|
COPYRIGHT 2005 Modern Humanities Research Association
Stephen Spender: The Authorized Biography. By JOHN SUTHERLAND. London: Viking Penguin. 627 pp. 25 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 0-670-88303-4.
Writing to Spender in April 1942, Auden suggested: 'I believe that you are a very strong, ruthless character [...] you escape from the guilt of having a destructive effect on those weaker than yourself, by imagining you are a sensitive sympathetic plant' (The Map of All My Youth: Early Works, Friends and Influences, ed. by Katherine Bucknell and Nicholas Jenkins (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 82). In reading John Sutherland's authoritative biography, Auden's portrait often comes to mind. One of its leitmotifs is Spender's uncomprehending response to critical attacks. Reviews of The Edge of Being (1949)made him resolve 'not to run the gauntlet of another volume of new poetry ever again' (Sutherland, p. 348). His dispute with the pugilistic...
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
|
Bookmark this article
Print this article
Link to this article
Email this article
Digg It!
Add to del.icio.us
RSS
