Auden and Christianity [Hardcover]

Arthur Kirsch (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 11, 2005

One of the twentieth century’s most important poets, W. H. Auden stands as an eloquent example of an individual within whom thought and faith not only coexist but indeed nourish each other. This book is the first to explore in detail how Auden’s religious faith helped him to come to terms with himself as an artist and as a man, despite his early disinterest in religion and his homosexuality. Auden and Christianity shows also how Auden’s Anglican faith informs, and is often the explicit subject of, his poetry and prose.

Arthur Kirsch, a leading Auden scholar, discusses the poet’s boyhood religious experience and the works he wrote before emigrating to the United States as well as his formal return to the Anglican Communion at the beginning of World War II. Kirsch then focuses on Auden’s criticism and on neglected and underestimated works of the poet’s later years. Through insightful readings of Auden’s writings and biography, Kirsch documents that Auden’s faith and his religious doubt were the matrix of his work and life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Kirsch contributes greatly to our understanding of 20th-century poet W.H. Auden by giving careful consideration to the ways theology and faith informed his work. One of the best elements is the book's close analysis of many of Auden's major poems, including short ones like "Musée des Beaux Arts" and "New Year Letter," as well as longer works such as "For the Time Being" and "Horae Canonicae." The reader is treated to long snippets of Auden's poetry, along with Kirsch's helpful analysis of the poet's evolving theological vision. Kirsch teases out themes and some ironies in Auden's more religious poetry, such as his insistence on the importance of the body in worship when he, as a homosexual man, remained ambivalent about whether his own body was sinful. (Oct. 11)
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From Booklist

Famous for his declaration that "Poetry makes nothing happen," W. H. Auden thought quite differently about Christianity, which he regarded as possessing a marvelous power to change human lives. Inexplicably, however, critics have largely neglected the effects of Auden's mature commitment to Christianity. Kirsch remedies that neglect with this much-needed study of how Auden's religious beliefs shaped his artistic vision. He depicts Auden as an often perplexed and frequently heterodox believer, one who wrestled with profound doubts. But whatever his theological irregularities, Auden voiced a Christian faith both intense and poignant in poems such as "For the Time Being" and "Horae Canonicae." And it is a Christian humility and self-discipline that Kirsch sees in Auden's oft-noted metrical virtuosity. Neither a dogmatist nor a homilist, Auden always wrote as one simply overwhelmed at both the one-time miracle of divine love manifest in Jesus and the ongoing miracle of human love expressed in forgiveness and acceptance. A fascinating blending of aesthetics and theology. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; First Edition ~1st Printing edition (October 11, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300108141
• ISBN-13: 978-0300108149
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,422,770 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential Overview of Auden's Christianity, February 4, 2009

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S. Schuler - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Auden and Christianity (Hardcover)

The older W. H. Auden was not outspoken about his religious convictions, but his Christianity does underpin many of his later poems, and the most sensitive readers of Auden have always known it. Now Arthur Kirsch has produced an excellent, readable study of this often-neglected aspect of Auden's life and poetry. The book is short and accessible to the student, but also interesting to the specialist. Kirsch demonstrates, conclusively I think, what other critics like Monroe Spears and Edward Mendelson have suggested more generally: that Auden's Christianity in all its peculiarities is central to the poetry of his middle and later periods. Other critics have argued that the Christianity that Auden espoused in the early 1940s was a fatal imposition upon an otherwise brilliant early career, but Kirsch reveals the extent to which Auden's religion informed and energized many of his well-known poems, even those that are admired by readers who despise Auden's religion.

Kirsch admits that he writes the book "from the outside," that is, as a non-Christian. That is both an asset and a liability. Kirsch's personal disinterestedness in the Christian religion allows him to explore Auden's somewhat heterodox views without being tempted to shoehorn the poet into a artificially orthodox categories, though there are points at which Kirsch ascribes to Auden more heterodox ideas than are necessarily warranted by the best evidence available. (For example, his account on pages 20-22 of Auden's doubting the resurrection of Christ should be more nuanced.) Nevertheless, Kirsch is almost always accurate in his assessment of Auden's personal beliefs and produces sound but not copious evidence from both poetry and prose to make a compelling case. But as a non-Christian, Kirsch is not always aware of certain theological nuances that were important to Auden. A reader will search in vain for detailed explanations of Auden's "Augustinian" outlook on human nature, for instance, or for his early antipathy towards "natural law." To be fair though, Kirsch did not set out to write a detailed account of the theological particularities of Auden's religion, so it is understandable that he occasionally conflates distinct theological ideas and overgeneralizes about the variegated nature of Christianity generally. However much a theologically nuanced book on Auden's religion would help readers of Auden, this is not that book. But it is the best comprehensive overview of Auden's religion that we have so far seen, and for that all readers of Auden must be grateful.

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A glimpse into the soul of a man, who like us all battles with piety and thankfully loses more often than not..., August 23, 2009

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Cl Smith "AfricanJade" (U.S.A.) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Auden and Christianity (Hardcover)

I adore WH Auden's gifted poetry and in this book we have a glimpse at his conflicted tussle with Christianity. It is such a human book, written about an intensely human, yet magnificent poet that it is well worth buying for those not convinced by over pious texts and those who relate to the contradictions, conflict and peace found within Christianity and belief.