A. E. Housman

Alfred Edward Housman (IPA: [ˈælfɹɪd ˈedwəd ˈhaʊsmən]; March 26, 1859 – April 30, 1936), usually known as A.E. Housman, was an English poet and classical scholar, now best known for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad.

Life
Housman was born in Fockbury, Worcestershire, the eldest of seven children of a country solicitor. His brother Laurence Housman and sister Clemence Housman also became writers.

Housman was educated first at King Edward's School, then Bromsgrove School, where he acquired a strong academic grounding and won prizes for his poetry. In 1877 he won an open scholarship to St John's College, Oxford, where he studied classics. He was a brilliant student, gaining first class honours in classical moderations, but a withdrawn person whose only friends were his roommates Moses Jackson and A. W. Pollard. Housman had sexual feelings for Jackson which were rejected as Jackson was heterosexual (Summers ed. 1995:371, Page 2004). This rejection could explain Housman's unexpected failure in his final exams (the "Greats) in 1881 (Cunningham 2000:981). Housman took this failure very seriously but managed to take the exams for a pass degree the next year, after a brief period of teaching in Bromsgrove School.

After graduating, Jackson got a job as a clerk in the Patent Office in London and arranged a job there for Housman as well. They shared an apartment with Jackson's brother Adalbert until 1885 when Housman moved in to lodgings of his own. Moses Jackson married and moved to Karachi, India in 1887 and Adalbert Jackson died in 1892. Housman continued pursuing classical studies independently and published scholarly articles on such authors as Horace, Propertius, Ovid, Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles. He gradually acquired such a high reputation that in 1892 he was offered the professorship of Latin at University College London, which he accepted.

Although Housman's sphere of responsibilities as professor included both Latin and Greek, he put most of his energy into the study of Latin classics. His reputation in this field grew steadily, and in 1911 he took the Kennedy Professorship of Latin at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained for the rest of his life. It was unusual at the time for an Oxford man such as Housman to be hired at Cambridge. During 1903–1930, he published his critical edition of Manilius's Astronomicon in five volumes. He also edited works of Juvenal (1905) and Lucan (1926). Many colleagues were afraid of his scathing critical attacks on those whom he found guilty of unscholarly sloppiness. To his students he appeared as a severe, reticent, remote authority. The only pleasures he allowed himself in his spare time were those of gastronomy which he also practised on frequent visits to France (Page 2004).

Housman always found his true vocation in classical studies and treated poetry as a secondary activity. He never spoke about his poetry in public until 1933 when he gave a lecture, "The Name and Nature of Poetry", in which he argued that poetry should appeal to emotions rather than intellect. He died two years later in Cambridge. His ashes are buried near St Laurence's Church, Ludlow, Shropshire.


[edit] Poetry
During his years in London, A E Housman completed his cycle of 63 poems, A Shropshire Lad. After several publishers had turned it down, he published it at his own expense in 1896. The volume surprised both his colleagues and students. At first the book sold slowly, but Housman's nostalgic depiction of brave English soldiers struck a chord with English readers and his poems became a lasting success. Later, World War I further increased their popularity.

Housman was surprised by the success of A Shropshire Lad because it, like all his poetry, is imbued with a deep pessimism and an obsession with all-pervasive death, with no place for the consolations of religion. Set in a half-imaginative pastoral Shropshire, "the land of lost content" (in fact Housman wrote most of the poems before ever visiting the place), the poems explore themes of fleetingness of love and decay of youth in a spare, uncomplicated style which many critics of the time found out of date compared with the exuberance of some of his late Victorian contemporaries. Housman himself acknowledged the influence of the songs of William Shakespeare, the Scottish Border Ballads and Heinrich Heine, but specifically denied any influence of Greek and Latin classics in his poetry.

In the early 1920s, when Moses Jackson was dying in Canada, Housman wanted to assemble his best unpublished poems together so that Jackson could read them before his death. These later poems, most of them written before 1910, show a greater variety of subject and form than those in A Shropshire Lad but also a certain lack of the kind of consistency found in his previously published work. He published them as his Last Poems (1922) because he thought that his poetic inspiration was running out and that he would not publish any more poems in his lifetime. This proved true.

