Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T14:30:47.626Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Two Versions of Voltaire: W.H. Auden and the Dialectic of Enlightenment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Susannah Young-Ah Gottlieb
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, W. H. Auden and the authors of the Dialectic of Enlightenment, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, ask themselves, in independent reflections, why attempts to free thought from oppressive schemata result in more-insidious forms of oppression: as clerical establishments go into decline, modernity creates new forms of mythological consciousness. For all three authors, the emergence of fascism in the early part of the twentieth century is proof of this and gives urgency to their inquiries into enlightenment. For all three, Voltaire is a pivotal figure, for his struggle against the unity of apologetic discourse and ruthless power allows them to discern an element of enlightenment that survives the most rigorous critique of its oppressive tendencies. This essay examines Horkheimer and Adorno's fragment “For Voltaire” alongside Auden's poem “Voltaire at Ferney” and shows how the latter both anticipates and reveals the limits of the former.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 120 , Issue 2 , March 2005 , pp. 388 - 403
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Adorno, Theodor W. Ästhetische Theorie. Ed. Adorno, Gretel and Tiedemann, Rolf. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973.Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor W. Kierkegaard: Konstruktion des Ästhetischen. 1933.Google Scholar
Reprint. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973.Google Scholar
Aldridge, A. Owen. “Voltaire Then and Now: Paradoxes and Contrasts in His Reputation.” Enlightenment Studies in Honor of Lester G. Crocker. Ed. Alfred, J. Bingham and Virgil W. Topazio. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation at the Taylor Inst., 1970. 1–17.Google Scholar
Auden, W. H. “A Change of Heart: Six Letters from Auden to Professor and Mrs. E. R. Dodds Written at the Beginning of World War II.” Ed. Kathleen Bell. W. H. Auden: “The Map of All My Youth”: Early Works, Friends and Influences. Ed. Bucknell, Katherine and Jenkins, Nicholas. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990. 95–115.Google Scholar
Auden, W. H. Another Time. London: Faber, 1940.Google Scholar
Auden, W. H. Collected Poems. Ed. Mendelson, Edward. New York: Vintage, 1991.Google Scholar
Auden, W. H. Prose. Ed. Mendelson, Edward. Vol. 2. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2002.Google Scholar
Auden, W. H. Secondary Worlds. London: Faber, 1968.Google Scholar
Auden, W. H. “Voltaire at Ferney.” Auden, Collected Poems 250–51.Google Scholar
Baker, Keith Michael, and Peter Hans Reill, eds. What's Left of Enlightenment? A Postmodern Question. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2001.Google Scholar
Beach, Joseph Warren. The Making of the Auden Canon. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1957.10.5749/j.ctttv9bwCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blake, William. “The Tyger.” The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake. Ed. David, V. Erdman. New York: Doubleday, 1988. 24–25.Google Scholar
Byron, George Gordon. Byron. Ed. Jerome, J. McGann. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986.Google Scholar
Carpenter, Humphrey. W. H. Auden: A Biography. Boston: Houghton, 1982.Google Scholar
Chisick, Harvey. “Ethics and History in Voltaire's Attitude toward the Jews.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 35 (2002): 577–600.10.1353/ecs.2002.0037CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fuller, John. W. H. Auden: A Commentary. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1998.Google Scholar
Gay, Peter. The Party of Humanity: Essays in the French Enlightenment. New York: Knopf, 1964.Google Scholar
Gordon, Daniel, ed. Postmodernism and the Enlightenment: New Perspectives in Eighteenth-Century French Intellectual History. London: Routledge, 2001.Google Scholar
Gottlieb, Susannah Young-ah. Regions of Sorrow: Anxiety and Messianism in Hannah Arendt and W. H. Auden. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003.Google Scholar
Hegel, Hegel Georg Wilhelm. Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. Miller, A. V. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1981.Google Scholar
Hegel, Hegel Georg Wilhelm. Werke in zwanzig Bande. Ed. Moldenhauer, Eva and Michel, Karl Markus. Vol. 3. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1971.Google Scholar
Horkheimer, Max. Gesammelte Schriften. Ed. Schmidt, Alfred and Noerr, Gunzelin Schmid. Vol. 5. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1987.Google Scholar
Horkheimer, Max, and Adorno, Theodor W. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. Cumming, John. New York: Continuum, 1988.Google Scholar
Horkheimer, Max, and Adorno, Theodor W. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2002.10.1515/9780804788090CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horkheimer, Max, and Adorno, Theodor W. Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1984.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. On History. Ed. trans, and. Lewis White Beck. Indianapolis: Bobbs, 1963.Google Scholar
Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Bennington, Geoff and Mussami, Brian. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984.Google Scholar
Noyes, Alfred. Voltaire. London: Sheed, 1936.Google Scholar
Schechter, Ronald. “Rationalizing the Enlightenment: Postmodernism and Theories of Anti-Semitism.” Gordon 93–116.10.4324/9781315023229-6CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, James, ed. What Is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions. Berkeley: U of California P, 1996.10.1525/9780520916890CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sieburth, Richard. “Ideas into Action: Pound and Voltaire.” Paideuma: A Journal Devoted to Pound Scholarship 6 (1977): 365–90.Google Scholar
Torrey, Norman L. The Spirit of Voltaire. New York: Columbia UP, 1938.10.7312/torr94206CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Voltaire. Œuvres complètes de Voltaire. Ed. Moland, Louis. Vol. 20. Paris: Garnier, 1879.Google Scholar