Happy birthday, Wystan, born today 112 years ago (February 21, 1907).
Here's an article that appeared in the Guardian in 2009. Note that the newspaper uses a photograph of Auden the elder statesman, face cracked; Auden would never have written poems in praise of Lenin after 1939.
<<<
Unpublished Auden poems surface in film archive
Translations of Soviet propaganda songs discovered in the British Film Institute archives
Alison Flood
Saturday May 23 2009
guardian.co.uk
Three unpublished poems by W. H. Auden have surfaced in the archives of the British Film Institute more than 70 years after they were written.
They were discovered by David Collard while he was working through the papers of Ivor Montagu, the co-founder of the Film Society, as part of the research for a study of Auden's career in the cinema. The verses are a poetic translation of anonymous Russian peasant songs extolling the virtues of Lenin and his political heir Stalin, which Auden was asked to produce for the world premiere of a Russian propaganda film, Three Songs of Lenin, in October 1935.
When arranging subtitles for Three Songs of Lenin, Montagu had decided the songs -- around which the film is structured -- needed a more poetic English rendering, and approached Auden. The poet worked from a literal translation to produce three songs, published for the first time this week in the Times Literary Supplement.
>>>
Read the rest of the Guardian story here.
From the archives. Originally posted May 26, 2009.
Wha?
Posted by: Deborah Overmeyer | May 26, 2009 at 04:08 PM