PARTISAN REVIEW
-whose hugeness really lies not in his power over them but
in
their
power over him in his helplessness. Probably the romantic, who is
a child in the dark in his creating is nearer the heart of humanity
than the anti-Romantic because we are all ultimately children in the
dark. But here I am only concerned with saying that Auden
is
extra–
ordinary. He has a great grasp of seeing experiences as illustrations of
an abstract pattern. In this respect the only person I have met who
compares with him
is
Andre Malraux who uses his intelligence with
the same purposiveness: to relate everything to the pattern which at
some phase of his own development becomes the whole of life for him.
At Oxford the legendary Auden was somewhat crude, if it
is
true that he kept on his mantelpiece a decaying orange, quite mil–
dewed where it faced the wall, in order to remind himself of the
fate of the West; and
in
his desk a loaded revolver always ready for
the clinical end which, if he decided life was a failure, he would ac–
complish without a qualm. He also had a reputation for a certain
ruthlessness in his behavior to other undergraduates. What to me was
most terrifying was the way in which those, like Gabriel Carritt, who
knew him well would say "Really Auden is very kind and quite
simple."
At the age of twenty-one, Auden had a very clear sense of his
potentialities and an idea of the influence he could e."<ercise on the
people around him. He had a picture of an intellectual and literary
landscape into which he would move as soon as the temporary con–
venience of his life at Oxford was over.
I first met him at a luncheon where he snubbed me. Probably
he
did this because my manner was extremely embarrassing. To my
surprise after this meal he invited me, in a few days' time to call
on
him.
One did not drop in on Auden. His particular type of affec–
tation at Oxford was excessive control of every moment of his day.
When I went in, he was seated with a lamp at his elbow, so that the
light was directed at me and he was in darkness. He looked up rather
abruptly, told me to sit down, and began to question me. I told him
that I had read a poem of his recently in one of the Oxford maga–
zines and that I liked it very much. "What did you like about it?"
he asked disconcertingly. I said: "I liked the climatic part," by which
I meant to be saying, rather obliquely that I liked the climax. "What
do you mean, the 'climatic' part?" he asked, "That interests me.
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