A groundbreaking reassessment of W. H. Auden's early life and poetry, shedding new light on his artistic development as well as on his shifting beliefs about political belonging in interwar England. W. H. Auden is a towering figure in modern literary history with a complex private self. Hannah Arendt wrote that he had 'the necessary secretiveness of the great poet'. The Island lays bare for the first time some of the most telling 'secrets' of Auden's early poetry, his world, his emotional life, his values and the sources of his art. In a book that is an argument but also a story, Nicholas Jenkins gives compelling readings of iconic poems. He presents Auden in the inter-War years as both a visionary writer, creatively dependent on dreams and intuitions, and a traumatized poet, haunted by war and suffering, and shadowed by his outsider status as a privileged but queer man. The Island considers, as well, Auden's imaginative flirtations with a lyrical nationalism appealing to a poet who, for a while, felt his psyche was like a map of English culture. The narrative ends in Auden's disillusionment with these potent myths and beliefs and the time when he left 'the island'. Auden's preoccupations - with the vicissitudes of war and the problems of love, belonging and identity - are of their time but they still resonate profoundly today. 'A superb, deeply researched study of Auden's early work and identity. Jenkins's understanding of young Auden as a poet shaped and haunted by the First World War - assimilating the influence of Wilfred Owen, Edward Thomas, Robert Graves, and W. H. R. Rivers - is convincing, original, and poignant. Fusing biography, cultural history, and literary criticism in innovative and elegant ways, The Island is a landmark publication in modernist studies.' Heather Clark, author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath 'Nicholas Jenkins is one of our most perceptive and resourceful critics. In this wonderful study of the early Auden, he brings to bear history, biography, and an acute sense of the artistic moment to fashion for us a young genius who is conservative, bucolic, gay, a patriotic adherent of post-imperial Little England. Most people work backwards from a writer's ultimate reputation, but Jenkins gives us a new, unexpected image of a poet developing in the aftermath of World War I and the collapse of modernism.' Edmund White, author of The Humble Lover 'The Island is a Copernican Revolution in Auden studies, a revelatory and often exciting book that presents a new and convincing account of Auden's early years. It explores, for the first time, the deep connections between the inner workings of his poems and the worlds of politics and economics. By bringing to light Auden's ambition to be a national poet, Jenkins transforms our understanding of not only Auden himself but all of modernist literature.' Edward Mendelson, author of Early Auden and Later Auden
Nicholas Jenkins teaches English Literature at Stanford University. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the Times Literary Supplement, and the New Republic, among other publications. He is the literary executor of the ballet impresario Lincoln Kirstein.
Jenkins
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Weitere Infos & Material
| feb 1907 | | born in York, the third son of George and Constance Auden |
| ca summer 1908 | | Auden family moves to Solihull, near Birmingham |
| april 1912 | | first memory of a public event: the sinking of the Titanic |
| sept 1914 | | Dr. Auden joins the Royal Army Medical Corps |
| summer–autumn 1915 | | Dr. Auden serves at Suvla Bay during the Gallipoli campaign |
| oct 1915 | | with brother John starts boarding at St. Edmund’s School in Surrey |
| jan 1916 | | Dr. Auden is invalided out of frontline medical duties |
| aug–sept 1917 | | Dr. Auden on leave; dispute with Mrs. Auden about a mistress in Egypt |
| sept 1917–feb 1919 | | Dr. Auden serving as a military medical administrator in Britain and France |
| ca winter 1917 | | shamed for his appetite in front of the school: “I see, Auden, you want the Huns to win” |
| ca feb 1919 | | Dr. Auden is demobilized and returns home |
| summer 1919 | | Auden family moves to Harborne, a Birmingham suburb; Dr. Auden suffers an attack of encephalitis lethargica |
| ca aug 1919 | | visits the North Pennines for the first time |
| ca march / april 1920 | | sex with the school chaplain at St. Edmund’s |
| oct 1920 | | starts at Gresham’s School in Norfolk |
| july 1921 | | plays Ursula in the Gresham’s production of Much Ado About Nothing |
| march 1922 | | as Auden walks with Robert Medley in a ploughed field, Medley inspires him to start writing poetry |
| july 1922 | | plays Katharina, the “shrew,” in the Gresham’s production of The Taming of the Shrew |
| aug 1922 | | walking tour in the Lake District with his brother John and Dr. Auden |
| ca 1924 /1925 | | the Audens buy Wesco in the village of Threlkeld in the Lake District |
| july 1925 | | plays Caliban in the Gresham’s production of The Tempest |
| ca july 1925 | | writes “The Dying House” |
| aug 1925 | | first journey abroad: with Dr. Auden to Salzburg and Kitzbühel |
| oct 1925 | | goes up to Christ Church, Oxford, intending to read natural science |
| march–april 1926 | | writes “‘Lead’s the Best’” |
| may 1926 | | drives a car for the Trades Union Congress in London during the General Strike; reads The Waste Land and adopts a modernist poetic style |
| sept 1926 | | switches to reading for an undergraduate degree in English literature |
| dec 1926–jan 1927 | | visits Austria again |
| june 1927 | | submits a book of poems to T. S. Eliot: rejected in September with mild encouragement |
| june / july 1927 | | drops his Eliotic modernist style and writes “I chose this lean country” |
| july–aug 1927 | | spends a tortured holiday with his father in Yugoslavia; perhaps writes his first poem abroad |
| aug 1927 | | writes “Who stands, the crux left of the watershed” |
| oct 1927 | | meeting with Eliot in London |
| dec 1927 | | starts drafting Paid on Both Sides |
| jan 1928 | | writes “Control of the Passes was, he saw, the... |
