Stop all the clocks…

What a great pleasure it was to hear Simon Callow reading WH Auden’s famous poem, Funeral Blues, at Poet in the City’s WH Auden event this week.

Simon Callow is of course famous for playing the role of the ebullient Gareth in the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral, whose premature death results in the eponymous funeral. In an unforgettable scene Gareth’s lover (played by John Hannah) reads the Auden poem in the church. Simon Callow recalls amusingly how often people praise him for his role in the funeral scene!

It is 100 years since the birth of WH Auden. The event, held jointly with the Auden Society, provided a fitting culmination to the centenary year, which has seen many fantastic celebrations of the poet’s life and works. However, I have not myself attended an event which so succinctly summarised the range and brilliance of Auden’s poetry, and his enduring appeal for new generations. As usual with Poet in the City the event was also full of poetry.

We were immensely lucky, of course, to have some of the world’s leading Auden specialists on the panel. Katherine Bucknell, Auden specialist and acclaimed novelist, started by talking about the many different hats worn by Auden, from the wide-brimmed felt hat of a bohemian, to a shop-keeper’s bowler hat and a working man’s flat cap. The hats, she said, could be seen as a metaphor for the chameleon-like character of the poet himself.

Peter Mudford, who was formerly married to Auden’s niece Rita, recalled some of his own personal memories of the poet, including a supper at Simpson’s on the Strand when Wystan spontaneously sang ‘Take back your Mink, take back your pearls…’ to the bemused waiters and clientele. More seriously he commented on how often lines from the poems come back to him in his daily life.

John Fuller, a distinguished Auden specialist, said that newcomers to Auden’s poetry should not worry too much about catching the meaning of every last phrase. They should just let the beauty of the language wash over them. Amongst other things he read the extraordinary poem The Age of Anxiety.

Lachlan Mackinnon, another leading Auden expert, read the fascinating and complicated poem Streams, with its extraordinary, humorous and disturbing images, such as a cream and golden coach drawn by two baby locomotives.

Simon Callow spoke very interestingly about the camp and theatrical side of Auden’s persona and how, unlike his friend Christopher Isherwood, he always seemed to remain slightly uncomfortable with his homosexuality. Although Lachlan also noted that, for much of Auden’s life, being gay had been a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment.

Simon’s wonderful readings of Epitaph on a Tyrant, Night Mail, and Funeral Blues reminded us of Auden’s nearly universal popularity and accessibility. He was almost the last English poet whose publications were public events, with queues forming outside bookshops, and first editions sold out within 24 hours. Without sacrificing any of its complexity or its emotional depth his poetry reached out to large numbers of people.

When John Hannah recited the lines ‘Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone…’ in the movie, the film-makers unintentionally ignited a new passion for WH Auden’s poetry amongst many people who did not regard themselves as poetry fans. It was like that again at the Poet in the City event this week. The audience of 230 people in the Great Room at Christie’s sat in complete silence as the Auden poems were read. I for one had shivers running down my spine all over again!

Comments

[Rehan Qayoom]

I was invited to the Auden evening through the Auden Society of whom I am a member. Past the glitzy Ritz hotel into Christie’s where the event was to take place. The foyer was enticingly bathed in purple light but sadly my name was missing from the guest list. I was not the only one – I told the lady I was a member of the Auden Society which seemed to alleviate her worries a bit in case I was wearing a bomb, she took my name down and allowed me inside. The actor Simon Callow was there from the film Four Weddings and a Funeral in which Auden’s poem Funeral Blues featured which Simon Callow also recited later that evening along with ‘Night Mail’ ‘Epitaph on a Tyrant’ and ‘August 1968.’

