Candice drew attention to:
> "Auden on Bin Laden" by Eric McHenry (_Slate_, 9/20)
> http://slate.msn.com/culturebox/entries/01-09-20115900.asp
One bit of this article particularly caught my eye:
"He banished it from subsequent editions of his work, and I'm not sure,
frankly, how it finally found its way back into print."
If even Eric McHenry is puzzled by this, perhaps an answer is in order. (As
usual, apologies to everyone who already knows this.)
From early on, Auden made a series of exclusions, excisions, and revisions
to his work. The two major exclusions (during Auden's lifetime) were
"Spain" and "September 1, 1939". The major excision was probably the
Claudel/Kipling stanzas from "In Memory of W.B.Yeats" Other changes
included the addition of the title, "A Bride of the Thirties", to the poem,
'Easily, my dear, easily you move your head ...' [These changes didn't only
happen with the pre-1940 poems -- there's the case of The Amazing Vanishing
Dildo from "In Praise of Limestone" (1948).]
In the 1945 _Collected Poems_, "September 1, 1939" appears without the
final stanza, and I think Auden omits it completely from his own collections
thereafter. The only exception to its envanishment after 1945 is its
appearance in an American anthology in 1955 with the final line revised to
read: "We must love one another and [sic] die."
In 1976, three years after Auden's death, his biographer, editor and
literary executor Edward Mendelson produced a _Collected Poems_, based
rigorously on Auden's final choices and instructions -- no "Spain", no
"September 1, 1939, no Claudel, no dildo.
[The Second Edition of this, with nine late poems added, is now out in
paperback.]
In 1977, Mendelson edited _The English Auden: <poetry, prose, and dramatic
writing> 1927-1939_ [a marvellous work!]. This was, in contrast to the
_Collected_ of the year before, based on the earliest printed texts of the
poems -- and it's here that "September 1, 1939" reappears again, along with
"Spain" and Claudel. (The title, "A Bride of the Thirties" vanishes, even
from the footnotes.).
In 1979, Mendelson produced the _Selected Poems_ -- exactly 100 poems,
including "Spain", "September 1, 1939", Claudel and Kipling -- and hey,
folks, the nude young male is even allowed to get his dildo back!!
At this point, I'll pause and allow those of you already screaming with
boredom to rush out and buy the _Selected_. If you don't have it, it really
is the single must-have Auden text.
OK, for those few remaining in the room, we now enter Chapter 18 territory.
Mendelson, as well as being a magnificent editor (and less magnificent
biographer) is also a rather shrewd operator who has ensured that, in order
to get all of Auden, you have to buy virtually every single book Mendelson
edited or wrote. You don't, for instance, find the textual commentary to
"September 1, 1939" in _The English Auden_ (where you'd -- or at least I
would -- expect) but in the first volume of his two volume biography of
Auden, _Early Auden_.
I could go on about this (as it irritates the hell out of me) but I'll cut
to where things are now.
Mendelson is in the process of producing a _Complete Works_ of Auden.
Currently, the published volumes include the _Libretti_, the _Plays_, and
the _Prose 1926-1938_. Worryingly, not formally counted as part of _The
Complete Works_ are either _The English Auden_ or the _Juvenilia_
As the *Poems* for the _Complete_ are "in preparation", this raises the
spectacle of _The English Auden_ (and possibly also the _Juvenilia_) being
replaced by a virtually identical text, with the addition of proper textual
notes. (Everything above was published by Princeton, with the exception of
_The English Auden_ which appeared from Faber in England and Random House in
the States).
(As a sidelight on this, pages 251-406 [of 469 pages in all] of _The English
Auden_ have already been superseded by _Prose 1926-1938_ -- more texts,
fuller details.)
End of story.
If anyone happens to have a copy of "The Platonic Blow", could they contact
me backchannel please, as I've never managed to find a copy of this.
Robin
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