Auden: The Complete Poems (finally!)

W. H. Auden: Poems, 1: 1927-1939 (2022)

Way, way back, in 1997 (it must have been), some 25 years ago, when I was first tentatively trying out Amazon.com as a means of obtaining books I couldn't find in the bookshops here in Auckland, I remember that my initial pre-order was for two books I wanted to see the moment they appeared: the Complete Poems of Herman Melville (in the Northwestern-Newberry Edition), and the Complete Poems of W. H. Auden (in the Princeton University Press edition).

It's been a long wait.

But now, at last, after two volumes of 'dramatic works' (1988 & 1993), and no fewer than six volumes of collected prose (1996-2015), it seems that Princeton's complete edition of Auden's works is about to culminate in two volumes of poems. Here's a rough breakdown of the constituent parts of their edition to date:


W. H. Auden: Plays and Other Dramatic Writings: 1928-1938 (1988)

The Complete Works of W. H. Auden:
[with Christopher Isherwood]. Plays and Other Dramatic Writings: 1928-1938. Ed. Edward Mendelson. London: Faber, 1988.
Including: The Dance of Death (1933)[with Christopher Isherwood] The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935)[with Christopher Isherwood] The Ascent of F6 (1936)[with Christopher Isherwood] On the Frontier (1938)

W. H. Auden: Plays and Other Dramatic Writings (1988)

[with Chester Kallman]. Libretti and Other Dramatic Writings: 1939-1973. Ed. Edward Mendelson. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1993.
Including: Paul Bunyan. Music by Benjamin Britten. 1941 (1976)[with Chester Kallman] The Rake's Progress. Music by Igor Stravinsky (1951)[with Chester Kallman] Elegy for Young Lovers. Music by Hans Werner Henze (1956)[with Chester Kallman] The Magic Flute, by Emanuel Schikaneder (1956)[with Chester Kallman] The Bassarids. Music by Hans Werner Henze (1961)[with Chester Kallman] Love's Labour's Lost. Music by Nicolas Nabokov (1973)

W. H. Auden: Libretti and Other Dramatic Writings (1993)

Prose and Travel Books in Verse and Prose. Volume 1: 1926-1938. Ed. Edward Mendelson. London: Faber, 1996.
Including: [with Louis MacNeice] Letters from Iceland (1937)[with T. C. Worsley] Education: Today - and Tomorrow (1939)[with Christopher Isherwood] Journey to a War (1939)

W. H. Auden: Prose and Travel Books in Verse and Prose (1996)

Prose. Volume 2: 1939-1948. Ed. Edward Mendelson. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002.
Including: The Prolific and the Devourer. 1939 (1993)

W. H. Auden: Prose. Volume 2: 1939-1948 (2002)

Prose. Volume 3: 1949-1955. Ed. Edward Mendelson. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008.
Including: The Enchaféd Flood, or The Romantic Iconography of the Sea (1950)

W. H. Auden: Prose. Volume 3: 1949-1955 (2008)

Prose. Volume 4: 1956-1962. Ed. Edward Mendelson. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010.
Including: The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays (1962)

W. H. Auden: Prose. Volume 4: 1956-1962 (2010)

Prose. Volume 5: 1963-1968. Ed. Edward Mendelson. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2015.
Including: Secondary Worlds: The T. S. Eliot Memorial Lectures, Delivered at Eliot College in the University of Kent at Canterbury, October, 1967 (1968)

W. H. Auden: Prose. Volume 5: 1963-1968 (2015)

Prose. Volume 6: 1969-1973. Ed. Edward Mendelson. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2015.
Including: A Certain World: A Commonplace Book (1970)Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

W. H. Auden: Prose. Volume 6: 1969-1973 (2015)

Poems. Volume I: 1927-1939. Ed. Edward Mendelson. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2022.
Including: Poems (1928)Poems (1930 / 1933)The Orators: An English Study (1932)Look, Stranger! [aka On This Island, 1937] (1936)Spain (1937)Another Time (1940)
Poems. Volume II: 1940-1973. Ed. Edward Mendelson. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2022.
Including: New Year Letter [aka The Double Man] (1941)For the Time Being (1945)The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (1947)Nones (1951)The Shield of Achilles (1955)Homage to Clio (1960)About the House (1965)City Without Walls and Other Poems (1969)Academic Graffiti (1971)Epistle to a Godson and Other Poems (1972)Thank You, Fog: Last Poems (1974)


W. H. Auden: Poems, 2: 1940-1973 (2022)

And why, exactly, should this be exciting news for anyone except Auden fanatics? Some time ago I outlined a few of my reasons for feeling so enthusiastic about his work in the following post. Is there more to it than that, though? We are, after all, coming up (next year) to the fiftieth anniversary of his death. Shouldn't we give him a bit of a rest?


Peter Davison, ed.: The Complete Works of George Orwell (1997-98)

I'm afraid not. Like his close contemporary (though not really friend) George Orwell, W. H. Auden maintains his relevance for readers today. I guess one reason why is because both grappled directly with the issues of their day, rather than maintaining some kind of careful aesthetic distance from the ugly events of the mid-twentieth century - among mankind's lowest moments in terms of sheer violence and terror.

Another reason is the way that both of them wrote: in clear, straightforward English, immediately comprehensible to most readers. Take, for example, Auden's 'Refugee Blues', written in 1939 as the true horror of Hitler's policies against the Jews became increasingly undeniable:

... Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go today, my dear, but where shall we go today?

Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said:
‘If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread’;
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
It was Hitler over Europe, saying: ‘They must die’;
We were in his mind, my dear, we were in his mind.

Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren’t German Jews, my dear, but they weren’t German Jews.

Is it poetry or propaganda? At the time many thought that Auden was crossing a line in talking so directly about the issues of the day - 'poetry' was for things like daffodils, and broken hearts, and learned disquisitions on history. It's a matter of taste, I suppose, but when I read lines like the ones below, I have to say if that isn't poetry, I don't know what is:

Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
They weren’t the human race, my dear, they weren’t the human race.

Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
A thousand windows and a thousand doors;
Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.

Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.

All I can say is that as Russian tanks roll again in Europe, and refugees stream west before Putler's armies, it's Auden poems I turn to for a bit of light in the darkness. All of a sudden he seems terrifyingly relevant in a way we probably all hoped he would never be again.



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Ukrainian refugees (The Guardian: 5-3-2022)



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