AudenвЂ™s reformation was by no means abrupt it was neither sudden, nor instigated by any singular event, but occurred as a gradual process culminating from many private and collective crises in the 30s and 40s.ДЄuden left England and immigrated to the U.S. During the decade to follow, the subject of his poetry and prose assumed a new, Christian existential theology inspired by his reading of Kierkegaard. Writing in 1937, AudenвЂ™s fellow writer and lifelong friend Christopher Isherwood wrote, вЂњIf had his way, he would turn every play into a cross between grand opera and high mass.вЂќ Even in the disbelief of his early career, Auden was inextricably attracted to religion and ritual, and would inevitably find himself moving away from an emphasis on secular knowledge and toward faith by the 40s.ДЄuden reconverted to Christianity and returned to the Anglican Communion in 1940. Despite his secular interests, religion was never truly divorced from AudenвЂ™s poetry. This loss, however, was soon substituted by an intense autodidacticism as he avidly probed fields as diverse as Greek literature, politics, Norse mythology, and modern scientific innovations. He often explained his loss of faith at sixteen rather plainly, as having simply lost interest. Yet, a young Auden displayed more interest in the вЂњexciting magical ritesвЂќ of the Church with their вЂњmusic, candles and incenseвЂќ than he ever did its sermons, didactic lessons or dogmas. Religious ties ran deep in AudenвЂ™s family both of his grandfathers were Anglican priests, and his mother was highly devout. No longer believing in the secular remedies he had once found in leftist politics and the collectivity, Auden came to focus on the liberation of a spiritual, privately inward life. Yet, by the 40s, Auden instead embraced an existential philosophy centered on the writings of SГёren Kierkegaard, and worked to develop an existential theology as a means to understand the era he would later name the вЂњage of anxiety.вЂќ If the modern world was defined by its collective neuroses of war, hatred, and anxiety, AudenвЂ™s answer to this disease now rested firmly in the individual. The 30s, a time he named the вЂlow, dishonest decadeвЂ™ where man passively watched the arrival of the Second World War, found Auden searching for rational and pragmatic solutions to the worldвЂ™s anxieties, primarily through the psychology of Sigmund Freud and Marxist thought. For Auden, this eraВ of conflict and unprecedented transformations called for a new kind of poetry to be written.ДЄudenвЂ™s poetic emphases went through great shifts in the 40s. to a new, collective fear centered on the existential questions of alienation, authenticity, and the meaning of manвЂ™s existence in the modern world.

As the period brought vast changes to the United States across its social, political, and economic spheres, it also introduced the U.S. Following the 1930s, an era indelibly marked by the Great Depression, HitlerвЂ™s rise to power, and the Spanish Civil War, the 1940s was a time of great national and global crises. Admired for his vast intellect, unsurpassed virtuosity in verseвЂ™s technical forms, and wideвЂ“ranging fields of knowledge, Auden found eminence across the Atlantic during his long tenure as a poet. Auden is celebrated as one of the most accomplished writers of the 20 th century. By Sam Leiva Auden, as photographed in the 1950sД«orn in York, England in 1907, the poet W.H.

Wh auden age of anxiety