to the main railway station where they can board a local train for Kirchstetten. In all, the journey from the airport to Kirchstetten takes about one and a half hours.
For the past two years we have stayed at the "Pension Resi" (A-3062 Kirchstetten 180/2, Haupstr. 44, Austria, tel. 02743/8539) at the very cheap rate of £5.00 per night with a good breakfast. All rooms have private facilities. The house next door also takes tourists at similar rates. Both houses are within 200 yards of the local railway station for direct trains to Vienna (45 minutes - £3.50 single) and, in the opposite direction, to the main town of St. Pölten (15 minutes - 75p single).
Many tourists find the position ideal, without the necessity of taking a car into Vienna and all the attendant problems of parking. Trains are in fact the only means of transport but they are spotlessly clean, punctual, and reliable.
Life in the village centres very much on the three Gasthäuser, vying with each other to present mouth-watering dishes, and I have got quite used to the spicy meats and sausages. People in villages tend to go to bed and rise early, so there isn't any wild nightlife, but my wife and I are usually too tired after the hectic daytime of shopping and visiting friends (a dangerous pastime if one is watching one's weight).
On my last visit I spoke at some length with Herr Enzinger, who was Mayor of Kirchstetten when Auden lived there. He told me how he would often meet Auden in one of the Gasthäuser where Auden would sit, usually alone, munching a ham sandwich with liquid refreshment close by and reading newspapers. The lady owner of one of the inns told me that Auden always wore slippers when walking in the village, whatever the weather. He visited all three inns in strict rotation and consumed to his heart's delight, as well as the innkeeper's. Sometimes he would wander over to Weinheber's garden where the poet was buried after his suicide in 1945. Auden was well-respected by the villagers who still talk about him as though they all knew him personally.
Our visit also included a chat with the present occupier of Auden's house, Franz Strobl who, in typical Austrian fashion, welcomed us with a glass of wine. Franz produced the Guest Book and showed us the signature of Leonard Bernstein. We too made an entry which earned us a second glass of wine and I can recommend it - the book signing, I mean.
Our visit to Austria is a regular delight and we are returning in 1990 for the Danube Festival. It is worth noting that, while Austria has the reputation for being expensive, this is not always the case, particularly if, like us, you stay in a village and eat the local foods.
RICHARD KELLETT
Auden's indebtedness to Old English and Norse literature has been widely recognised. Specific examples of sources, however, are rarely cited, although some have been identified by John Fuller in his Reader's Guide. The influence is usually regarded as being a general one of tone, mood, and style. The specific matter of sources is largely ignored. Monroe K. Spears (in The Poetry of W. H. Auden: The Disenchanted Island, 1963) summarizes the influence of Old English and Norse literature in such general terms as Auden's "nordic mask".
In the case of "Paid on Both Sides", however, the influence of Old English texts in particular appears to be more specific. Auden wrote his play in 1928, shortly after leaving Oxford, and, at three points in the action there are close parallels in plot and indeed in language to texts which formed part of his undergraduate studies.
The play's title, as Lawrence Heyworth observed, is taken from Beowulf, line 1305, "possibly adapted from John R. Clark Hall's 1901 prose translation: `That was no good exchange - - that they should pay on both sides with the lives of friends.' " (see Mendelson, Early Auden (1981), 42). Beowulf, however, also provides a possible source for the revenge plot at the wedding of John Nower and Anne Shaw which concludes the charade. This episode closely parallels the account of the blood feud and its effects at the wedding of Ingeld in Beowulf, lines 2017-2067.
The incident at the beginning of "Paid on Both Sides" - the ambush of Red Shaw in revenge for the killing of John Nower's father - has a close parallel in the entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 755. In this episode Cyneheard discovers that Cynewulf, who has killed his brother, is going to visit a woman in Merantune, accompanied by a few followers. In "Paid on Both Sides" Red Shaw "goes to Brandon Walls today, visits a woman", with "a few" followers. He is similarly ambushed by John Nower in a revenge attack.
The account of the battle following this attack, written in alliterative verse, echoes The Battle of Maldon, not only in its verse form, but also in incidental details such as the death of Edward (the name is common to both poems) who was the first to fall.
"Paid on Both Sides" was Auden's first substantial work to be published and it highlights the specific nature of his debt to Old English literature, which he knew from his first encounter as an undergraduate was "going to be my dish".
C.J. BALL
University of Keele, England
In the 1936 Look, Stranger! version of the untitled poem "Easily, my dear, you move, easily your head" these lines occur:
Lucky to love the new pansy railway,
The sterile farms where his looks are fed,
And in the policed unlucky city,
Lucky his bed.
For the 1945 Collected Poetry Auden restored the original title, "A Bride in the 30's" and revised the first line of the above to "Lucky to love the strategic railway".