I introduced myself to Professor Mudford who has now retired. He was the husband of Auden’s niece and for whose wedding Auden wrote his poem EPITHALAMIUM. He remembered my face but not my name which is just as well and good/fair enough! He asked what I was doing now and I said I was writing a book on the Agapemonites and explained who they were. He was one of the best lecturers at Birkbeck only to be rivaled by Dr Dutton and I commended him on his lecture on Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (which put a match to my interest in Oscar Wilde). He asked me whether I wrote poetry myself for I told him being an undergraduate had broadened my knowledge a lot and that I didn’t only, as a result, read stuff of interest to myself alone! He had asked me how I was finding the course which no other lecturer had done until then – I thought it was extremely kind of him to do so. He also suggested I show Professor Rowe the copy of the Lamp & Owl with my poem in it. I Didn’t. He wasn’t lecturing us that term and would probably have been difficult to get hold of. He also delivered a lecture on Tom Stoppard’s ARCADIA.

The first speaker was Katherine Bucknell who originally co-founded the Auden Society and has edited his juvenilia. She recited ‘The Watershed.’ She mentioned the various types of hats that Auden wore throughout his life, representative of the Chameleon Poet. Among them a working class flat cap (Tony Harrison’s mother made him wear one, saying it made him look more working class), a wide-brimmed felt hat, a shop-keeper’s bowler hat.

John Fuller next who recently brought out an updated edition of his commentary on Auden. Professor Inglesfield recommended that we buy the new and “Fuller, if you excuse the pun commentary.’ He started off by reading from ‘The Age of Anxiety’ and then recited the poem ‘As He Is’ which he describes as another Quest poem that “leads to a state of anxiety at which one becomes what he called in theory ‘receptive to religious conversion.” There is a phrase in this poem ‘defeat of grief’ which Aleem also uses literally in Urdu, and both terms are unique to the poets and the languages they wrote in. John Fuller said that ‘Another Time’ was “possibly his best collection.” and also quoted Auden as saying that “To appreciate artists one must know a few barmaids and vice-versa.”

Lachlan Mackinnon then recited STREAMS and asked how serious was Auden. Of course for him the truly serious was also truly frivolous, he writes as much somewhere. He pointed out the lines

Suddenly, over the lawn we started to run
for, lo, through the trees, in a cream and golden coach
drawn by two baby locomotives
the god of mortal doting approached us
flanked by his bodyguard, those hairy armigers in green
who laugh at thunderstorms and weep at a blue sky:
He thanked us for our cheers of homage,
and promised X and Y a passion undying.

This is Auden’s vision of Eros in his chariot.

Professor Mudford said that when in his presence one recognized that “one was in the presence of genius.” He first met Auden in 1959. He related an incident when he and his ex-wife Rita were driving him around London and asked “Where would you like to have dinner?” Professor Mudford said that his heart sank when Auden replied “I’d like to go to Simpson's-in-the-Strand.” On the way he started to recite from his latest volume of poems Academic Graffiti. What they heard in one of the (over 60) clerihews from the book went like this

“When the young Kant
Was told to kiss his aunt, [typically pronounced ‘ant’]
He obeyed the Categorical Must,
But only just. I think you went through a red light my dear.”

He shuffled in in his trademark carpet slippers as usual and daunting t-shirt, refused to look at the menu, said “I’ll have a large trout” then proceeded to sing loudly (much to the bemusement of the clientele) “Take back your mink / take back your pearls.” Simpson’s being a good restaurant bought him his trout and generally tolerated his presence. Professor Mudford recited ‘Miss Gee’ with its classic, inimitable lines

She passed by the loving couples,
She turned her head away:
She passed by the loving couples
And they didn’t ask her to stay.

Then he recited ‘The More Loving One’ and ‘As I Walked Out One Evening.’ Auden, with his theory of the Good Place, the chief focus of my own writing on him was, he said “very much aware that we were products of different localities and places”

England to me is my mother tongue
And what I did when I was young

Anita Money, Auden’s niece was there but I didn’t see her. There was a man from India seated to my right who asked me if I was a poet. Around 230 people attended the evening.

[Leslie]

It is a great thing! And I Showed it to some friends and they agreed it's good!