Blake Auden and James Auden

Abstract You will remember that Auden, when an undergraduate at Oxford, took a look at the literary scene in general and decided that it offered an empty stage. ‘Evidently they are waiting for Someone’, he said with, Stephen Spender tells us, ‘the air of anticipating that he would soon take the centre of it’. Auden’s fantasy, however, was to be at the centre, not to be the sole figure. Christopher Isherwood was to be the novelist. Robert Medley was to be the painter. Cecil Day-Lewis was in there in some poetic capacity, as were Louis MacNeice and Spender. Spender told Auden he wondered whether he, Jr Jr fSpender, ought to write prose. But Auden put his foot down. ‘You must write nothing but poetry, we do not want to lose you for poetry.’ ‘But do you really think I’m any good?’ gulped Spender. ‘Of course,’ Auden frigidly replied. ‘But why?’ ‘Because you are so infinitely capable of being humiliated. Art is born of humiliation.