Wystan Hugh Auden (1907 – 29 September 1973) is an Anglo-American poet whose four hundred poems elucidate everything from love to social themes and profound meditation. (Here you can read Funeral Blues and Elegy for J.F.K.) Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for “The Age of Anxiety”, a long poem in six parts, Auden also composed hundreds of essays, lectures, and reviews.
His prose book “The Dyer’s Hand” (1962) gathered edited, and arranged the best of his prose writing, including many of the lectures he gave in Oxford as Professor of Poetry.
The result is a collection of essays containing precious observations on poetry, art, and life in general
In the section on “Writing”, we read:
“Every “original” genius, be he an artist or a scientist, has something a bit shady about him, like a gambler or a medium.”
“How happy is the lot of the mathematician! He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve. No cashier writes a letter to the press complaining about the incomprehensibility of Modern Mathematics and comparing it unfavorably with the good old days when mathematicians were content to paper irregularly shaped rooms and fill bathtubs without closing the waste pipe.”
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