Biography of Wystan Hugh Auden

Poetry witness of the century

21 February 1907 29 September 1973 Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York (England) on February 21, 1907. The family belongs to the middle-class English; the young man spent his childhood in Harbonre, Birmingham. In the following years start to become interested in literature, especially of Norse mythology, besides music and psychology. Scolsatica career starts at Gresham's School, Holt, Norfolk, then in 1925 he attended the University of Oxford. At Oxford he founded a literary society that bears his name, the "Auden Circle", a group of young authors which includes Christopher Isherwood, Cecil Day Lewis, Louis MacNeice, and Stephen Spender. In his youth is influenced by Rilke-briefly and negatively-then mainly from Brecht and later by Karl Kraus. In the years 1928-1929 along with Isherwood spent a year in Berlin, at the time under the Weimar Republic The literary debut in 30 see Auden as a writer engaged, left, ironic and sarcastic debunker of bourgeois culture. Between 1936 and 1945 is witnessing a crucial passage of time: live in fact between the Spanish civil war and World War II, metabolizing all changes in historical situations and literature of the period. These experiences make Auden a master poised between the two halves of the century and for this reason, his literary output is now the subject of new discoveries and upgraded interpretations. In 1936 bride Erika Mann, daughter of Thomas Mann, in order to make them get the English Passport allowing her so leave the borders of Nazi Germany; the couple will live ever together. The year following Auden participates in the Spanish civil war as a driver of medical aid. He moved in 1939 with Christopher Isherwood in the United States: their gesture is interpreted as a moral desertion from England (and Europe) threatened by Hitler and provokes reactions. Obtained American citizenship in 1946; his fame as a writer and became increasingly spreads Meanwhile admired in New York environment. Will also have a significant influence on younger poets, including John Ashbery. In the past years in England Auden had known Edward m. Forster, of which he had become a close friend, and T.S. Eliot, who published his work first appeared on its magazine «Criterion». In past years the USA knows various German intellectuals and writers like Klaus Mann, Erich Heller and Hannah Arendt. On culture of Auden, paramount will have the philosophy and social criticism (Marx and Freud at the beginning, then Kierkegaard and Simone Weil), as well as the theatre (Shakespeare, Ibsen) and musical theater (Mozart, Verdi). With his partner Chester Kallman writes some opera librettos, including "the career of a libertine" by Igor Stravinsky, which is staged in 1951 at the teatro La Fenice in Venice. Among the most important and famous books of poetry include "another time" (1940), "the age of anxiety" (1947) and the short collection published posthumously "fog" (1974). Very important is his work as an essayist, documented mainly in the volume "the Dyer's hand" (1962). In the years ' 50 he spent six months in New York and six months in Italy, in Ischia. After replacing its Italian destination Kirchstetten, the small Austrian village near Vienna. In 1967 he was awarded the National Medal for Literature "in the United States. Wystan Hugh Auden died in Vienna on September 29, 1973. One of his most famous poems is "Funeral blues", mentioned in the movie "Dead Poets Society" (1989) by Peter Weir and "four weddings and a funeral" (1994) by Mike Newell.
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