W.H. Auden was, of course, one of the 20th Century's greatest poets. This collection of essays, forewards and reviews illuminates his carefully thought out positions on poetry, literature, art, artists and religion. The book covers a period of over thirty years and the organization of the book is not chronological. Though this obscures the development of Auden's thoughts over time, it does serve as a useful almost biographical device. Beginning with the most esoteric discussions of Christian mysticism, the editor proceeds to go deeper and deeper into Auden himself, until he ends with a semi-autobiograhical account. Read in conjunction with the poetry, one feels sometimes that the poems do illustrate the philosophy more clearly than the prose, but notwithstanding, these essays are well worth reading. The essays on Goethe and Wagner are arresting insights about the relationship between the artist and his life that might startle those used to the conventional view of art derives from life. The format leads inevitably to repetition but the repetition is welcome as the concepts are often difficult and benefit from being brought forth in different contexts.

Just as W.H. Auden's verse of the 1930s came to define a specific poetic epoch (that of Spender, MacNeice, Day Lewis - the so-called "Auden generation"), so his body of essays and reviews has assumed an important place among the canon of literary criticism. Still, when we want a concise account of that troubling term "modernism" it is to Auden's "The Dyer's Hand" that we turn; his essays on Shakespeare remain among the best ever composed. The writings collected as "Forewords and Afterwords" serve to reinforce this status. Here Auden's great love of the written word (and of opera, too) is beautifully evinced. While a reasonable proportion of the essays deal with the Germans (Auden, after all, chose to live his final years in Austria), it is when he turns south, beyond the alps, that he is perhaps most interesting. I think it was Clive James who noted Auden's almost Bloomian fascination with Dante, and it is in "The Greeks and Us" (the opening essay of this volume) that we see this preoccupation with the Mediterranean emerge. Here Auden charts a wonderment with the Greeks which begins, as a boy, with the tales of Homer, flowers when one reads the tragedians, and is so inseparable from us that even today "everyone is born either a Platonist or an Aristotelian" (5). This essay - in its erudition, enthusiasm, in its thematic demands - then lays a groundwork from which all his other examinations grow. What is his essay on Kierkegaard but an affirmation of that need to "become fully conscious" (32) which he attributes to the Greeks? Even Wagner, "the greatest of the monsters", comes to embody someone "for better or worse, fully human" (32) when thought of in the terms he constructs in his first essay. Auden himself exemplifies that "civilsed voice" - refreshing, complete, humane, and which he associates with Pope - as he lays parts of the western literary tradition bare in "Forewords and Afterwords". Here his initial essay is a seed from which the others appear to grow, each representing a shoot - at once a departure but each feeding from the same root - on the same tree of human understanding.

In the first half of the book, Auden has written a brilliant set of essays on Christian doctrine, thought and mysticism. The essays on Protestant Mysticism and Kierkegaard are worth the price of the entire volume. Those whose tastes run more to the literary will enjoy the bulk of the work.

The first verse of William Blake's Auguries of Innocence appears in Bronowski, as homage to Ludwig Boltzmann: " To see a World in a Grain of Sand, And a Heaven in a Wild flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour...." William Blake was born in London in 1757. He attended drawing school and thereafter eked out a very modest existence as an engraver and artist. He was not able to find a publisher so in 1789 he himself engraved and published Songs of Innocence and The Book of Thel. Blake died in 1827. Blake was one of many 'romantic poets' of that epoch. Auden and Pearson point out that the romantic definition of man appears towards the end of the eighteenth century. The divine element that man possesses is not power nor free will of reason, but self-consciousness. Man can see possibilities, he can imagine states of existence other than they are.

One of the annoying things about the received opinion about the Romantic poets is the statement that there were exactly six of them--Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, and Shelley. This pronouncement is usually delivered with equal conviction to assertions you usually hear only in the natural sciences--e.g., that there are three kinds of human muscle (cardiac, striated, and slow-flexing) and two kinds of stony drip-accreted icicles in caves (stalactites and stalagmites). Nor elsewhere in the area of literature do you quite hear that there were so many Russian realist novelists, so many French Symbolist poets, so many English medieval poets, etc. So it's something of a relief to read in the editors' introduction to the "Portable Romantic Poets" that American romantics are included as well, because poets don't just arrest their reading, as anthologizers usually arrest their selecting, at continental or national boundaries. It's also welcome to see the inclusion of poets who are sometimes left out because they might be felt to be minor or unpopular (Landor) or generically different (Burns) by anthologizers. This anthology is a welcome corrective to received wisdom about who actually qualifies as a Romantic. And the efficient introduction is a minor masterpiece of cultural exposition as well.

