Frasi di Wystan Hugh Auden pagina 2

“Io e il pubblico sappiamo quel che tutti gli scolari apprendono: coloro cui vien fatto male male fanno in cambio.”

Origine: Da La verità, vi prego, sull'amore; in W. H. Auden, La verità, vi prego, sull'amore, traduzione di Gilberto Forti, Adelphi, 1995; p. 17.

“Quanto è felice la vita del matematico. Egli viene giudicato solamente dai suoi pari, e lo standard è talmente elevato che nessun collega o rivale può ottenere una reputazione che non merita.”

Origine: Citato in John Le Carré, L'onorevole scolaro (The Honourable Scoolboy), traduzione di Attilio Veraldi, Rizzoli, 1978.

“Splenderà il sole com'era giusto, | sulle gambe bianche che sparivano nel verde | dell'acqua; e la nave costosa e delicata che certo aveva visto | con stupore un ragazzo che cade giù dal cielo | aveva la sua meta, e proseguì con calma la sua navigazione.”

Origine: Da The Dyer's Hand.

“Ci sono dei libri ingiustamente dimenticati; non ce ne sono di ingiustamente ricordati.”

Origine: Da Masée des Beaux Arts; citato in Robert Fisk, Cronache mediorientali, Il Saggiatore.

“Fermate ogni orologio, tagliate il telefono, | Tenete il cane a tacere con un succulento osso, | Chetate i pianoforti e fra un rollìo smorzato | Sfornate il feretro, che i dolenti si accostino. | Che aeroplani lamentosi incrocino lassù | E scarabocchino sul cielo il messaggio È Morto, | Mettete crespi nastri attorno il collo bianco dei piccioni, | Che i vigili indossino guanti di coton nero. | Era il mio Nord, il mio Sud, il mio Est e l’Ovest, | La mia settimana feriale e il mio riposo domenicale, | Il mio mezzodì, la mezzanotte, il mio discorso, il canto; | Pensavo ch’amore fosse eterno: Io, mi sbagliavo. | Ora, le stelle non servono più: spegnetele tutte; | Imballate la luna, e smantellate pure il sole; | Svuotate l’oceano, e sradicate il bosco. | Poiché nulla può venir ormai a niente di buono.”

Origine: Da The Dyer's Hand; citato in Dizionario delle citazioni, a cura di Ettore Barelli e Sergio Pennacchietti, BUR, 2013.

“In most poetic expressions of patriotism, it is impossible to distinguish what is one of the greatest human virtues from the worst human vice, collective egotism.”

Origine: Blues in memoria; in W. H. Auden, La verità, vi prego, sull'amore, traduzione di Gilberto Forti, Adelphi, 1995.

Wystan Hugh Auden: Frasi in inglese

“To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic love,
The photographing of ravens; all the fun under
Liberty's masterful shadow;
To-morrow the hour of the pageant-master and the musician, The beautiful roar of the chorus under the dome;
To-morrow the exchanging of tips on the breeding of terriers,
The eager election of chairmen
By the sudden forest of hands. But to-day the struggle.To-morrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs,
The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion;
To-morrow the bicycle races
Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle.”

W. H. Auden libro Forewords and Afterwords

"C.P. Cavafy", p. 341
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)
Contesto: In most poetic expressions of patriotism, it is impossible to distinguish what is one of the greatest human virtues from the worst human vice, collective egotism.
The virtue of patriotism has been extolled most loudly and publicly by nations that are in the process of conquering others, by the Roman, for example, in the first century B. C., the French in the 1790s, the English in the nineteenth century, and the Germans in the first half of the twentieth. To such people, love of one's country involves denying the right of others, of the Gauls, the Italians, the Indians, the Poles, to love theirs.

“We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.”

W. H. Auden libro Spain

Origine: Spain (1937), Lines 81–92

“Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.”

W. H. Auden libro The Age of Anxiety

Epilogue
The Age of Anxiety (1948)

“How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.”

