Customer Reviews

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden's work is in a way a challenge to the reader. Many times (Specially in the so called english Auden) it happens that you don't really know what the poem is about or why you like it. As Mr. Fuller says sometimes "Auden's merit lies in his vagueness". The Oxford professor Mr. John Fuller has written a highly accurate work in which he comments every single work published and unpublished by Auden. He states in his prologue that this is not a book for reading "in the normal way", meaning that "W. H. Auden: A Commentary" is a book just as a dictionnary is: A book in which you look for some information but you don't read from the first page until the last as you do it with a novel for instance. I actually don't think Mr. Fuller's opinion to be in this case too fair. In spite of the evident, permanent and necessary reference to Auden's work I beleive the tone and mood of his own comments make this book readable not only as an information book but also as a work in itself. The very word "Commentary" moves to think in a work written in order to illuminate another text. But Mr. Fuller builds his commentary from a wide range of "starting points". Sometimes is Auden's meter, sometimes the structural likness with other poetic form (As the "Sagas" - a nordic poetic form completely unknown to me) or just a philosophical or psychological concept used by Auden in a quite hidden way or lastly Mr. Fuller's own perplexity like in his comment to the poem "The Wanderer". Mr. Fuller's comments never exceed a couple of pages, but there he develops his own way of reading the poem and give us the chance to see this simple fact in action: How does a man read. In addition to this the book provides the whole technical and theoretical background required to enjoy the poem even more than after our vague intuitons. If you look for general observations about Auden's life or work this is not the book for you. But if you are looking for a way to refine your own readings by learning a lot of information hidden in Auden's poems and at the same time contemplate how works the interpretive mind of a great poet when he reads a 20th century classic, this is a perfect chance.

If you want to better understand the poetry of W. H. Auden, and you want to buy only one book of Auden criticism, buy this one. (If you want to get a second and third, buy Mendelson's _Early Auden_ and _Later Auden_.) Fuller succinctly but comprehensively explains every poem Auden ever published. Fuller's treatment pays careful attention to poetic form, literary allusions, contemporary sources, and the development of Auden's poetic sensibilities, including his subsequent revisions of many poems. This is not to say that Fuller's commentary is the last word on any one poem, but he consistently enlightening in his comments, even for readers who are already very familiar with Auden's poetry.

One difficult decision that Fuller evidently had to make early on was how to organize his work. He might have organized it any number of ways, but he opted to order his book according to each volume of poetry Auden published. Originally, that was the right decision. Most early readers of Auden bought his books as they appeared, and since each volume originally stood as an aesthetic whole, Fuller's choice made perfect sense. However, now that a new generation of Auden readers (myself included) is reading Auden through anthologies and through his _Selected Poems_ and _Collected Poems_ (edited by Mendelson), Fuller's commentary can be difficult to use, partly because he does not usually use the titles that Auden later appended to many of his earlier poems. However, that minor inconvenience is more than compensated for by the extensive index.

One of Fuller's best qualities is his lucid prose. One does not have to be a trained literary critic to understand Fuller's writing, which is generally forthright and clear.