Working with a BBC colleague on the script of a TV programme for a new Open University literature course which included some of Auden's 1930s poetry, I was very reasonably asked "But why `pansy railway'?" I'd always assumed that "pansy" pointed in surreal fashion to a homosexual relationship and was surprised to find that Stan Smith read it as a sneer (Re-reading Auden (1985) 85). Certainly it seems preferable, aurally as well as semantically, to "strategic" - Auden's rather clumping solution, I take it, to the difficulty of reconciling "pansy" with "bride".
Nevertheless, the poem's critique of romantic-sexual escapism from the demands of the public world cannot be confined to homosexual relationships. And why is it the railway that is "pansy"? One would have supposed that, objectively, railways were as resistant to the fantasies of romantic "Love" as "policed unlucky cities". Could it not therefore - or indeed also? - be that "pansy" belongs with "farms", an item in that countrified scenery which Auden so regularly identifies as the place of escapist illusion, its direct opposite being the world of the city and the machine. In that case, the railway is "pansy" because it enables the lovers to speed through the landscape, feeding their narcissism by "looks" at the "sterile farms", seeing nothing of the reality of these terrifying lands which, as the next verse says, "Love" transforms into "worlds as innocent as Beatrix Potter's". It may be objected that it is "Love", not "lovers", that takes this journey. But in this poem the upper-case version is sharply contrasted with the lower-case. "Love" (upper-case) is the self-regarding appropriation of "love", that impersonal life-giving desire, which lovers are advised impersonally to affirm, lest its inevitable manifestation take such alternative and "crooked" forms as money-grubbing or cancer.
Or is this all too patterned and logical an account of Auden's often illuminatingly wayward practice with detail? Can other readers answer the question: why "pansy railway"?
GRAHAM MARTIN
Department of Literature, The Open University, Walton Hall,
Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, England
In reply to Philip Lahey's query in the April Newsletter concerning the lines from "New Year Letter" ("The grinning gap of Hell, the hill/Of Venus and the stairs of Will") I do not know if Auden refers to a tale of Boccaccio's or not. However I would be interested to know what readers have found in terms of Auden's attitude to sexuality and women in his work. My own opinion is that he, at least consciously, did not view the female genitalia as "the grinning gap of Hell", although I do feel that his attitude toward sexuality and women was ambivalent and often contradictory. Auden says also in "New Year Letter" that "Woman, passive as in dreams / Redeems, redeems, redeems, redeems". Yet in other works, such as "Paid on Both Sides" and The Ascent of F6 women are seen as dominating and devouring figures.
In her review of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own (see Ending in Earnest, New York, 1931) Rebecca West differentiates between two types of homosexuals: "The men who despised us for our specifically female organs chastised us with whips; but those to whom they are a matter of envy chastise us with scorpions." In terms of Auden's work and personal life, do readers have any comments?
LORRAINE M. PEARSALL
3011 Sweet Oak Drive, Melbourne, Florida 32935, U.S.A.
The border means more than a customs house,
A passport officer, a man with a gun. Over there
Everything is going to be different;
Life is never going to be quite the same again
After your passport has been stamped and you find yourself
Speechless among the money-changers.
The man seeking scenery imagines strange woods and unheard-of
Mountains. The romantic believes
That the women over the border
Will be more beautiful and complaisant than those at home;
The unhappy man imagines at least
A different hell;
The suicidal traveller expects the death
He never finds. The atmosphere of the border,
It is like
Starting over again; there is something about it
Like a good confession: poised for a few happy moments
Between sin and sin.
When people die on the border they call it
"A happy death".
The above poem, set out as prose, forms the first paragraph of Chapter 1 of a travel book about Mexico, The Lawless Roads, 1939, by "Graham Greene" - obviously a pseudonym.
JOHN WHITEHEAD
The Coach House, Munslow, nr Craven Arms, Shropshire SY7 9ET, England
The National Sound Archive's collection of recordings by and about W. H. Auden is one of our largest collections concerning a major 20th century writer. I know of no comparable resource for the study of Auden's spoken work.
The Archive works like a reference library - recordings are held on the condition that they remain on the premises and that are not copied or broadcast without the written permission of all appropriate rights holders. Use of library and playback facilities is free, but space is limited so to hear a recording you should make an appointment with the listening service, preferably giving at least a week's notice. Besides the main building in London, there are also listening facilities at Barnstaple in Devon and Boston Spa in Yorkshire, but whichever location you wish to use, appointments and enquiries should be directed to the listening service in London.
