Jun 15, 2023 - Sale 2641

Sale 2641 - Lot 72

Price Realized: $ 6,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
HIS VIEWS ON YEATS'S POETRY AUDEN, W.H. Two items, each Signed, to the literary editor of the Chicago Sun: Autograph Manuscript, draft for a book review * Brief Autograph Letter, sending the manuscript. The manuscript, "Life of W.B. Yeats," review of Joseph Home's biography, with occasional holograph corrections throughout. Signed at end of text. The letter: "Here is the review of the Yeats biography, far too long, I fear, but if one is to say anything of interest, difficult to do shorter. So just cut it about as you see fit." Together 5 pages, 4to, written on rectos of separate sheets, moderately evenly toned, horizontal folds, paper clip stains at upper and lower edges of letter. [Swarthmore, PA, 28 January no year]

Additional Details

". . . Yeats['s] temptation--he never succumbs to it completely--to regard art as a religious ritual damages the art for it prevents the artist from taking serious risks of failure. Magnificent as is their diction, I cannot but feel that his poems lack a certain inner resonance. . . ."
Auden's review is quoted in Edward Mendelson's Early Auden (New York: Viking, 1981), 174 .