Far be it from me to critique these poets, but I can say something about this particular presentation. It's a handy little volume, with a several-page introduction providing historical context, and a several-page calendar of British and American poetry from 1750 to around 1850. The calendar doesn't just list poetry, it includes events like "Watt's steam engine patented" and "Lewis and Clark Expedition" as well as the publication of novels and music, so context is well established. At the back of the book is an index of poems by title and by first line, and there's a set of biographical notes on the poets.

If you want to know what romantic poetry's all about, take a look at this. I don't know how an English Lit Ph.D. would rate this book but I think it's a nice collection.

I will admit to being slightly put off by the text when I first started reading it. However, once past the unique construction of grammar and syntax, it was an enjoyable experience. I found the filter of the English class system, homosexuality and 1920's mores an interesting perspective. I would recommend reading some of Isherwood's other texts before undertaking this one as many of the stories and characters are freely referenced and revealed in a truer light. The descriptions of Germany are unique to his age and thoroughly fascinating. The story of the man he tries to save from the Nazi's is interesting, but I particularly liked the end of the novel where he broaches the future and seeking love, and true companionship. Overall I fine read.

This book is one of a kind....brilliant, great, adventurous, a classic. Words do not describe it. Isherwood lays evertything on the table. He shows all his cards. This is one of the most exciting books I've ever read. I'm a college student and I skipped all of the ten thousand other books I have to read in order to read this one. It was not a waste of time. Once you get into this book it's a blast. The best part is following Isherwood across Europe. If you want the definitive feeling about the Modern Era read this book. You will get to know such characters as EM Forster, W.H. Auden, and Virginia Woolfe.....Gee, ever heard of them? This is the last great classic Isherwood wrote. I was so entranced by the words that I stayed up all night to finnish it. It's defintiely on my all time favorite list.

Christopher Isherwood makes it clear in his introduction that this book will be candid about his homosexuality. It begins with his move to Berlin and covers the time up to his move to America. There are fascinating anecdotes: the character of Sally Bowles (later made famous by "Cabaret") was named after the then unknown but handsome American Paul Bowles. Isherwood read E.M. Forster's "Maurice" in manuscript, decades before it was published. These are just a few. And note: his "Diaries: Volume 1" begins just *after* this book (the earlier diaries were destroyed)

Although we should all be grateful to have WH Auden's thoughts on the Bard - and they are very novel observations - I can't help but feel slightly disappointed by this collection of lectures. It is amazing that his students took such diligent notes and that Arthur Kirsch managed to transcribe them so that we can almost feel Auden talking to us. However, I was forced to give it three stars because (and this is irrational) I just didn't feel like I connected with his ideas. His analysis of the characters is very modern and is definitely a new and refreshing perspective from what we all learned. His lecture on the Merchant of Venice, I thought, was the most interesting. However, I think that it was maybe a little too novel and provoking, a little too detached from the actual symbolism of the plays. I enjoyed this book, but I'm just not sure I have been convinced or particularly impressed with these lectures. Maybe it's just me...

Reading each of Auden's lectures will not make you an expert on any aspect of the plays or poems - he doesn't aim to be comprehensive. Instead, Auden engages you in one or two key aspects from each play. Subsequently, the book could have been called "Conversations about Shakespeare."

Occasionally, as in "Julius Caesar" or "King Lear," Auden is direct and focused. Here you will get a good, general view of these plays. But more often he dives into a theme, leaving the specifics of the play far behind. Reading some lectures I would ask myself, "Is he going to talk about the play or is he going to stick with this?" In the lecture about "As You Like It," he goes on for the first seven pages about the pastoral play. You would think this would be annoying, but Auden's easy manner keeps you hooked. Then in the end you will have learned something new, something special to Auden's perspective.

Some of the themes can be pretty high brow, but usually the are educational and entertaining. And this off-the-beaten-path approach is what makes the lectures unique.

If you're looking for the exact historical context of a play or a lengthy essay about some character, read the introduction from a paperback copy of a play. Auden's lectures will teach you a little extra you won't find anywhere else.

Imagine trying to assemble lectures made close to 50 years ago from assorted notes and other papers. This is what Kirsch has managed to achieve in an excellent book that is superbly edited and written. W.H. Auden appears as a sensible and balanced critic of Shakespeare and his observations are always telling. I really like his chapter on Macbeth even though Auden claims that he has nothing to offer. I am just so pleased that Kirsch took the time to research and compile this book. An intense labour of love that will repay countless readings.

