Posted by zeugma on February 7, 2005, at 16:40:56
In reply to Re: Auden, posted by Susan47 on February 7, 2005, at 15:15:37
Ah, Auden...he is so much better than his editors, who don't generally share his poetic conscience (read: reverence for truth) and like a snappy line better than a "true" one. Well, I'm oversimplifying... but I'll take an example. "Setempber 1, 1939" is one of his most famous poems, containing the famous line "We must love one another, or die." Sometime later, he realized that we would die anyway, and changed it to the far less resonant "We must love one another, and die." This is sad stuff :-( So he ditched the poem altogether, and it was this cleaned-up Auden that I first encountered in a hardcover edition in my parents' collection. The sonnet I quoted was included under the title "Embassy." His dark, beautiful vision comes through more clearly, I think, for his restless dissatisfaction with his most famous poems. That edition has as epigraph
In a hard land, where eggs are dear,
And climbing to harder by a stonier
Track- we hear it: the right song
For the wrong time of year.I'd like to know where these lines come from- i assume they're by auden himself, though not from any poem included in that edition.
I feel like right now is the wrong time of year for anything, indeed.
-z
poster:zeugma
thread:452970
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20050118/msgs/454485.html