STEPHEN FRY

Dear Mr Fry,
I’ve just joined to CLUBFRY.
Don’t you think that Wystan Hugh Auden’s poetry is in a way the interpretation of the discomfort philosophy? It comes almost to the point “the worse, the better”, or shall I say, “what is worse, is more interesting”. And what is very attractive in Auden that drama never displays itself (if displays at all) in dramatic form. Moreover he shows an aspiration to avoid any outward pathos, never gets hysterical. It seems to me, that this position is very noble both in literature and in life.
Auden’s poetry is also devoid of narcissism. He seldom used first-person singular, but strangely enough his poetry inspires with admirable sense of objectiveness or even linguistic inevitability. I like his lack of exaltation, his voice is restrained and dry. In our hysterical age such approach has a great value. Look at Austen’s technique of descriptions – not direct, but symptomatic. He didn’t reveal the real sore, but only the symptoms. Of course you remember this genial line: ‘The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day’.
But still as a final poetic accord I prefer Crossing the Bar by Alfred, Lord Tennyson to Funeral Blues by W.H.Auden. Don’t you?