Stephen Spender
THE LIFE OF LlTERATURE *
In 1933, John Lehmann published an anthology called
New
Signatures
which showed that a new and socially conscious group
of poets was writing in English. The writers who immediately at–
tracted attention were
w.
H. Auden, Cecil Day Lewis, Rex Warner,
William Empson, Julian Bell and myself. Of these, Empson was com–
plicated, abstruse, very unlike the others.
A year later, my first volume,
Poems,
was published. I was pleased
and rather relieved that they were so well received. But nothing that
anyone wrote about my poems could prove what I wanted to be
proved: that they were good. Nor was it so easy to be sure that the
critics who said they were bad were not right. For these critics always
expressed themselves much more cleverly than the ones who liked
my work. Nearly all writers have these secret feelings about criticism:
as though in the depths of their work they were writing for someone
whom they know they can never please. And there is a further com–
plication. Secretly the poet is not only writing for someone who
does not like his work, he is also writing for everyone, and is discon–
certed at being told that he is difficult, unmusical, and so on. In a
sense, he only wants to please.
A writer is on trial, and his works are his "case." Before he has
published he thinks that his "case" will be decided with
his
books.
Soon he realizes that the most he can hope for is that his "case" will
go on being considered after he is dead.
We were a "new generation," but it took me sometime to
appreciate the meaning of this phrase. There was a generation of
writers ten or twenty years older than ourselves labeled "Blooms-
*
This is the third part of a chapter from an autobiographical work in progress.
The first and second parts appeared in the November and December issues.
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