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Correspondence with W.H. Auden
December 19th, [1941?]
1223 Pontiac Street
Ann Arbor
Michigan.
Dear Mrs. Niehbur Niebuhr,
Thanks etc so for your long letter, though you
sound very overdone. I hope that that Christian Dynamo
Reinhold will give you two or three days rest at
Christmas, or rather that you will very firmly put
to bed and keep him there. How I laughed over
your story about not getting anything DONE. I'm
sure if Lutherans had confessions, his would
say "Now, my son, as a penance for being an
ecclesiastical Orson Welles, you shall sit in an
arm-chair for 48 hours with NO RADIO and
twiddle your thumbs." [In Purgatory while you and I are picking Oakum,
he will be condemned to a rocking-chair.]
After the shock of the first twenty-four hours,
the war has fallen back into being part of the
natural climate, and till I'm wanted for anything,
I can shall carry on with my daily routine. As it
has to come, I suppose it couldn't have come
in a better way as far as American opinion
is concerned, though it makes me a little sad
to realize there is more indignation over the Japs than
the Germans, because they are little and yellow. The
Hearst editorial the next day in the Detroit Times might
have been written by Goebbels. It even mentioned Castor Oil.
The news from Malaga is grim, isn't it? But enough of that:
I think one ought to make a rule with oneself never
to talk about the war except when there is something practical
to be done.
I'm plugging slowly away at my Christmas
Oratio which will be immensely long, and very
theological. Vacation begins today and I leave at
noon (it is now 8.00 am) for California. Some
of my students seem to be coming along nicely; There
are many theories about me. One party believes that
I am a starry-eyed idealist, another that I am
a crass materialist. One professor who is a
fanatical Aristotelian met another professor in the corridor
and said: "I don't like to say anything malicious about
another human being, but I hear Auden is a Platonist."
The class is very shocked at the moment because I've
told them that for their exam at the end of the semester
all they have to do is learn six cantos of the Divine Comedy
by heart and write them out. They think it can't be done,
so I've promised them that if I can't learn the whole assignment
in the train between Chicago and Los Angeles, I'll reduce it.
Have you and Reinhold found that American students
are not used to having their work criticized severely?
They seem to imagine that it can only proceed from
a personal dislike. Now when WE were undergraduates ……
By the by, have you ever read Arthur Waley's The Way
and its Power, a translation of the Quietist Tao Tê Ching?
It has some wonderful stuff in it.
I must stop and start packing and distributing
the leavings of the Ice-box to neighbours.
Much love to you, Reinhold, and the Family
and a happy "Ivory Tower" (God, how I hate that term)
Christmas.
Wystan
Reinhold Niebuhr Papers: Library of Congress, Manuscript Reading Room
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