After his death Housman's brother, Laurence, published further poems which appeared in More Poems (1936) and Collected Poems (1939). He also deposited an essay entitled "A. E. Housman's 'De Amicitica'" in the British Library in 1942 (with the proviso that it was not to be published for twenty-five years). The essay discussed A. E. Housman's homosexuality and his love for Jackson (Summers ed. 1995: 371). Given the conservative nature of the times it is not surprising that there was no unambiguous autobiographical statement about Housman's sexuality during his life. In Last Poems we have no. VI, 'Lancer,' in which he goes for a soldier, with its refrain, 'O who would not sleep with the brave?' More Poems was more explicit, as in no. 31 about Jackson 'Because I liked you better / Than suits a man to say' (Summers ed. 1995:372). His poem 'Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?', written after the trial of Oscar Wilde showed that he also explored the more general question of societal injustice regarding homosexuality in addition to his personal emotions (Housman 1937:213). In the poem the prisoner is suffering 'for the colour of his hair' a natural and God-given attribute which - in a clearly coded reference to homosexuality - is regarded as 'nameless and abominable' (recalling the legal phrase 'peccatum horribile, inter christianos non nominandum', 'the horrible sin, not to be named amongst Christians').

Housman also wrote a parodic Fragment of a Greek Tragedy, in English, and humorous poems published posthumously under the title Unkind to Unicorns.

John Sparrow John Hanbury Angus Sparrow (see above) cites a letter written before he died in which Housman describes how his poems came into existence:

"Poetry was for him ...'a morbid secretion', as the pearl is for the oyster. The desire, or the need, did not come upon him often, and it came usually when he was feeling ill or depressed; then whole lines and stanzas would present themselves to him without any effort, or any consciousness of composition on his part. Sometimes they wanted a little alteration, sometime none; sometimes the lines needed in order to make a complete poem would come later, spontaneously or with 'a little coaxing'; sometimes he had to sit down and finish the poem with his head. That .... was a long and laborious process ... "

On this, he adds as a footnote later in the preface:-

"How difficult it is to achieve a satisfactory analysis may be judged by considering the last poem in A Shropshire Lad. Of its four stanzas, Housman tells us that two were 'given' him ready made; one was coaxed forth from his subconsciousness an hour or two later; the remaining one took months of conscious composition. No one can tell for certain which was which."


[edit] Housman in other artforms

[edit] Literature
Housman is the main character in the 1998 Tom Stoppard play The Invention of Love.

Housman's poetry ("There's this to say for life and breath, it gives a man a taste for death") supplies the title and is quoted in Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise thriller, A Taste for Death.

"A Taste for Death" is also the title of P.D. James´ 1986 crime novel, the 7th in her Adam Dalgliesh series.

A Shropshire Lad is mentioned in E.M. Forster's A Room with a View: one of the characters, Reverend Beebe, picks up the book from a stack whilst visiting the Emerson home, and remarks, "Never heard of it", perhaps lamenting the son's "unconventional" - if not sacrilegious - literary taste. [1]

Housman is mentioned and quoted several times by Diana Gabaldon in her popular historical fiction series, starting with Outlander.

There is a reference to Housman in Ian McEwan's novel Atonement, when Robbie, an English literature graduate from Cambridge, glances at his copy of Poems and A Shropshire Lad.

Another reference to Housman can be found in The Secret History by Donna Tartt. "With Rue My Heart Is Laden" is recited by Henry during the burial ceremony of Bunny.

In Chinua Achebe's novel No Longer At Ease the main character Obi frequently refers to Housman's poetry, particularly "Easter Hymn."

In John Dos Passos' novel Three Soldiers, a quote from Housman's A Shropshire Lad is cited by the educated Andrews in part four, chapter one, "mocking" Andrews as it jingles through his head.

Patrick O'Brian has a minor character quote from one of Houseman's poems (Poem AP IX "When the bells justle in the tower") in his novel The Thirteen Gun Salute [2]

In the film of Out of Africa, Karen Blixen, played by Meryl Streep, reads Housman's "To an Athlete Dying Young" over the grave of her lover Denys Finch Hatton.