I have compiled a list of recordings for Auden researchers and enthusiasts who want to use the Archive (enclosed separately with this Newsletter). This is not an exhaustive discography as comparison with Bloomfield and Mendelson's bibliography will show; it confines itself to listing recordings that are on the Archive's shelves and available for immediate listening. I have omitted certain BBC recordings which should theoretically be available but presently are not because we lack staff and time necessary to process them. I have also chosen to exclude most recordings of other people reading Auden's poems, the exceptions being items which include useful critical or biographical information.
In categorizing the material I have followed the practice of the National Sound Archive's Drama and Literature section. Our literary acquisition policy concentrates on recordings of writers reading their own work; therefore the authorship of an item is usually implicit in the identity of the speaker. Generally the headings Reader, Speaker, and Author/Subject provide the most useful distinction between literary recordings. Within these categories, the entries are chronologically arranged by recording date where known; otherwise the transmission date is used in the case of broadcasts, and the release date for commercial discs and tapes.
I would welcome correction or amplification of the information on this list and I would be particularly interested to learn of any existing recordings that it does not include.
TOBY OAKES
British Library National Sound Archive, 29 Exhibition Road,
London SW7 2AS, England. tel. 01-589-6603
A packed meeting room at James Thin's bookshop in Edinburgh heard two of Scotland's finest living poets reading their favourite Auden pieces. Douglas Dunn and Iain Crichton-Smith were featured at the second reading organised by the Society, this one timed to coincide with the Edinburgh Festival.
It was clear here, as it was at the earlier event at the National Poetry Centre, that a large number of living poets regard Auden as the greatest poet of the century. The audience in Edinburgh was a lively one, and exceedingly knowledgeable about Auden's work, so that a lively and detailed discussion followed the reading.
It is, it seems, typical of the Scottish tradition of reading poetry, that both Douglas Dunn and Iain Crichton-Smith felt it perfectly natural to stop in mid-verse to make their own comments. This probably contributed to the feeling among those present that they were not just an audience but participants in a living body of poetry.
RICHARD FIFE
Charles H. Miller, Auden: An American Friendship, Paragon House. Now available in paperback $9.95
Adolphe Haberer, ed., Les Années 30, 9 (March 1988), Université de Nantes, Special MacNeice Number, FFr 50. Essays by Adolphe Haberer, Margaret Llasera, George Morgan, and Jean-Michel Rabaté. The essays by Llasera and Morgan are in English.
George Plimpton, ed., Poets at Work, Penguin £6.99. Includes an interview from The Paris Review with Auden.
Stravinsky, The Rake's Progress (libretto by Auden and Kallman), video of Glyndebourne Production with Hockney designs. Cast includes Felicity Lott, Leo Goeke, Richard van Allen, Samuel Ramey. Conductor - Bernard Haitink, Director - John Cox. Available, Pickwick £12.99. Also available by recorded delivery mail from Glyndebourne Information Office, Glyndebourne, Lewes, East Sussex BN8 5UU, England for £14.50. Note: The video is available only in British format VHS.
Some interest has been expressed by members in holding an Auden Conference in the United Kingdom, possibly at Oxford in 1991. Would anyone who would like to attend, submit a paper or, most importantly, serve on a conference committee, please write to me.
Several readers have requested information about current work on Auden appearing other than in book form. Readers are invited to send me any details of articles about or mentioning Auden that they have encountered in their reading so that we can start a bibliography in subsequent Newsletters.
Newsletter 5 will include a consideration by Nicholas Jenkins of the reviews of the Auden and Isherwood Plays and Other Dramatic Writings 1928-1938.
The deadline for submissions to Newsletter 5 is 15 January 1990. I would be pleased to receive any articles or items for inclusion.
Editor: Kathleen Bell, 37 Redwood Crescent, Beeston, Nottingham NG9 lJF, England
The W. H. Auden Society welcomes new members. Annual subscriptions are as follows:
Concessions (students, unemployed, etc.) £3 $5
Individuals £6 $10
Institutions £8 $12
New members and members wishing to renew subscriptions should send cheques (payable to The W. H. Auden Society) to Katherine Bucknell, 70 Lexham Gardens, London W8 5JB, England. Receipts on request.
A small amount of mail was stolen during August from the mailbox used by the Society. Would any members who have not received replies to correspondence sent during that period please write again. Also, if any subscription cheques have not yet cleared your bank, we may not have received them and would appreciate hearing from you about this. Please write to the membership address in London
.
