Author/Editor		Jurak, M
Title		Wystan Hugh Auden in medicina
Translated title		Wystan Hugh Auden and medicine
Type		članek
Source		In: Zupanič-Slavec Z, editor. Zbornik referatov Med medicino in literaturo. 1. Pintarjevi dnevi: srečanje medikohistorikov Alpe-Jadran; 1994 okt 14-15; Ljubljana. Ljubljana: Inštitut za zgodovino medicine,
Publication year		1994
Volume		str. 97-103
Language		slo
Abstract		W.H. Auden (1907-1973), a poet, a playwright and essayist, came from a doctor's family and several of his friends were doctors too. They probably made him interested in contemporary psychological theories, particularly in psychosomatic diseases. He got acquainted with works written by Sigmund Freud, Georg Groddeck, Homer Tyrell Lane and John Layard, his friends, the poet Stephen Spender and the novelist Christopher Isherwood, assert that W.A. Auden was even at the beginning of his literary career, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, more interested in arts and psychology than politics. He wished the people to become morally and politically more responsible for their actions and he believed that the arts should play an active role in this process. Signs of man's illness are interpreted in W.H. Auden's early poems and in his plays as the result of man's feeling of guilt, caused by his inability to be creative and to act according to his inner laws. In his poems Auden uses the so-called "dream parataxes", i.e. he does not keep to grammatical rules and to the logical development of thinking of his personae or of his characters in his plays. His imagery is often based on man's eroticism or on his longing for death. Auden believes that it is man's psyche, which should be changed first, so that instead of man's egotistic desires and his consumer's attitude to life man should become more self-aware and morally responsible for his actions. In his later works W.H. Auden clearly suggests that Christian "agape" is much more valuable than "eros". This thesis is supported with examples from W.H. Auden's early poems and from his plays, which he wrote together with Christopher Isherwwod.Abstract truncated at 3200 characters.
Descriptors		MEDICINE IN LITERATURE PSYCHOSOMATIC MEDICINE