[edit] Music and art song
Housman's poetry appealed to a significant number of British - and in particular English - composers in the first half of the 20th century. The national, pastoral and traditional elements of his style resonated with similar trends in English music. It is also suggested that the melancholy strain in the poems appealed to a generation of composers deeply influenced by the carnage of the First World War. George Butterworth, Ivor Gurney, John Ireland, Arthur Somervell, and Ralph Vaughan Williams all wrote Housman settings. A 1976 catalogue listed 400 musical settings of Housman's poems (Palmer and Banfield 2001). Gerald Finzi repeatedly began settings, though never finished any. Even composers not normally associated with the pastoral tradition, such as Arnold Bax, Lennox Berkeley and Arthur Bliss, were attracted to Housman's poetry.

While Housman's poetry had a marked impact on British music, it has not been limited in its appeal by time, place or style. The American composer Samuel Barber set With rue my heart is laden. The contemporary New Zealand composer David Downes includes a setting of March on his CD The Rusted Wheel of Things.


[edit] Visual art
A wall hanging of A Shropshire Lad was created and now hangs prominently in the St Laurence Church, Ludlow, England. A plaque honouring the poet is also installed on the church grounds.


[edit] Film
Nicolas Roeg's 1971 film Walkabout concludes with lines from A Shropshire Lad, spoken by a narrator.

John Irvin's (1981) The Dogs of War (film) ends with Epitaph for an Army of Mercenaries being sung over the end titles.

Meryl Streep, portraying Karen Blixen, quotes "To an Athlete Dying Young" at the gravesite of Denis Finch-Hatton in Out of Africa (1985). Toward the end of the film, she accepts a drink from the exclusive all men's club in Nairobi, and toasts "rose-lipped maidens, lightfoot lads" -- an allusion to Houseman's "With Rue My Heart Is Laden".

A line from Housman's poem XVI "How Clear, How Lovely Bright", was used for the title of the last episode of the television movie series "Inspector Morse" (The Remorseful Day). Morse also quotes the last stanza of the poem 27 minutes into the episode.

Blue Remembered Hills, a television play by Dennis Potter, takes its title from A Shropshire Lad. and features Potter reading part of the poem.


[edit] Works

[edit] Poetry
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
Last Poems (1922)
More Poems (1936)
Collected Poems (1939); the poems included in this volume but not the three above are known as Additional Poems. The Penguin Edition of 1956 includes an Introduction by John Sparrow.
Manuscript Poems: Eight Hundred Lines of Hitherto Un-collected Verse from the Author's Notebooks, ed. Tom Burns Haber (1955)
Unkind to Unicorns: Selected Comic Verse, ed. J. Roy Birch (1995; 2nd ed. 1999)
The Poems of A. E. Housman, ed. Archie Burnett (1997)

[edit] Classical scholarship
M. Manilii Astronomica (1903-1930; 2nd ed. 1937; 5 vols.)
D. Iunii Iuuenalis Saturae: editorum in usum edidit (1905; 2nd ed. 1931)
M. Annaei Lucani, Belli Ciuilis, Libri Decem: editorum in usum edidit (1926; 2nd ed. 1927)
The Classical Papers of A. E. Housman, ed. J. Diggle and F. R. D. Goodyear (1972; 3 vols.)

[edit] Published lectures
These lectures are listed by date of delivery, with date of first publication given separately if different.

Introductory Lecture (1892)
"Swinburne" (1910; published 1969)
Cambridge Inaugural Lecture (1911; published 1969 as "The Confines of Criticism")
"The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism" (1921; published 1922)
"The Name and Nature of Poetry" (1933)

[edit] Letters
The Letters of A.E. Housman, ed. Henry Maas (1971)
The Letters of A.E. Housman, ed. Archie Burnett (2007)

[edit] References
Housman, Laurence, A.E.H.: Some Poems, Some Letters and a Personal Memoir by his Brother (London: Jonathan Cape, 1937)
Cunningham, Valentine ed., The Victorians: An Anthology of Poetry and Poetics (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000)
Page, Norman, ‘Housman, Alfred Edward (1859–1936)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
Palmer, Christopher and Stephen Banfield, 'A. E. Housman', The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: Macmillan, 2001)
Summers, Claude J. ed., The Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1995)

[edit] Further reading
Shaw, Robin, "Housman's Places" (The Housman Society, 1995)