Wystan Hugh (W.H.) Auden (1907-1973) is considered one of the finest, if not the finest, poet of the mid-20th century. He had a large influence on poetry, including American poetry. Born in Britain, he emigrated to the United States in his 30s and became a U.S. citizen, and he eventually managed to win both a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue) and a National Book Award for Poetry (The Shield of Achilles).
Auden exercised considerable influence in literary circles. He was first a poet, yes, but he was also a critic, a lecturer, a playwright, and a librettist for opera. Many have pointed out that no one since Auden has had such a literary influence on writing in English, an influence that was global. His style and his intellect had a significant influence on such poets as Robert Lowell, John Ashbery, James Merrill, the New Formalists, Maxine Kumin, and many others. His influence could also work the opposite way – it was so pervasive that the Beat Generation poets were said to be writing like they did in reaction to Auden.
My favorite period of American literary history is roughly 1895 to 1940. As literary periods go, it’s a large swath of time, and it includes both the Realists and Modernists (and perhaps it’s because I don’t see a clear delineation between those two schools of literature).
For novelists, that includes Stephen Crane, Jack London, Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner. My wife thinks I’m slightly crazy, but I’m one of the few people she’s ever heard of who enjoys reading Faulkner.
For poets, it’s T.S. Eliot, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Edgar Lee Masters, Vachel Lindsay, Robert Frost, and others – “others” including Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935).
British poet and writerMatthew Hollishas told the story of a poem, arguably the most significant poem of the 20thcentury.
The year 1922 was an amazing year for authors and literary creations. The Shakespeare & Co. Bookstore in Paris published Ulysses by James Joyce. Sinclair Lewis published Babbitt. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Beautiful and the Damned. Herman Hesse published Siddhartha. Virginia Wolff wrote Jacob’s Room. And T.S. Eliot published that poem, The Waste Land. Literary Modernism was being born, and Joyce, Wolff, and Eliot had much to do with it.
The year
1922 isn’t especially remembered as a year of major significance (it wasn’t a
presidential election year, for one thing), but it was a momentous year in
history nonetheless. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was formed after
five years of civil war. Gandhi was sentenced to prison in India by the
British. The first successful treatment of diabetes with insulin was reported
in Canada. The BBC was formed in the UK. The Lincoln Memorial was dedicated. Reader’s Digest was launched, and soon
became the most popular magazine in America. And speaking of civil war, one
erupted in Ireland.
In
literature, 1922 is now considered to have witnessed a revolution in fiction and
poetry. More than a decade later, the writer Willa Cather
called 1922 “the year the world broke in two,” and that sentiment has been
borrowed for the title of one of two recent books on what happened in the
literary world that year. – events that still affect literature almost 100
years later.
Wallace
Stevens (1879-1955) won two National Book Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for
poetry, along with the Bollingen Prize and the Frost Medal. He was one of the
American poets who were considered the high priests of literary modernism, along
with T.S. Eliot, William
Carlos Williams, and Robert Frost. He
was a presence in poetry for more than four decades and had an enormous impact
on poetry’s substance and direction.
Literary studies
of his poetry abound. Several biographies of Stevens were written in the 1980s
and a few in the 1990s. Twenty years after the last major biography, Paul Mariani has
published The
Whole Harmonium: The Life of Wallace Stevens.
It
was in June, I believe, when I saw an item posted by Maureen Doallas on her
blog, Writing Without Paper.
If you know Maureen, she know she is all things art, and this item had to do
with an exhibition at the Tate Britain
on the
work of sculptor Barbara Hepworth. I checked the link and made a note of
it, since we were planning a vacation in London and would be there while the exhibition
was still on (it closed on Oct. 25).
I
was not familiar with Barbara
Hepworth’s work. I wasn’t familiar with 20th century sculpture.
And I wasn’t sure what I thought about the modernist / international style of
sculpture. But these are actually good reasons to see an exhibition, and I did
add it to the list of “possibles” to see.
Early
one morning during the first week we were there, I was power-walking in Pimlico
and went right by the Tate Britain. I saw the banner for the Hepworth
exhibition, and decided I would try to make time for it. A few days later, I
did. (Instead of walking, I took the tube from St. James’s Park to Victoria
Station, and from Victoria Station to Pimlico.) Three blocks later, I was at
the Tate, paid my admission for Hepworth, and went in.
Barbara
Hepworth in 1934 with ‘Mother and Child’ (Getty Images)
Born
in 1903 in Yorkshire, Hepworth was interested in art from a young age. By 17,
she was studying at the Leeds School of Art, and moved to London shortly after,
to study at the Royal College of Art. She fell in love with and eventually
lived with sculptor John
Skeaping, with whom she had a son. They shared studio space. The
relationship lasted until she met and fell in love with Ben Nicholson, with whom
she had triplets. In the years leading up to World War II, Hepworth was making
a name for herself (along with sculptors like Henry Moore), and working
in Modernism and what was
called the International Style.
After
the war, her reputation grew. She and Nicholson were divorced in 1951. She
established her studio in St. Ives in Cornwall, and executed a number of
commissions for the United Nations, art centers, sculpture parks and other
organizations. She died in a fire in her studio in 1975.
Large
and Small Form, 1934; the Piers Art Centre, Orkney.
The
show was arranged in six largish rooms, and mostly (but not entirely) in
chronological order. The first room was mostly smaller, table-top pieces,
carvings in wood and stone. The larger pieces came at the end, but the
exhibition was mostly organized by themes – carving, studio, international
modernism, equilibrium, staging sculpture, and pavilion. Hepworth also worked
in brass, especially for outdoor installations.
Walking
from room to room, one could how she developed concepts of form, including the
human form. Some of the wooden pieces suggested an African influence, but the
spherical shapes she developed were captivating. I couldn’t tell you what they
represented, but I was nonetheless captivated by several of the pieces,
particularly in the international modernism and equilibrium rooms. And I was
struck by the sheer beauty of many of the sculptures she produced. (For an
extra cost, which I paid, the Tate had a very helpful audio guide.)
I
bought a book about Hepworth, British
Artists: Barbara Hepworth by Penelope Curtis, and I wish I had been able
to read it before seeing the show. Curtis provides an overview of Hepworth-s
life and work, a critical history, and the influence she’s had, all in less
than 100 pages but filled with photographs of her sculptures. It’s an excellent
introduction to the artist and international modernism.
I’m
glad I went. I learned something about a period and its sculpture that I knew
precious little about. And the Tate knows how to do an exhibition.
Barbara Hepworth at the Tate Britain
Top photograph: Sculpture with Colour
(Deep Blue and Red) by Barbara Hepworth, 1940; Tate Britain.
