The Hidden Law: The Poetry of W.H. AudenIn this study - the fruit of a lifelong critical and imaginative engagement with W H. Auden's works - Anthony Hecht identifies and traces consistent habits of thought and belief within the poet's extensive and varied writings and through his celebrated conversions and repudiations, literary and otherwise. Hecht acknowledges that Auden's poems "both invite the intrusive scrutiny of the cryptographer and deny him access". Yet the readings he offers of poems from every phase of Auden's career, along with dramatic works and critical essays, manage to explicate and illuminate Auden's rich (and often cryptic) allusiveness without murdering to dissect. Among the themes that connect Auden's works are his deep interest in the workings of language; his notion of the ultimate frivolity of art; his interest in the nature of heroism; his understanding of the relation of public to private life; the development of his religious thought; and what Auden called the "hidden law" that governs human existence - a strict and retaliatory force, something like poetic justice, that gives form to our best literature and shapes our personal fates. Hecht identifies these preoccupations in Auden's work - and shows how they cut across the many genres in which he wrote - without losing sight of each poem's individual history and context. As one of Auden's most distinguished poetic heirs, Anthony Hecht is uniquely qualified to illuminate both the reading and the writing of these essential works of twentieth-century literature. |
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Page 58
... least it was one way of thinking . It was given one of its earliest and most majestic expressions in Pico della Mirandola's oration On the Dignity of Man , a text Auden paraphrases in the first of the sequence called Sonnets from China ...
... least it was one way of thinking . It was given one of its earliest and most majestic expressions in Pico della Mirandola's oration On the Dignity of Man , a text Auden paraphrases in the first of the sequence called Sonnets from China ...
Page 75
... least morally innocent , and certainly lost . If at one time the compensation for this loss was the hope of salvation and of eternal happiness in the companionship of saints and angels , the loss of confidence in a heavenly estate ...
... least morally innocent , and certainly lost . If at one time the compensation for this loss was the hope of salvation and of eternal happiness in the companionship of saints and angels , the loss of confidence in a heavenly estate ...
Page 269
... least , psychologically , to reconcile with the first . It deserves full quotation . If we are never alone or always too busy , Perhaps we might even believe what we know is not true : But no one is taken in , at least not all of the ...
... least , psychologically , to reconcile with the first . It deserves full quotation . If we are never alone or always too busy , Perhaps we might even believe what we know is not true : But no one is taken in , at least not all of the ...
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Common terms and phrases
acknowledged addressed admired allowed appears Auden authority become begins believe body Byron called Christian claim clear close Collected comes composed concerns continues course death described dream earlier early effect Eliot entirely essay example expressed eyes fact feel figure final follows give heart hero hope human important innocent interest kind language later least less Letter lines living look means mind moral nature never night once opening pass passage past perhaps play poem poet poetry political possible prayer present reader reason recall reference regard religious represent seems sense serious sexual social society sort speaks stanza suggests things thought turn voice writing written wrote Yeats