PortadaGruposCharlasMásPanorama actual
Buscar en el sitio
Este sitio utiliza cookies para ofrecer nuestros servicios, mejorar el rendimiento, análisis y (si no estás registrado) publicidad. Al usar LibraryThing reconoces que has leído y comprendido nuestros términos de servicio y política de privacidad. El uso del sitio y de los servicios está sujeto a estas políticas y términos.

Resultados de Google Books

Pulse en una miniatura para ir a Google Books.

Cargando...

Forewords and Afterwords

por W. H. Auden

MiembrosReseñasPopularidadValoración promediaMenciones
2222120,615 (4.41)5
Ensayos de procedencia y épocas diversas que revelan el mismo ingenio e inteligencia que se desprende de la brillante poesía de Auden
Ninguno
Cargando...

Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará.

Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro.

» Ver también 5 menciones

Mostrando 2 de 2
Done! This was my traditional Christmas Eve book from my mother, and I've been picking at it since then. I finally gave myself permission to skim essays about books I hadn't read, which made it much more enjoyable. I've loved Auden's poetry since I was about thirteen, but I hadn't read much of his prose until now.

There are some real gems here. Auden's essays on Wilde, Houseman, Kipling, Wagner, Poe, Pope, Cavafy, and Caroll are all highlights for me (the Wagner is even very funny), and some of the lines have been familiar to me out of context for years: "From the beginning Wilde performed his life and continued to do so even after fate had taken the plot out of his hands."

There are also essays that pointed me towards interesting books; The Art of Eating by M. F. K. Fisher is intriguing (and his way of referring to her as "Mrs. Fisher" throughout the essay is so period, and so characteristic of him). I'm also very curious about Henry Mayhew's research among the London poor of the 19th century; London Labour and the London Poor is the volume mentioned, and Auden makes it sound absolutely riveting.

Auden's Freudian bias pops up sometimes. I mean, is it really true that when a man becomes a chef, he's imitating women's breastfeeding, but if a woman becomes a chef, it's because she's establishing that her worth doesn't rely on her ability to breastfeed? What, Wystan? Really?

Then, there are the times he feels himself qualified to make sweeping statements - for example, about the characters and motivations of all gay men everywhere. He says that it is "very rare for a homosexual to remain faithful to one person for long" because they can't have children, and lack that common interest. This is, frankly, just plain wrong from where I'm sitting, but then Auden had his own troubles with Chester Kallman, etc. Earlier in that same essay he writes that "few, if any homosexuals can honestly boast that their sex-life has been happy." I can imagine that in mid-centry America, a time of rampant hatred of gay men and women, when homosexuality was considered among the mainstream population to be truly depraved, this was more true than I can imagine.

And, if his essays tend to have a magesterial tone and to betray some personal quirks, well, so much the better. They're interesting, illuminating, and no-one else could have written them.
1 vota Cynara | Jan 2, 2012 |
so many pp bookmarked - must make a day of it - or a week ( )
  Overgaard | Feb 21, 2024 |
Mostrando 2 de 2
As a volume conveying Auden’s European magnitude as an artist, this collection of his ancillary prose could scarcely be bettered. In its casual way (casual in the happenstance of its occasions and compilation: there is, of course, nothing casual whatever about its thought and craft) it is a testament not just to Auden’s culture but to culture – the European artistic civilization which, we can now see, Auden was as effective as Eliot in comprehending and maintaining. And he was more at ease in it than Eliot. In every sense he was at home...

On top of these things there is the insistence that the facts of art are concrete and practical, and that educating yourself in them is a matter of finding out about them, and that years might go by before the truth reveals itself. By returning to this point over and over – by always insisting that of finding things out there is no end – Auden creates, unbeatably, the feeling that education is lifelong, addictive, playful. In him there is no element of the self-immolating drudge. He would never have been capable of Eliot’s sermon on the necessity for the student to embrace boredom.
añadido por SnootyBaronet | editarTimes Literary Supplement, Clive James (Oct 12, 1973)
 

Pertenece a las series editoriales

Debes iniciar sesión para editar los datos de Conocimiento Común.
Para más ayuda, consulta la página de ayuda de Conocimiento Común.
Título canónico
Título original
Títulos alternativos
Fecha de publicación original
Personas/Personajes
Lugares importantes
Acontecimientos importantes
Películas relacionadas
Epígrafe
Dedicatoria
Primeras palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés. Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
Once upon a time there was a little boy.
Citas
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés. Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
Idle curiosity is an ineradicable vice of the human mind. All of us like to discover the secrets of our neighbors, particularly the ugly ones. This has always been so, and, probably, always will be. What is relatively new, however—it is scarcely to be found before the latter half of the eighteenth century—is a blurring of the borderline between the desire for truth and idle curiosity, until, today, it has been so thoroughly erased that we can indulge in the latter without the slightest pangs of conscience. A great deal of what today passes for scholarly research is an activity no different from that of reading somebody’s private correspondence when he is out of the room, and it doesn’t really make it morally any better if he is out of the room because he is in his grave.
In our culture, we have good reason to be skeptical when anyone claims to have experienced the Vision of Eros, and even to doubt if it ever occurs, because half our literature, popular and highbrow, ever since the Provencal poets made the disastrous mistake of trying to turn a mystical experience into a social cult, is based on the assumption that what is, prohably, a rare expcri-ence, is one which almost everybody has or ought to have; if they don’t, then there must be something wrong with them. We know only too well how often, when a person speaks of having “fallen in love” with X, what he or she really feels could be described in much cruder terms.
Últimas palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés. Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
(Haz clic para mostrar. Atención: puede contener spoilers.)
Aviso de desambiguación
Editores de la editorial
Blurbistas
Idioma original
DDC/MDS Canónico
LCC canónico

Referencias a esta obra en fuentes externas.

Wikipedia en inglés

Ninguno

Ensayos de procedencia y épocas diversas que revelan el mismo ingenio e inteligencia que se desprende de la brillante poesía de Auden

No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca.

Descripción del libro
Resumen Haiku

Biblioteca heredada: W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden tiene una Biblioteca heredada. Las Bibliotecas heredadas son bibliotecas personales de lectores famosos que han sido compiladas por miembros de Librarything pertenecientes al grupo Bibliotecas heredadas.

Ver el perfil heredado de W. H. Auden.

Ver la página de autor de W. H. Auden.

Debates activos

Ninguno

Cubiertas populares

Enlaces rápidos

Valoración

Promedio: (4.41)
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3 1
3.5
4 8
4.5
5 8

 

Acerca de | Contactar | LibraryThing.com | Privacidad/Condiciones | Ayuda/Preguntas frecuentes | Blog | Tienda | APIs | TinyCat | Bibliotecas heredadas | Primeros reseñadores | Conocimiento común | 203,253,636 libros! | Barra superior: Siempre visible