In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Stevens and Auden: Responses to a Questionnaire by the Editors
  • Liesl Olson

1. How did you happen to come upon W. H. Auden’s unpublished little poem “Miss God on Mr. Stevens” with which you started out your investigation into the Stevens-Auden relation published ten years ago in the pages of this journal (WSJrnl 27.2)?

Like many graduate students in New York City, I spent many hours at the New York Public Library—it was an inspiring contrast to my small apartment. I would visit the Berg Collection during periods when I needed a break from writing my dissertation. I found Auden’s poem in the Berg amid notes between Auden and his late amanuensis, Alan Ansen. I am always thrilled by archival finds, but at the time I assumed that many other scholars must have read (and written about) the poem. Surprisingly, that was not the case. I thought it would be worthwhile to bring the poem to light (it’s so weird!). I also wanted to speculate about why it was written in Auden’s own copy of Transport to Summer.

2. What, if anything, has changed in your views of the relation between Stevens and Auden in the ten years since you contributed your article to the journal? Have you developed ideas or come across any further material evidence that you wish you could have included in your article back then?

Honestly, it’s not my inclination to compare poets along biographical lines. Although my research has become increasingly historicist—as a result of working in archives—the article was my first experiment into the intersection between biography and literary analysis. It was really the discovery of the poem that led me in that direction—that led me to look at the complex political and cultural contexts that would have led the poets to write about one another. At this point, I’m aware of other methodological approaches to treating manuscripts and [End Page 224] archival materials—“genetic criticism” interests me. But I still think, as literary scholars, that we might think harder about our approaches to archival research. In our digital age, for instance, could there ever be paleography courses that focused on the twentieth century?

As for the poetry: Stevens and Auden, for me, are two of the most meaningful poets of their era. They wrote poems that I turn to, again and again. Over the past ten years, yes, my sense of each poet has changed as I have changed. Poems transform for people over the course of time.

In terms of my intellectual engagement with the work, I have been influenced by Susan Howe’s understanding of Stevens’ work as deeply impacted by the language of early American thought—Winthrop and Edwards and Mather—and by the exact words in Webster’s 1828 Dictionary. Who said that Stevens seems at first to be a European dandy, until suddenly you see that he has straw between his teeth? Stevens has become powerfully American to me. Auden, less so.

3. In your article, you point to the way in which Stevens, late in life, seemed to regard Auden as among the “Academic figures” from whom he wanted to keep his distance (L 772). You explain that part of what may be involved in this description is that Stevens had previously “use[d] the term ‘academic’ to refer to art that too obviously ‘teaches’ a doctrine or espouses a political ideology” (“Stevens” 245–46). You then go on to marshal the poet’s famous ironic quote from “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction,” “They will get it straight one day at the Sorbonne” (CPP 351). How does this shed light on Auden’s original title for “Miss God on Mr. Stevens”—that is, “Art History”—as well as on Auden’s reduction of Stevens to a belated post-Nietzschean mythmaker?

You are right to suggest that “Art History” is a resonant title in that it functions on many levels: as a comment on poetry’s role within academic disciplines; as an ironic joke about Stevens’ theory of art; and as a critique of Stevens’ supposed rejection of history (or politics) in poetry. And yet Auden...

pdf

Share