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PARTISAN REVIEW
DM:
Let's go on to two other people probably more pleasing for you
to talk about. You knew Auden and Akhmatova, and they seem to
have been very important to you. Could you say something about
Auden and also about Akhmatova, how they struck you or how they
affected you?
JE:
I can tell you how. They turned out to be people whom I found
that I could love. Or, that is, if I have a capacity for loving, those
two allowed me to exercise it, presumably to the fullest. To the ex–
tent that I think - oddly enough, not so much about Akhmatova but
about Auden - sometimes that I am he. That shouldn't be reported,
perhaps, because they would fire me everywhere.
Essentially, what you do love in a poet like Auden is not the
verses. Obviously you remember, you memorize, you internalize
the verse, but you internalize it and internalize it and internalize it
until the point comes when he occupies in you more of a place
perhaps than you yourself occupy. Auden, in my mind, in my heart,
occupies far greater room than anything or anybody else on the
earth. As simple as that. Dead or alive or whatever. It's a tremen–
dously strange thing, or maybe I'm freaking out, or maybe I freaked
out at a certain time, or maybe I've just gone mad. I simply think
about him too often. In a sense, I can go as far as to say that, if I
could supply an index to my daily mental operation, I think Auden
and his lines would pop up more frequently there, would occupy
more pages, so to speak, than anything else. And similarly Akhma–
tova, though to a lesser extent, oddly enough, I must confess. Well, I
shouldn't pretend.
Both of them I think gave me, whatever was given me, almost
the cue or the key for the voice, for the tonality, for the posture
towards reality. In a sense, I think that their poems to a certain ex–
tent-some of Akhmatova's and quite a lot of Auden's-are written
by me, or that I'm the owner. That is, it doesn't matter what I do in
my attitude towards people, in my attitude towards what I'm writ–
ing. I know that I'm myself, that gender distinguishes me from both
of them, I would say, in many ways . But I sort oflive their lives. Not
that I'm a postscript to either one of them. Both would rebel against
that. But to myself it's more sensible or more pleasant perhaps to
think that I'm a postscript to them than that I'm leading my own life.
I happen to think of myself as somebody who loves Auden or loves
Akhmatova more than myself. It's obviously an exaggeration, but
it's an exaggeration I feel comfortable with sometimes. I know quite
clearly one thing about both of them: that they were both better than
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