The Island
The Island: W. H. Auden and the Regeneration of England by Nicholas Jenkins
For many readers W. H. Auden is the indispensable modern poet and in this centenary year of his birth, I ask — How did Auden begin?
This book's young Auden is a shaman-like poet of gaunt lyrics and No Man’s Land-like moors which are the poetry of an apocalyptic struggle for survival within the 1920s English psyche. One of my claims is that, far from being a socialist as is usually assumed, the young Auden was a poetic nationalist who longed for an eternal tie with his nation.
The Island moves through post-industrial landscapes, underground Weimar Berlin, and the hothouse worlds of public schools. Informed by revelatory archival material by and about Auden, his milieux and his complex love life, at this book’s core are my readings of Auden's extraordinary poetry.
In 1937 Auden published On this Island, with its idyllic vision of a place “at the small field’s ending … | Where the chalk wall falls to the foam, and its tall ledges | Oppose the pluck and knock of the tide.” Here was his ultimate “island poem.”
The Island ends on a dramatic note with a visit to Buckingham Palace where Auden was awarded a medal for his achievement. Symbolically speaking, the crisis of post-War England and the first phase of Auden’s career both ended at that moment — in a brief blaze of ignominious glory.
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