My reading of the Auden Selected finds itself severely paused in the Caliban to the Audience segment of The Sea and the Mirror. Do you know, I've never actually got through this bit ever, despite generally being quite a fan of W.H.'s riffs on themes Shakespearian. In fact, the song of the Master and Boatswain might just make it into my all time top-ten favourite poems being one of the few I memorised entirely by accident. I suppose it's the sheer density of the Caliban piece that makes it so forbidding. Anyway, it's managed to stall me yet again.
Bit surprised to realise that these poems were written as the war was going on. I've always thought of them as products of the peaceful fifties, which shows just how wrong you can be. I'm not sure how registering the full context alters my reading, but I've got a feeling it does. Somehow Auden is one of those writers for whom context is everything. The whole 'Thirties' bit seems crucial to any grasp of the earlier stuff. And, my goodness, doesn't he do the whole darkness of our times thing so well? Probably because he's not really doing it so much as feeling it.
It's an interesting exercise to try and get a sense of the totality of the world and what it was up to circa 1940. Puts our worries in perspective.
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