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Beautiful. -- Mark Schorer New York Times [Auden's] four long poems ... remain the astounding heart of his work... In For the Time Being, the most successful of these poems, [the characters] are at once participants in the Nativity story and drunken New Yorkers. -- Adam Gopnik New Yorker The oratorio ... carries [its theme] through a series of resourceful modulations to a music-hall finale, setting the Flight into Egypt--'the Land of Unlikeness'--against a real-estate development of the Waste Land. The perplexities and strivings of the intellectual, the man with the mirror, are profoundly grasped and impressively orchestrated... Auden, like most intelligent believers, affirms a positive faith by a kind of double negation, a denial of doubt, a questioning of skepticism. He is more adept at burying Caesar than at praising Christ, more anxious for a Messiah than confident in the Revelation. -- Harry Levin New Republic 'The Christmas Oratorio' contains very fine passages, is amusing as well as being serious, and ... has the power in some of the choruses, of bringing to mind the mighty chorales of Bach. -- Stephen Spender Time and Tide

[Auden's] four long poems ... remain the astounding heart of his work... In For the Time Being, the most successful of these poems, [the characters] are at once participants in the Nativity story and drunken New Yorkers. --Adam Gopnik, New Yorker Beautiful. --Mark Schorer, New York Times For the Time Being is efficiently annotated and interestingly introduced. --Lachlan MacKinnon, Times Literary Supplement The oratorio ... carries [its theme] through a series of resourceful modulations to a music-hall finale, setting the Flight into Egypt--'the Land of Unlikeness'--against a real-estate development of the Waste Land. The perplexities and strivings of the intellectual, the man with the mirror, are profoundly grasped and impressively orchestrated... Auden, like most intelligent believers, affirms a positive faith by a kind of double negation, a denial of doubt, a questioning of skepticism. He is more adept at burying Caesar than at praising Christ, more anxious for a Messiah than confident in the Revelation. --Harry Levin, New Republic 'The Christmas Oratorio' contains very fine passages, is amusing as well as being serious, and ... has the power in some of the choruses, of bringing to mind the mighty chorales of Bach. --Stephen Spender, Time and Tide [A] long-awaited, happy-making edition... I am incapable of reading the last pages of For the Time Being without tears... The trip will be surreal, as For the Time Being often is, but it will end as For the Time Being ends, with 'joy.' --John Timpane, Philadelphia Inquirer [S]plendid critical edition. --Cyntha Haven, Book Haven

[Auden's] four long poems ... remain the astounding heart of his work... In For the Time Being, the most successful of these poems, [the characters] are at once participants in the Nativity story and drunken New Yorkers. --Adam Gopnik, New Yorker Beautiful. --Mark Schorer, New York Times For the Time Being is efficiently annotated and interestingly introduced. --Lachlan MacKinnon, Times Literary Supplement The oratorio ... carries [its theme] through a series of resourceful modulations to a music-hall finale, setting the Flight into Egypt--'the Land of Unlikeness'--against a real-estate development of the Waste Land. The perplexities and strivings of the intellectual, the man with the mirror, are profoundly grasped and impressively orchestrated... Auden, like most intelligent believers, affirms a positive faith by a kind of double negation, a denial of doubt, a questioning of skepticism. He is more adept at burying Caesar than at praising Christ, more anxious for a Messiah than confident in the Revelation. --Harry Levin, New Republic 'The Christmas Oratorio' contains very fine passages, is amusing as well as being serious, and ... has the power in some of the choruses, of bringing to mind the mighty chorales of Bach. --Stephen Spender, Time and Tide [A] long-awaited, happy-making edition... I am incapable of reading the last pages of For the Time Being without tears... The trip will be surreal, as For the Time Being often is, but it will end as For the Time Being ends, with 'joy.' --John Timpane, Philadelphia Inquirer

Author Information

Alan Jacobs is the Clyde S. Kilby Professor of English at Wheaton College in Illinois. He previously edited Auden's The Age of Anxiety for this series, and is the author of several books, including most recently The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction.

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