"Wystan Auden read us some of his new poem in the evening...I follow Auden in his derision of patriotism, class distinctions, comfort, and all the ineptitudes of the middle-classes. But when he also derides the other soft little harmless things which make my life comfortable, I feel a chill autumn wind. I feel that were I a communist the type of person whom I should most wish to attack would not be the millionaire or the imperialist, but the soft, reasonable, tolerant, secure, self-satisfied intellectuals like Vita and myself. A man like Auden with his fierce repudiation of half-way houses and his gentle integrity makes one feel terribly discontented with one’s own smug successfulness. I go to bed feeling terribly Edwardian and back-number, and yet, thank God, delighted that people like Wystan Auden should actually exist."
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Academics from EnglandAcademics from the United StatesLiterary criticsPoets from the United StatesEducators from the United States
Original Language: English
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Sources
Harold Nicolson, Diary, 4 August 1933. Quoted in Justin Wintle and Richard Kenin, The Dictionary of Biographical Quotation of British and American subjects (1978) p. 37 and in Ruth Winstone, Events, Dear Boy, Events: A Political Diary of Britain 1921–2010 (Profile Books, 2012)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/W._H._Auden
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