Talk:W. H. Auden/Archive 1

message: It's been awhile since I had poetry, so ... is Auden's homosexuality documented, or simply widely suspected?  In other words, does the last paragraph need rephrasing?  Koyaanis Qatsi
No doubt at all about it.  He entered therapy for it, and eventually accepted it.  Several unpublished poems of his treat the issue. --Peccavimus 00:45, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: No objection to change in tone, but I don't think we should remove information in the process. It's probablly worth knowing that he married a lesbian and had no children. - Nunh-huh 04:53, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

text: Her article doesn't mention her sexuality, but she was a lesbian.  Here is confirmation from Isherwood.  Just google for "Erika Mann lesbian" - not all the information in the world is in Wikipedia (yet).  --ajn (talk) 21:24, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: General material

message: I've changed the title of Auden's poem back to Anthem for St. Cecilia's Day. Although originally proposed as Three songs for St. Cecilia's Day, it was only published as Anthem, as far as I can tell. This is from "Columbia Granger's Poetry Database", as well as from Humphrey Carpenter's biography of Britten. The title is also not to be confused with Dryden's "A Song for St. Cecilia's Day" from which Auden got some amount of inspiration. Makemi 17:29, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: St. Cecilia

message: In this edit, Liteditor removed the phrase
:widely regarded as among the most influential and important writers of the 20th century.
with the edit tag deleted pov statement.  It could indeed be POV to say that Auden is widely regarded in this way, since it's hard to quantify that.  However, I think it's factually clear that he has been widely cited as influential, as shown on the web alone by a Google search which lists many pages making such comments as:
* One of the most influential poets of the 20th century 
* After Yeats and Eliot, Auden is the most influential English-language poet of the twentieth century. 
* Auden is ordinarily depicted as the most influential and, in many cases, best-loved member of his generation of English poets 
So I've changed the article to say that "Auden . . . was an English poet, often cited as one of the most influential of the 20th century".  (In so doing I've omitted the word "critic", but this is covered under the Work section where it is indicated that he is primarily known as a poet.) -- JimR 05:14, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Influential? 

message: I don't think that the user who wrote the part about a "bugger's dream" intended it as a vandalism. Atavi 19:00, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Bugger's dream

message: I moved the following text from the article, recently added by User:12.27.184.21 at the top of the 'Work' section:
The following section needs to be thoroughly rewritten in order to emphasize the poems and essays that Auden regarded as important and which have been regarded as important by literary history. Far too many details below seem to be Wikipedia-style miscellaneous details that are almost entirely insignificant except to the contributors.
Sounds reasonable although rather grumpy. Stumps 04:36, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Note on Work Section 

message: It seems that this peerson was very important in Auden's life and deserves mention here. They seem to have been together since Yates' public school days, as this article and this review suggest. Any thoughts on adding this material to the article? Haiduc 03:59, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There is no implication in the text that they "remained together" but only that they spent time together. Yes, they did remain friends for a long time. Please do not delete the "Pederasts" category if it is accurate, despite what Auden's feelings about categories may have been. Haiduc 02:41, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually it isn't accurate (although it is certainly accurate for, say, Benjamin Britten). Auden's romantic relations, after his mid-twenties, were always with people in their twenties or thirties.160.39.18.250 14:10, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not so. He had another fling with Yates when the boy was seventeen and he was twenty nine, and he was thirty two when he hooked up with the eighteen year old Kallman. Haiduc 23:16, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Actually you're right about those details. I always tend to think of Kallman as the middle-aged man he had turned into when he and Auden collaborated on opera libretti.160.39.18.250 21:41, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Love relationship with schoolboy Michael Yates 

message: Am I the only person who is puzzled by the way in which this article seems to focus either on Auden's sexual inclinations and on his memories of the Pennine Hills in Northern England? A visitor from Mars would scarcely guess that Auden was important because he was a great poet and essayist. Many Wikipedia articles treat a writer's work as centrally important. This one seems to present Auden as a prominent example of his sexual inclinations. Probably there's nothing to be done about it, but I don't think it does much good to Wikipedia or anything else. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.202.77.248 (talk • contribs) 
:Yes, I see that as a major problem of Wikipedia. Side issues which spark either the public imagination or one particular editor's pet issue tend to get too much space and attention, and the article becomes unbalanced. The most obvious examples of this phenomenon are trivia sections, but it can lead to larger problems as well. Mak (talk) 21:43, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The merit of Wikipedia is that many specialists can cooperate to produce an ecumenical result. Haiduc 01:00, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem of Wikipedia is that most tendentious editors are not interested in cooperating. Familiar result of their editing is assigning undue weight to some minor point that interests them most. --Ghirla -трёп- 08:36, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you prepared to argue that a love relationship and life-long friendship which inspired a man celebrated for his love poetry, and which was described in the media as "an emotional milestone," is a "minor point" and "neglectable"?! I cannot quote chapter and verse, as you seem to be able, but I intuitively know that Wikipedia is not a culture of complaint but a place where if an article is unbalanced one is free to fill in the missing pieces (if one is able) rather than rail at others' work. Haiduc 11:44, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tendentious contributions (sexuality gets more attention than work?) 

message: The list of quotations (now on a separate page W. H. Auden: Quotations) was a messy and disorganized gathering that seems to have been taken (complete with errors) from quotation sites on the web. It is far below Wikipedia standards as it stands, and perhaps someone will be inspired to rework it in chronological order, with quotations checked against printed originals, and with a more representative selection. Macspaunday 20:54, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quotations moved to separate page 

message: Substituted at 20:01, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment