Nicholas Jenkins: Could you tell me when you met Auden? And can you remember anything about the impression he made on you then? Kirstein is also the author of two novels and Rhymes of a Pfc., a collection of poems that Auden said, as a picture of World War II, was "by far the most convincing, moving, and impressive book I have come across.' Besides his works on American history, dance, painting, and sculpture, Mr. Together they founded what have since become the country's two preeminent classical dance institutions: The New York City Ballet and The School of American Ballet. In 1933 he persuaded the choreographer George Balanchine to come to the United States. Lincoln Kirstein, born in 1907 - the same year as Auden -, edited the periodical Hound & Horn from 1927 to 1934. Kirstein inaugurates a series of conversations with Auden's friends and collaborators that will appear in the Newsletter. Beneath the evident strength of his intellect - and an extraordinary physical energy that lasted well into his eighties - was an equally extraordinary kindness and gentleness that in his later years was no longer even partly hidden by his severity.Ī Conversation With Lincoln Kirstein This interview with Mr. He was sharply skeptical about the new geological orthodoxy of plate tectonics, and could discuss the virtues and defects of the theory in terms accessible to an educated layman. When he noticed a visitor's interest in spacecraft photographs of the moons of the outer planets, he analyzed their surprising geology with the lucid enthusiasm of a skilled teacher. In later years he was generous with recollections of his brother and family. I first met John Auden at his brother's funeral in Kirchstetten in 1973, where his diplomacy helped make possible a joint service by the Catholic priest of the village and an Anglican minister from Vienna. In 1965 he published an epithalamium for the marriage of John and Sheila's daughter Rita. In 1951, Wystan (who had introduced John to John's first wife) first met John's second wife and daughters during a visit to a cultural congress in India for the rest of his life he spoke of his nieces' intellect and beauty with the pride of a parent and treasured his friendship with John's wife Sheila. In 1938 Wystan thought through his decision to move from England to America partly by discussing it with his brother. Wystan and John saw each other infrequently after John left England for India, but their meetings were significant. Wystan reconverted to the Anglicanism of his youth at around the same time that John converted to Catholicism. John's mountaineering in the Himalayas gave Wystan the idea for a play he wrote with Christopher Isherwood, The Ascent of F6, a play that he in turn dedicated to John. In letters sent from Oxford to India, Wystan, aged 20, analyzed John's poems with the respect due to an older brother and the slight condescension of a professional writing to an amateur. Wystan's early poems seem to have prompted John to write poetry of his own. John's passion for geology found an echo in Wystan's childhood fascination with lead mines. John and Wystan Auden were united by close emotional ties and shared intellectual interests. Auden Society, and strongly and generously supported its activities. John Auden was a founding member of The W. In 1940 he married Sheila Bonnergee their two daughters are Dr Rita Auden and Anita Auden Money. His first marriage, to Margaret Marshall, ended in divorce. In 1960 he began ten years' work with the Land and Water Sources Division of the Food and Agricultural Organization in Rome, and then retired to London. He later became the head of the Survey, and remained with it until he retired in the 1950s. On leaving Cambridge in 1926 he joined the Geological Survey of India. Edmund's School (Wystan followed him there), Marlborough, and Cambridge, where he studied geology. John Auden was born in York on 14 December 1903, the second of the three sons of George Augustus Auden and Constance Rosalie (Bicknell) Auden. John Bicknell Auden, the distinguished geologist who was Wystan Auden's older brother, died in London on 21 January 1991 at the age of 87.
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