The Greatest Secret About W. H. Auden
In a new essay about W.H. Auden, Edward Mendelson writes that the poet ‘had a secret life that his closest friends knew little or nothing about. Everything about it was generous and honorable. He kept it secret because he would have been ashamed to have been praised for it.’ No, this wasn’t anything sexual; it was moral. Auden performed countless, unsung acts of generosity. Mendelson explains that Auden had ‘many motives for portraying himself as rigid or uncaring when he was making unobtrusive gifts of time, money, and sympathy.’ Read the essay to find out what they were. Auden is pictured on Fire Island, in 1946.