W. H. Auden libro The Dyer's Hand

"Hic et Ille", p. 96
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

“To ask the hard question is simple,
The simple act of the confused will.”

The More Loving One (1957)

“Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city. Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.”

To Ask the Hard Question is Simple, first published in book form in Poems (1930)

“The truly tragic kind of suffering is the kind produced and defiantly insisted upon by the hero himself so that, instead of making him better, it makes him worse and when he dies he is not reconciled to the law but defiant, that is, damned. Lear is not a tragic hero, Othello is.”

The Fall of Rome (1947), lines 21–28

“The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.”

W. H. Auden libro Forewords and Afterwords

"The Greeks and Us", p. 21
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

“Every day America's destroyed and re-created,
America is what you do,
America is I and you,
America is what you choose to make it.”

W. H. Auden libro The Dyer's Hand

"Reading", p. 6
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

“I am beginning to lose patience
With my personal relations.
They are not deep
And they are not cheap.”

Paul Bunyan

“The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.”

Case Histories (1930)

“One can only blaspheme if one believes.”

Funeral Blues (1936)

“Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.”

W. H. Auden libro Forewords and Afterwords

"Concerning the Unpredictable", p. 472
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

“I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.”

A misquotation of a haiku by Auden found elsewhere on this page ("Thoughts of his own death" etc.)
Misattributed
Variante: Thoughts of his own death,
like the distant roll
of thunder at a picnic.

“To some degree every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.”

As I Walked Out One Evening (1937)

“Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others.”

W. H. Auden libro The Dyer's Hand

"American Poetry", p. 367
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

“In general, when reading a scholarly critic, one profits more from his quotations than from his comments.”

W. H. Auden libro Forewords and Afterwords

"As It Seemed to Us", p. 498
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

“I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.”

W. H. Auden libro The Dyer's Hand

"Reading", p. 9
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

“I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.”

W. H. Auden September 1, 1939

Origine: September 1, 1939 (1939), Lines 1–11

“In any modern city, a great deal of our energy has to be expended in not seeing, not hearing, not smelling. An inhabitant of New York who possessed the sensory acuteness of an African Bushman would very soon go mad.”

Origine: Paris Review interview (1972), p. 266

“Put the car away; when life fails
What's the good of going to Wales?
Here am I, here are you:
But what does it mean? What are we going to do?”

W. H. Auden libro Forewords and Afterwords

"The Justice of Dame Kind", p. 464
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

“A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.”

It's no use raising a shout (1929), first published in book form in Poems (1930)

“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.”

Origine: Paris Review interview (1972), p. 251

“At first critics classified authors as Ancients, that is to say, Greek and Latin authors, and Moderns, that is to say, every post-Classical Author. Then they classified them by eras, the Augustans, the Victorians, etc., and now they classify them by decades, the writers of the '30's, '40's, etc. Very soon, it seems, they will be labeling authors, like automobiles, by the year.”

W. H. Auden libro The Dyer's Hand

"Notes on the Comic", p. 372
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

“Let us then
Consider rather the incessant Now of
The traveler through time, his tired mind
Biased towards bigness since his body must
Exaggerate to exist, possessed by hope…”

W. H. Auden libro The Dyer's Hand

"Reading", p. 12
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

“Now is the age of anxiety.”

W. H. Auden libro The Age of Anxiety

Prologue
The Age of Anxiety (1948)

“The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.”

Widely attributed online to Auden, this phrase does not occur anywhere in his writings. It is apparently a confused recollection of the title of his long poem The Age of Anxiety (1947). (The phrase "age of anxiety" occurs only in the title of the poem, not in the text, nor in anything else by Auden.)
Misattributed

“To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however "good" I may become, remains unchanged.”

W. H. Auden libro The Dyer's Hand

"Hic et Ille", p. 104
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

“Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other's good faith, but also in their capacity to arrive at the truth.”

W. H. Auden libro The Dyer's Hand

"The Guilty Vicarage", p. 157
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)