Living in Time: The Poetry of C. Day Lewis

259 Pages·1998·14.02 MB·English

by  Albert Gelpi

LIVING IN TIME
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LIVING
• IN •
TIME
ALBERT GELPI
New York • Oxford
Oxford University Press
1998
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York
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Copyright © 1998 by Albert Gelpi
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
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without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gelpi, Albert,
Living in rime : the poetry of C. Day Lewis /
by Albert Gelpi.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-509863-3
i. Day Lewis, C. (Cecil), 1904-1972—Criticism
and interpretation.
I. Tide.
PR6007.A95Z68 1997
82i'-9!2—dc2i 96-45410
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Erratum
Gelpi/'Living in Time
ISBN 0-19-509863-3
An inadvertent typographical error appears
on page 145 in the chapter subtitle. The
word "Thantos" should have appeared as
"Thanatos."
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This book is, as ever, for Barbara;
and this time also for Edward,
dear friend and comrade ofMeriden Court
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THE GENESIS OF THIS book goes all the way back to the academic year 1964-
65 at Harvard, when I met C. Day Lewis. He had come as the Charles
Eliot Norton Professor to deliver, in the fall and spring, the series of lec-
tures later published as The Lyric Impulse; I was an assistant professor with
a brand-new Ph.D. But the differences in age and culture and experience
somehow worked to kindle the regard and friendship we instantly felt
for each other and found in each other. I was beginning to study the
American poetic tradition, and it was daunting and thrilling that he came
to my lectures on American poets whenever he could. I was deeply moved
when he told me that if I were ever to write about his poetry, he would
be very pleased. I knew even at the time that I had to gain the knowl-
edge and perspective and critical distance necessary for such a task, and
today, three decades later, I date these words of acknowledgment in
completion of the first critical assessment of the whole body of his work
in verse.
From the outset Jill Balcon, the poet's widow, has been encouraging
and unfailingly helpful, giving me access to the papers, manuscripts, and
books in her possession, even making copies of unpublished lectures and
letters for me. I worked many hours, out of time, in the panelled study at
Grooms Hill, under the pencil sketch of Thomas Hardy, where Day Lewis
had worked for the last decades of his life, and later in the snug, book-
lined study at Vine Cottage, looking out at the gently declining vista of
Jill's beautiful garden.