For years, I have heard about this book. After reading it, I am not that thrilled. I would suggest purchasing the JR Ackerly biography, as opposed to this. It's a bit sanitized for my taste.

Ackerley, a subtle and unassuming writer, has lately been quietly adopted as a "gay" writer. The term seems to have had less meaning in Ackerley's time than in ours. "My Father and Myself" would perhaps have been, at the time it was written, a suspenseful tale; it is constructed almost as a mystery. The modern reader, alert to every faint whiff of suggested homosexuality, will have guessed the memoir's (un-)shattering conclusion well before he has reached the end. No matter: Ackerley could've written elegantly and compellingly about stock-car racing, or peeling paint; his material here--his father's past and his own youth--is of universal interest, and of particular interest to unhappy sons.

The NYRB Classics series pretty much started out with a slew of reprints of the cult writer J.R. Ackerley, including his three memoirs (this, MY DOG TULIP and HINDOO HOLIDAY) and his one novel (WE THINK THE WORLD OF YOU). This, I would say, is easily his finest work. Ackerley's masterful reconstruction of his father's mysterious lovelife (comprising two unwed households and several unexplained longterm "friendships" with wealthy men) and his own conflicted sex life as a gay man in early twentieth-century London. Ackerley's tone always seems extremely honest, and while the narrative never comes to any absolute conclusions about Ackerley's father you're left convinced that these omissions and gaps are meaningful in and of themselves. This is as about a fine and interesting a memoir as I can imagine.

It's a nice little book, that's it. It has some poems about Tolkien and his world with no rhymes (mostly) and some quotes. Some older people or some professors :) might like it, but not me. The only reason I gave it three stars is because it had two funny poems in there.

An essay of Auden's does appear in the book. It is in fact, a hodgepodge of Tolkien related material, mostly essays (including a short biography) but also stories set in Middle Earth, songs, poems, word games, and even recipies written by other authors. It is an interseting look at Tolkien fandom. I found the black & white interior illustrations simply breathtaking the first time I saw this book. For me, it is the most important Tolkien related book not actually written by him, and the one that is most worth having. I found it at a library over ten years ago, and recently gave up hope of ever seeing it again, but here it is.

It's popular now-a-days to call communism "out of touch" and socialism "out of style." Brecht's question, then: Who should own anything? Should possession be nine-tenths of the law? Or should the laws of ownership remain an open-ended affair? -- could be called a foregone conclusion.

Woe to the foregone conclusion, then. Its trial date is ever on the way.

Laughably, the Helms-Burton bill, recently signed into law by Pres. Bill Clinton, is a giggle back to Brecht's discussion. And a silly one. One should think that were the United States to be in the business of giving back land "once stolen," that the Navajo, Sioux, Chippewa, et. al. would be first in line.

Not so!

Apparently, Cuba's land belongs not to its current owners, but to its capitalists of 40 years hence. Oh, silliness. Oh, amusement.

So ask Brecht's question, then, not as a socialist, a communist or a red. Ask it as a human being. To whom does anything belong? What is belonging? What is ownership? Who owns anything? When - and why - does ownership occasionally turn on its own head?

I just got this and was a bit surprised. I was told and had always thought that this was by the poet W.H. Auden, who was very involved with Greek and Icelandic (he edited the Portable Greek Reader among other things), and figured that "H.W." was just a typo for "W.H.". It's not--this is indeed by an H.W. Auden, of Edinburgh. And, rather than the wit and urbanity I was expecting from the poet, I find a rather straight-forward English to Ancient Greek vocabulary put together by a 19th-century schoolman.

So it was a bit of a disappointment, but I soon got over it. There are a couple (though also hard-to-find) English to Ancient Greek dictionaries I know of: "An English-Greek Lexicon" by G.M. Edwards (Cambridge UP, 1930, long out of print) and S.C. Woodhouse's "English-Greek Dictionary: A Vocabulary of the Attic Language" (ISBN 0-415-15154-6, reprinted by Routledge and available at Amazon); but Auden's little book is well worth getting. I have both the others mentioned, but I'm glad to have Auden's as well.

