Second Thoughts

Having the week off has proved fairly productive in terms of getting some reading done. I've completed my reading of the Auden Selected and found myself having to reconsider the way I look at Auden the Poet. I suppose I've always thought that the late stuff, from the mid-fifties onwards, was hardly vintage and we needed to look at the Thirties Auden for the real thing. Curiously I found myself enjoying the final poems in the Selected a good deal more than anything else (except for the out-and-out 'classics' no one's going to argue with) and starting to wonder whether this was the ultimate authentic voice of the writer, hard-fought for and entirely achieved. I remember W.H. being interviewed by Michael Parkinson for his late night chat show some time in the early seventies and giving a reading of his poem on the moon landings. At the time I thought it disappointing, as a choice and a poem; now it seems perfect for its time and, indeed, these times.

Oddly I've got a feeling that I once read, long ago, one of Auden's later books of poems - was it Homage to Clio? - and got something of the same feeling of enjoyment, but thought that the book must represent something of a falling-off because all the critics seemed to think so. I suppose I really must get hold of the Collected Shorter Poems at some point and see how much I've missed.

Also found myself having second thoughts about Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun. I've never seen a stage version of this but I can just about remember the movie and I've always thought of it as a worthy period piece, representative of the early stages of the movement for civil rights in the U.S. Not exactly great drama, but expressing something that needed to be said at that period. The play swam back into my consciousness through marking IB papers as one or two centres have taken it up in the classroom, and I was pleased to get hold of a copy along with that cache of cheap novels from the shop at Holland Village. It turns out that I underestimated the work. Ms Hansberry, who sadly died very young, was clearly a dramatist of great mythic power. The Younger family have something of the archetypal power of the Lomans about them and the play entirely transcends its period, making the concerns of black Americans in 1959 seem universal in their scope. I'll bet the drama positively fizzes in a theatre.

As ever, it's nice to be wrong, and it makes life a lot more interesting.