“Journey to a war” (Publication, 1939)
Year
1939
Text
Auden, W.H. ; Isherwood, Christopher. Journey to a war. (New York, N.Y. : Random House ; London : Faber & Faber, 1939). = Auden, W.H. Journey to a war. (New York, N.Y. : Octagon Books, 1972).= Rev. ed. (London : Faber and Faber, 1973). [Enthält : Sonnets from China].[Bericht über die Jahre 1937-1945]. (Aud5)
Type
Publication
Contributors (2)
Auden, W.H.
(York 1907-1973 Wien) : Dichter, Schriftsteller, Professor of Poetry, Oxford University ; amerikanische Staatsbürgerschaft
Isherwood, Christopher
(Disley, Cheshire 1904-1986 Santa Monica, Calif.) : Britisch-amerikanischer Schriftsteller
Subjects
History : China
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Literature : Occident : Great Britain
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Literature : Occident : United States of America
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Periods : China : Republic (1912-1949)
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References / Sources
Chronology Entries (22)
| # | Year | Text | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1938.02.28 | W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood left Hong Kong in the Tai-Shan for Guangzhou. "The railway was being bombed, almost daily, by Japanese planes… The river-boats, which were British-owned, had never been bombed at all". In Guangzhou the British Consul General sent a car. They were to stay at Paak Hok Tung, a settlement of American and English missionaries. The next day they visited Mayor Zang Yanfu. The next day they were invited to lunch with Wu Dezhen. The next two days they were wandering about the city. | |
| 2 | 1938.03.04 | W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood left Guangzhou for Hankou by train. | |
| 3 | 1938.03.08 | W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood in Hankou. "This is the real capital of war-time China. All kinds of people live in this town – Chiang Kai-shek, Agnes Smedley, Chou En-lai ; generals, ambassadors, journalists, foreign naval officers, soldiers of fortune, airmen, missionaries, spies… The Consul has offered us the hospitality of a big empty room." They visit Bishop Logan H. Roots. | |
| 4 | 1938.03.09 | W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood attended a press conference in Hankou. | |
| 5 | 1938 | W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood went to interview William Henry Donald in Hankou. | |
| 6 | 1938.03.12 | W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood met General Alexander von Falkenhausen and Agnes Smedley in Hankou. | |
| 7 | 1938.03.14 | W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood met Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Chiang May-ling Soong in Wuchang. | |
| 8 | 1938.03.17 | W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood left Hankou by train for Zhengzhou (Henan) with her interpreter Chiang. The next day they visited the American Mission Hospital. | |
| 9 | 1938.03.19-24 | W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood arrive by train and stay in Shangqiu. | |
| 10 | 1938.03.24 | W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood arrived in Suzhou by train at the Garden Hotel. | |
| 11 | 1938.03.25 | W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood met General Li Zongren in Suzhou. | |
| 12 | 1938.03.27 | W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood left Suzhou in hired rickshaws for Liuzhuan. | |
| 13 | 1938.03.29-04.10 | W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood travelled by train and stayed in Xi'an. | |
| 14 | 1938.04.13-14 | W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood travelled by train and returned to Hankou. | |
| 15 | 1938.04.21 | W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood attended a party with a number of Hankou intellectuals including the poet Mu Mutian who presented them with some verses written in their honor and Tian Shouchang [Tian Han]. Ma Tongna interviewed them for the newspaper Da gong bao. | |
| 16 | 1938.04.22-29 |
W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood stayed in Hankou. Interview of Ma Tongna with W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood in Da gong bao included a Chinese rendering of Auden's sonnet together with a manuscript facsimile in modification. They visited the Wuhan University, met Agnes Smedley, Alexander von Falkenhausen and Du Yuesheng. |
|
| 17 | 1938.04.30-05.07 | W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood travelled to Jiujiang and Nanchang. They stayed at the Burlington Hotel in Nanchang. They visited the Amercian Mission Hospital, Governor of Jiangxi, General Xiong Shihui. | |
| 18 | 1938.05.08-20 | W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood travelled and stayed in Jinhua. They met General, Governor Zhejiang Huang Shaohong. They visited Lanxi, Tunki (11 May waiting for the permission to got to the front), Tai hu, Tianmu Shan, Tipu, Anji, Xiaofeng (Zhejiang). They met Peter Fleming. | |
| 19 | 1938.05.20-22 | W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood leaved Jinhua for Wenzhou (Zhejiang). | |
| 20 | 1938.05.25-06.12 | W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood stayed in Shanghai. They met Ambassador Archibald John Kerr and Rewi Alley. | |
| 21 | 1939 |
Auden, W.H. Macao. In : Auden, W.H. ; Isherwood, Christopher. Journey to a war [ID D3432]. A weed from Catholic Europe, it took root Between some yellow mountains and a sea, Its gay stone houses an exotic fruit A Portugal-cum-China oddity Rococo images of saint and Saviour Promise its gamblers fortunes when they die, Churches alongside brothels testify That faith can pardon natural behaviour. A town of such indulgence need not fear Those mortal sins by which the strong are killed And limbs and governments are torn to pieces. Religious clocks will strike, the childish vices Will safeguard the low virtues of the child And nothing serious can happen here. Sekundärliteratur George Monteiro : W.H. Auden's moral picture of Macao, now presented unobtrusively against a background of major wars, is one of greater destruction. The "men" who are torn to pieces become metonymically (and more graphically) "limbs"" and death--the sins that were major--have become "mortal." Other alterations affect tone, making it more colloquial. Moreover, his early modernist tendency to universalize gives way to greater particularity, to specifying and naming things. Macao ceases to be a "city" and becomes--rather off-handedly--a "town." While the original fourth line--"And grew on China imperceptibly"--turns into an accusation. The poet now makes Portugal directly responsible for introducing the European Catholicism that has given Macao its peculiar moral character. Macao is now "a Portugal-cum-China oddity." Why make this quasi-observation into an accusation? In the context of Auden's personal moral landscape, Macao in 1938 embodies cultural oppositions and moral contradictions. Churches and brothels stand side by side, and (transvalued) vice has become, as in William Blake, the protector of virtue. The "town" is a place of sin and indulgence (recalling, perhaps, the sale of indulgences in an earlier time) for which there appears to be no punishment. Portugal has coupled with China to give birth to Macao. Given this context, it is appropriate that the Latin term cum, which gives Auden's phrase an ecclesiastical tinge, evokes as well its near-homonym in English, carrying with its connotative hint of the philoprogenerative. |
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| 22 | 1939 |
Auden, W.H. Hong-Kong. In : Auden, W.H. ; Isherwood, Christopher. Journey to a war [ID D3432]. The leading characters are wise and witty; Substantial men of birth and education, With wide experience of administration, They know the manners of a modern city. Only the servants enter unexpected; Their silence has a fresh dramatic use: Here in the East the bankers have erected A worthy temple to the Comic Muse. Ten thousand miles from home and What's-Her-Name The bugle on the Late Victorian hill Puts out the soldier's light; off-stage, a war [Text in Journey to a war] Thuds like the slamming of a distant door: Each has his comic role in life to fill, Though Life be neither comic nor a game. = [Text in Sonnets from China] Thuds like the slamming of a distant door: We cannot postulate a General Will; For what we are, we have ourselves to blame. |