BOOKS
AUDEN IN MID·CAREER
AUDEN.
By
Richllrd Hog
gil
rt.
YlIle University Press. $3.75.
Mr. Hoggart says: "This essay is meant to be an introduction
only, a running of the finger down certain aspects of Auden's verse, so
that the general reader may tum to it more readily." Mr. Hoggart suc–
ceeded with me: his book led me to re-read Auden himself. But having
done so, I find that I am somewhat dissatisfied with what Mr. Hoggart
has done. I wish that he had gone a little bit farther, ventured upon a
few generalizations-in short, been more explicit about his picture of
Auden's art and its development. There is much to be said for trying
to introduce a poet to new readers, instead of judging him; yet some
sort of bias is inevitable, and perhaps it is better to admit it dearly. Mr.
Hoggart's book may be described as a reading of Auden, with many
quotations, and with elucidations of passages and stylistic devices; and
it is apparently addressed to readers who do not yet like modem verse.
In commending Auden to his general reader, Mr. Hoggart lays
great emphasis on Auden's insight into the notorious plight of Our
Time. He quotes Auden: "In grasping the character of a society, as in
judging the character of an individual, no documents, statistics, 'ob–
jective' measurements can ever compete with the single intuitive glance."
And he applies the formula to Auden's verse: "It is this kind of percep–
tion which allows Auden to pass his eye over a situation, a web of
relationships or a complex of emotional nuances, and detect the typical
feature, the important connection.... Its lucidity is both exciting and
liberating to the reader, presumably because it sets some part of what
was previously amorphous into a highly selective but revealing pattern:
And nervous people who will never marry
Live upon dividends in the old world cottages
With an animal for friend and a volume of memoirs."
This is a fair sample of Mr. Hoggart's rather awkward writing, and it
indicates his own interest in Auden as a seer. When he says that Auden's
lucidity is exciting and liberating, he is right; but if the reader seeks
in Auden for some consistent diagnosis of our social ills-what we look