The difference is simply that he classifies things by topic, rather than alphabetization. The 100 pages of translations are divided up (with subdivisions) into:

The World and Nature
Space and Time
The Human Body
Human Life; Its Various Relations
Mind
Arts and Sciences
Speech and Writing
Philosophy
Emotions, Character
Virtue and Vice
Religion
Domestic Life
Commerce and Agriculture
The State
Law and Justic
Military Matters
Naval Matters
Miscellaneous
Proverbs

The one flaw to this book is that there are a lot of mistakes in the accents--either the wrong accent or placed on the wrong syllable. It's not a big deal, but they should've corrected that for the reprint.

It's a great book though for the bathroom or for waiting for a bus or just chillin' at some party you don't want to be at. You read the English version, think how you'd say that in ancient Greek, and then see how Plato and Thucydides say it. It's fun, it's a great price, and if you're still reading this review by now then you should definitely buy it.

History in English Words is a fascinating archeological exploration of societies precursor to those of today that speak the English language. Where nothing or little exists in the archaeological ruins, words reveal lifestyle, thought and patterns of migration. In addition, to following the movement of the precursor civilizations across Asia and Europe. The book is lively and thought provoking. The first half gets a little thin as he approaches the modern age, but then he launches into a new premise, that of the conflict of religious and scientific thought in the second half and the book is reinvigorated.

Sins are definitely out of fashion. The last time I came across the Seven Deadly Sins of Envy, Pride, Covetousness, Gluttony, Sloth, Lust and Anger, it was in a glossy Singaporean magazine for the trendy crowd. Under each of the headings it featured big cars, expensive condos, the current "IN"-nightspots, the newest restaurants, fashionable jewelry, designer clothes and so on. The word "sin" may have made monks and Victorians tremble; but we just shiver in anticipation of the latest thrill. Alain de Botton captures this change in attitude perfectly in his 5-page afterword: "[Today] our concerns are of a different order. We worry about whether we are cheerful or depressed, fulfilled or low in self-esteem. We worry about happiness, not sin and virtue."

"The Seven Deadly Sins" have originally been published in 1962 by The Sunday Times, and authors from England have written all seven contributions. The book does not rank the sins in any order (rankings are a very American obsession, and it seems the English have not been infected yet in the early sixties). However, it is very fitting for our democratic society to begin with ENVY, Angus Wilson's contribution, and to end the book with ANGER, W. H. Auden's contribution. Envy is the quintessential democratic "sin." Alain de Botton reflects that "envy comes from comparison and [...] the habit for everyone to compare themselves to everyone else is a particularly modern, democratic one." People envy only those who they feel themselves to be like: "There are few successes more unendurable than those of our closest friends [and] it follows that the more people we take to be our equals, the more we will be at risk of dissatisfaction." Which explains why a society of equals does not automatically lead to more happiness for its individual members. Anger is also a very democratic "sin" because anger tends to arise from a sense of entitlement: "We aren't overwhelmed by anger whenever we are denied an object we desire, only when we believe ourselves entitled to obtain it" (Alain de Botton). A sense of entitlement comes with democracy: we are not just in pursuit of happiness, we assume we are entitled to it.

Wedged between the highlights of Wilson's and Auden's articles are contributions by Edith Sitwell on PRIDE (a tongue-in-cheek confession to the "virtue" of pride), Cyril Connolly on COVETOUSNESS (a very funny short story about obsessive greed), Patrick Leigh-Fermor on GLUTTONY (an indigestible, rambling piece of writing - skip this part of the menu!), Evelyn Waugh on SLOTH ("Sloth is the condition in which a man is fully aware of the proper means of his salvation and refuses to take them," the state of rejecting the "spiritual good" which - in modern parlance - leads to depression, the contemporary cousin of sloth), and finally Christopher Sykes on LUST (a fine example of British common sense).

If we worry about happiness, not sin and virtue, why should we read about "The Seven Deadly Sins" at all? Why worry about the "good" when we can go out and have "fun" instead? The answer is: the "good" is about the value we attribute to our lives looking forward and looking back, the "fun" is just living it. In general, we are bad at "just living" or "living in the moment." but experts in reflecting on the past and planning for the future. It is a smart decision to build on our expertise and put some meaning into our lives to make looking back and forward more enjoyable. After all, the good life and the happy life are complementary, not mutually exclusive. Alain de Botton points it out just so well: "If we listen to pre-Christian philosophers, there is never a conflict between happiness and goodness. For Socrates, the sinful man is at the same time the miserable man, the good one the happy one. It's only with the arrival of Christianity that a conflict starts to appear and that, unwittingly, it starts to seem as though being good is dull and not likely to lead one to happiness, while sinfulness is bad, but actually rather fun."