Professional Documents
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Poet: W. H. Auden
Presented By: Chris Favero
WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN
Born:
21 February, 1907
York, England
Died:
29 September 1973 (aged 66)
Vienna, Austria
(Wikipedia –
Auden)
Photo courtesy of: news.bbc.co.uk
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/710000/images/_7104 Poet – Man of Letters
47_auden150.jpg
CHILDHOOD
Auden was born in York, England, to George Augustus Auden, a physician, and
Constance Rosalie Bicknell Auden, who had trained (but never served) as a
missionary nurse.
He was the third of three children, all sons; the eldest, George Bernard Auden,
became a farmer, while the second, John Bicknell Auden, became a geologist.
Auden's grandfathers were both Church of England clergymen; he grew up in an
Anglo-Catholic household which followed a "High" form of Anglicanism with
doctrine and ritual resembling those of Roman Catholicism.
(Wikipedia – Auden)
EDUCATION
(Wikipedia –
Auden)
1936 / WORLD EVENTS
January 20 – King George V of the U.K. dies.
February 6 – The IV Olympic Winter Games open in Garmisch-
Partenkirchen, Germany.
March 1 – Construction of Hoover Dam is completed.
March 7 – In violation of the Treaty of Versailles, Nazi
Germany reoccupies the Rhineland.
August 1 – The 1936 Summer Olympics open in Berlin, Germany, and
mark the first live television coverage of a sports event in world history.
November 2 – The BBC launches the world's first regular (then) high-
definition television service.
November 3 – U.S. presidential election, 1936: Franklin D. Roosevelt is
Photo courtesy of: WiciaQ
http://wiciaq.deviantart.com/art/Reflection-of-sorrow-
reelected to a second term in a landslide victory over Alf Landon.
58745568 (Wikipedia – 1936)
FUNERAL BLUES
More commonly known as Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, exists in two very
different versions: the original version in five stanzas, and the 1938 final version in four
stanzas.
The original five-stanza version was a parody of a poem of mourning for a political
leader written for the verse play The Ascent of F6, which Auden wrote with Christopher
Isherwood in 1936. Both the original and the later version share the first and second
stanzas, but the endings are entirely different.
The final four-stanza version of the poem was written to be sung by the soprano Hedli
Anderson, in a setting by Benjamin Britten.
(Wikipedia – Auden)
FUNERAL BLUES - SPOKEN
STANZA I
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
-Summary-
WORKS CITED
Auden Society
Wikipedia - Auden
Wikipedia - 1936
Google Images
YouTube - Reading