I heard Auden speak at Iowa, and when asked why he cut those lines out of
"September 1st, 1939," he said that they were a lie -- "you're going to die
anyway."
And in fact, Auden diddled with this a lot. He changed it to "We must love
one another and die," then he cut out the stanza altogether, then he cut the
whole poem from his official collected works.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Roger Day" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 4:26 PM
Subject: Re: Dipodic is...? (Re: is dipodic a no-no? )
>I dimly recall Mendelson saying that Auden *did repudiate his younger
> self, reverting to toryism and christianity. I think the dildo in
> question vanished out of prudishness. Defrocked vicar he was
> apparently.
>
> I still like 1st September 1939: I wonder, did he write anything as
> good after? I wonder if that first verse is the beginning of his
> repudiation?
>
> Roger
>
> On 1/24/07, Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> >I just knew you wouldn't be able to resist mentioning the Amazing
>> >Vanishing
>> >Dildo.
>>
>> Well, natch!
>>
>> > But seriously, why did Auden cut his earlier poems like that, to what
>> > is
>> > very often their detriment? Can he really have felt so insecure?
>> >
>> > joanna
>>
>> The reasons he gives (I couch it in those words) were that he had become
>> unhappy with the moral implications of some of the statements in "Spain"
>> and
>> "September 1939" -- the "necessary murder", for instance. But the result
>> is
>> to abolish the problems that the poems uncomfortably raise -- as with
>> the
>> excision of the Kipling/Claudel lines in the Yeats Elegy.
>>
>> I don't think it's *directly political, except perhaps with regard to
>> "Spain", though it's certainly bound up with his shift of attitude in
>> this
>> area that Roger pointed to in an earlier post. Maybe it was just that he
>> became increasingly gaga the longer he was in America, mushing his brain
>> with uppers and downers, or through the involvement with Chester Kalmann.
>>
>> Auden repudiating his younger self?
>>
>> I couldn't work out just when the Claudel bit was cut, whether before or
>> after the first book publication in 1940. It'll be in Mendelsohn's
>> biography or notes somewhere, no doubt, but he tends to scatter
>> information
>> across at least three books, in order to make people or libraries have to
>> buy them all.
>>
>> The Dildo is a different issue, linking to the (re)titling of "Easily, my
>> dear, easily you move your head". The "Platonic Blow" still doesn't
>> appear
>> in any of the various official volumes, though I think Mendelson does
>> gingerly mention it in the biography. Be interesting to see if it's
>> allowed
>> into the on-going Complete Works. If they ever reach the poems.
>>
>> Robin
>>
>
>
> --
> http://www.badstep.net/
> "Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious."
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