“In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start…”

october 8 nelson rufatt on t.s. eliot & w.H.Auden

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) and W. H. Auden (1907-1973) became Christian poets, but with very different results. Eliot, the born-again Anglo-Catholic mystic, wrote poems that filled with quiddities. Auden, appalled by his ability to write beautiful, persuasive rhetoric in a world driven to murder by tyrants, eschewed metaphor, and cultivated a sceptical prosiness that said only what it meant. What do these different styles say about the poets’ faith? Is spiritual life better reached through enchantment, or disenchantment? Questions like these will be raised by Nelson Rufatt in his seminar on Eliot and Auden.

Nelson Rufatt is a pianist, composer, and poet. He is the host of Counterturn, a podcast about humanism and the arts. He is also a choral scholar and parishioner of St. Peter's Eastern Hill.