Compiled by Toby Oakes
British Library National Sound Archive,
29 Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AS
Tel. 01-589-6603
Opening hours: 10.00 - 17.00 Monday - Friday (10.00 - 21.00 on Thursday)
BBC |
Auden reading his own poems: |
BBC 1497 |
BBC |
Auden reads: In The Square |
BBC 1967 |
Recorded |
The Poet's Voice, cassette 4a 1.Four Sonnets from China (The Traveller, The Hospital, Exiles, Wandering lost upon the mountains of our choice) 2. Song: As I walked out one evening |
Harvard Univ.. Press - Poet's Voice - No. 4 of 6 cassettes |
Recorded |
4. Thanksgiving for a Habitat |
|
Recorded |
Pleasure Dome - An Audible Anthology of Modern Poetry: |
Columbia ML4259 |
Recorded |
W. H. Auden Reading: 12/12/53 |
Caedmon |
Recorded |
W. H. Auden Reads a Selection of His Poems: |
Argo RG184 |
BBC TP |
Poems introduced and read by W. H. Auden |
M143W |
BBC TP |
Poets in Public: W. H. Auden and Stevie Smith introducing and reading their own poems |
883 - 4R |
BBC R3 |
International Poetry Festival, Purcell Room reading "Fleet Visit" (BBC LP32037) |
M1201R |
Recorded |
Selected Poems by Wystan Hugh Auden The Wanderer* |
Spoken Arts |
Released |
The Spoken Arts Treasury of 100 Modern American Poets, Vol. 9 (See above) |
Spoken Arts |
Recorded |
Poetry International `69 |
Argo |
BBC R3 |
Auden at 65 |
1963W |
BBC R3 |
Auden in London (Poetry International `72) |
M4880R |
BBC R4 |
The Modern British Poets: W. H. Auden (introduced by Peter Porter) |
M4602R |
British |
In the series: Contemporary Poets Reading their own Work; recorded at Christ Church, Oxford The Aliens |
2578W |
BBC R3 |
Poetry Now (Introduction: George Macbeth) |
M5068R |
BBC R3 |
Poetry International '73 (BBC T41346) |
2326R |
Open |
Yeats and Auden |
A306 OU 24 |
BBC |
Discussion with Christopher Isherwood of The Ascent of F6 |
BBC 12119-20 |
BBC |
Talk on conditions in China (BBC LP 24741) |
5973WR |
BBC |
"On Writing Poetry Today" - third lecture in the series "The Dyer's Hand" (BBC LP 24269 - 70) |
T9478W |
BBC TP |
Discussion of Shakespeare's sonnets |
|
BBC TP |
Tradition and the New: Nowness and Permanence (BBC LP 30578) |
M735R |
BBC TP |
Discussion with Peter Sadler about Auden's libretto for Henze's The Bassarids and the problems of librettists (BBC T3065) |
1041R |
Recorded |
T.S. Eliot Memorial Lectures: "Secondary Worlds - Art and Truth" (BBC T31489): 1. The Martyr as Dramatic Hero |
|
BBC R3 |
Discussion of music with Hans Keller |
P772W |
BBC R3 |
Larkin at 50 - A Birthday Tribute |
P832R |
BBC R4 |
Interview from PM with Christopher Blount |
BBC LP 35426 |
BBC R3 |
Tennyson, 80 Years On: Discussion with Christopher Ricks and Hallam Tennyson (BBC T36478) |
T542R |
BBC TP |
The Ascent of F6 (BBC MX 16850-5) |
T4995-6 |
BBC TP |
The Dark Valley (BBC LP 26205) |
5974WR |
BBC TP |
The Dog Beneath the Skin |
942 - 4W |
BBC TP |
Stephen Spender: Tribute to Auden |
BBC LP |
BBC TP |
Celebration of Auden's 60th Birthday |
T155W |
BBC R3 |
C. Day-Lewis: Reminiscences of Auden |
BBC LP 32418 |
BBC R3 |
Paid on Both Sides - A Charade |
T527 |
Essex |
Five American Poets - lecture by Robert Lowell including consideration of "Circe", "Loneliness", and "Lullaby" |
T7219W |
BBC R3 |
Musical setting of four Auden poems by Peter Dickinson sung by Meriel Dickinson: "Look, stranger", "Eyes look into the well", "Carry her over the water", "What's on your mind" I |
4239BW |
NSA |
Tribute to W. H. Auden at Riverside Studios: |
T6351R & |
NSA |
Stephen Spender reading Auden's poems at the National Poetry Centre |
T7234W |
BBC R3 |
The Ascent of F6 |
B2894 |
NSA |
W. H. Auden Society reading at the National Poetry Centre - readings by John Fuller, Andrew Motion, Stephen Spender, Gavin Ewart, Peter Porter, and Roy Fuller. Introduced by Charles Monteith. |
(C15/371) |
Note: Numbers prefaced with "N" refer to the Bloomfield and Mendelson Bibliography.
The National Sound Archive also holds various recordings of operas for which Auden wrote the libretti (Britten's Paul Bunyan, Stravinsky's, The Rake's Progress and Henze's Elegy for Young Lovers, The Bassarids, and Moralities), all of which may be traced under their respective composers' names in our general catalogue.
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