CORRESPONDENCE:

...All the "last" poems of Auden's last two years appeared in Thank You, Fog...

...and won its point...

...Are these countries really appropriate models for the emerging world...

...I suggest not: (1) The concept of a sovereign national state, able to impose its will by force, is anachronistic in terms of modern weapons technology...

...If printed, they would hardly fill three pages...

...2) From a social and human point of view, Europeans do not value the melting pot concept of the U.S.A...

...Lask confirms that Mr...

...or perhaps the U.S.S.R...

...Half of his work remains to be published...

...C. JOHN SULLIVAN Unpublished Auden...

...New Haven, Conn...

...On the contrary, they could argue that the Negroes should be given self-determination in areas such as New York and the Mexicans in Southwestern U.S.A...

...Mendelson has made this declaration...

...Schall's prescriptions are for a world which is perhaps passed- and a good thing too...

...It may simply, of course, be a misquotation arising from a newspaper reporter...

...CORRESPONDENCE Appropriate Models...

...France or England could probably destroy much of the U.S.S.R., etc...

...and I think with that quote under this picture, that point is made devastatingly by the voice of Auden...

...michael newman Correction The quote at the beginning of Michael Newman's Aug...

...To the Editors: James V.Schall's article, "The Dubious Existence of Europe" [June 20] contains many insights and much information, but the overall tone is one of deep regret that Europe refuses to follow the political-social model of the U.S.A...

...ended to break into his...

...Mendelson would be Thomas Lask, who in an article in the April 29, 1975 New York Times quoted Stephen Spender as saying "It will be a long time before people get the measure of Auden...

...One major point of the whole broadside," Newman writes, "is that the medium is the massage...

...Vietnam defeated France, then the U.S.A...

...Certainly this unitary state is not valued by Latvians, Poles, Hungarians or Czechs...

...So it appears that the unpublished Auden which hasn't been "burnt" constitutes somewhere between three and 300 pages, and that this dispute is in fact between Mendelson and Stephen Spender...

...3) In a world where every group or "nation" will apparently have the power to destroy everyone else-and the notion of restricting these powers to a few great souls like Kissinger or Brezhnev, is hardly acceptable to free man, also impractical in a world of total scientific communication-it seems (Continued on page 383) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 355) far more appropriate to let people preserve what is valid in their Englishness, Frenchness, etc., than to build more superpowers, with their overweaning arrogance...

...The few other unpublished poems , will appear in due course in a collected edition of Auden's work-which will also include three or four unpublished essays, some radio scripts and the libretto Paul Bunyan as the only other previously unprinted writings...

...Auden's own words seem to have been dropped out of that machine, which resembles a linotype machine...

...Cuba threatened the destruction of Eastern U.S.A...

...Spender did indeed say this, that the article went unchallenged-adding that "we're happy Mr...

...I saw several, during my six years' study with him, and imagine that Spender saw many more...

...Picture and quote were intended to reinforce the author's contention "that Auden's poems work like that machine...

...EDWARD MENDELSON Literary Executor of the Estate of W. H. Auden Reply The newspaper reporter indicted by Mr...

...and operatically speaking, this was the point where my voice was intended to break into his...

...To the Editors: Stephen Spender's remark, reported recently in Commonweal [Michael Newman's "Age Before Beauty," 8/1/75], that only half of W. H. Auden's work has been published, is wildly incorrect...

...Unmentioned as yet, of course, remain what Auden called his "queer" poems, which he told me would be published posthumously...

...Except for juvenilia, only a very few of Auden's poems remain unpublished...

...In the modern world, the American Civil War for unity could be considered a colossal political blunder...

...As for the Soviet Empire, created and held together by systematized terror, the basic feeling is one of contempt-for the Empire, not the people -and one must doubt its durability...

...1 article, "Age Before Beauty," belonged beneath the illustration appearing on page 311...

...These weapons are spreading everywhere and as Brezhnev recently suggested, this is only a modest foretaste of the scientific possibilities...