Theologically, the poem is an attempt to follow Kierkegaard down into the depths of our sin, cultivating the ancient spiritual practice of admitting just how f'ed up we really are. I must confess that I love alliterative verse, but I recognize that the whole technical enterprise was a bit. I felt like I was reading a bizarre chimera of Piers Plowman and Casablanca.
It's one of Auden's signature blends, the twin obscurantism of arcane sites of Western civilization and dated slang. The result is a dissonant clash of registers. I think it is safe to say that the poem does not succeed in accomplishing all of its tasks, but it cannot be faulted for leaving such a monstrous to-do list incomplete.Īlmost the entire poem (and it is long!) is written in Medieval alliterative verse, but in thoroughly modern English. I don't know enough about poetic forms to catch all of the references, but it is at least simultaneously a medieval quest/dream poem, an oblique account of World War II, a landscape poem, a mystical treatise, and a philosophical and psychological thought experiment, with hints of a murder mystery. The poem is not sure what genre it is, which makes it both jungly diverse and plain cacophonous. It is a poem that is more fittingly respected than loved. I don't know enough about poetic forms to catch all of the references, but it is at least simultaneously a medieval quest/dream poem, an oblique account of World War II, a lands The Age of Anxiety is one of Auden's greatest works, indeed probably one of the greatest poems of the Twentieth Century, but I do think the popular verdict is correct. The Age of Anxiety is one of Auden's greatest works, indeed probably one of the greatest poems of the Twentieth Century, but I do think the popular verdict is correct.
#Wh auden age of anxiety full
Alan Jacobs's introduction and thorough annotations help today's readers understand and appreciate the full richness of a poem that contains some of Auden's most powerful and beautiful verse, and that still deserves a central place in the canon of twentieth-century poetry.more This volume-the first annotated, critical edition of the poem-introduces this important work to a new generation of readers by putting it in historical and biographical context and elucidating its difficulties. Yet reviews of the poem were sharply divided, and today, despite its continuing fame, it is unjustly neglected by readers.
Beginning as a conversation among four strangers in a barroom on New York's Third Avenue, Auden's analysis of Western culture during the Second World War won the Pulitzer Prize and inspired a symphony by Leonard Bernstein as well as a ballet by Jerome Robbins.
Auden's last, longest, and most ambitious book-length poem-immediately struck a powerful chord, capturing the imagination of the cultural moment that it diagnosed and named. Beginning as a conversation among four strangers in a barroom on New York's Third Avenue, Auden's analysis of Western culture during the When it was first published in 1947, The Age of Anxiety-W. When it was first published in 1947, The Age of Anxiety-W.
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