What WH Auden Can Do For YouBy Alexander McCall Smith (Princeton, £13.95)
Wystan Hugh Auden was a meticulous poet but a very messy man. Alexander McCall Smith recalls the only time he saw Auden reading at the University of Edinburgh. There was the great man, reciting his luminous lines from memory; and there was the “sartorial disaster, wearing a stained and ash-spattered suit and battered carpet slippers,” his fly-buttons conspicuously undone, shambolic but approachable and endearing.
For McCall Smith, writing about “the greatest literary discovery” of his life is a messy task too, involving not just commentary on his favourite poems, but also reminiscences, dreams, anecdotes, coincidences and jokes. That jumble of associations is the charm of this very personal book of homage and reflection. Discovering “September 1, 1939” in the early 1970s when he was a young man teaching law in divided Belfast, McCall Smith adopted Auden as a moral and literary guide. Later, he endowed Isabel Dalhousie, the amateur detective of The Sunday Philosopher’s Club, with a penchant for quoting Auden, leading to a correspondence with the Auden scholar Edward Mendelson, their friendship and ongoing seminar for two.
McCall Smith does not approach Auden as a scholar or critic, although he writes thoughtfully on serious questions about the poet’s life and craft. His emphasis is on the profound ways Auden has influenced his life, and the ways he might influence ours. No bloodless icon, but flawed and human and humane, his Auden offers a modern reader the great gifts of charity, forgiveness, and comfort. That’s an offer we can hardly refuse.
Wystan Hugh Auden was a meticulous poet but a very messy man. Alexander McCall Smith recalls the only time he saw Auden reading at the University of Edinburgh. There was the great man, reciting his luminous lines from memory; and there was the “sartorial disaster, wearing a stained and ash-spattered suit and battered carpet slippers,” his fly-buttons conspicuously undone, shambolic but approachable and endearing.
For McCall Smith, writing about “the greatest literary discovery” of his life is a messy task too, involving not just commentary on his favourite poems, but also reminiscences, dreams, anecdotes, coincidences and jokes. That jumble of associations is the charm of this very personal book of homage and reflection. Discovering “September 1, 1939” in the early 1970s when he was a young man teaching law in divided Belfast, McCall Smith adopted Auden as a moral and literary guide. Later, he endowed Isabel Dalhousie, the amateur detective of The Sunday Philosopher’s Club, with a penchant for quoting Auden, leading to a correspondence with the Auden scholar Edward Mendelson, their friendship and ongoing seminar for two.
McCall Smith does not approach Auden as a scholar or critic, although he writes thoughtfully on serious questions about the poet’s life and craft. His emphasis is on the profound ways Auden has influenced his life, and the ways he might influence ours. No bloodless icon, but flawed and human and humane, his Auden offers a modern reader the great gifts of charity, forgiveness, and comfort. That’s an offer we can hardly refuse.
