Stephen Spender

Presenter0:00

This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:08

Yeah.

Stephen Spender0:08

Whereabouts in Britain were you born?

Presenter0:10

Uh

Stephen Spender0:10

In London.

Stephen Spender0:11

You come from a literary family, I believe? Uh well, rather a family of journalists. My father was a freelance journalist and my uncle, J. Spender, was a famous editor.

Presenter0:21

Yes. How early in life did did verse begin to fascinate you? When did you first

Presenter0:27

find the sounds of words are important.

Stephen Spender0:29

Well, I think that when I was nine, I remember we went to the Lake District for holiday, and there my father read to me, or showed me, uh, the poems of Wordsworth about childhood, We're Seven, and so on, very sentimental poems, but to me they made an enormous impression.

Presenter0:47

Yeah.

Stephen Spender0:47

When was your first poem published?

Stephen Spender0:49

Uh well, if you call it published, when I was at Oxford I bought a p a printing set for printing chemists' labels and I printed a ghastly volume called Nine Experiments on this set.

Stephen Spender1:04

Yes, a very rare volume now. It's a very rare volume indeed. And I also printed Auden's poems in a similar way, and that's a very much sought after and very valuable volume.

Presenter1:15

What was it your very first ambition to be, or was it poetry from the start?

Stephen Spender1:19

Uh I first of all wanted to be a naturalist. I imagined myself with a long white beard sitting in a garden uh full of flowers and uh green leaves and caterpillars and birds and so on. Mhm. And when did it become apparent? apparent to you that verse was to be the major thing in your life? Well, I think the moment I started seriously being taught botany, I lost interest in nature and took to poetry.

Stephen Spender1:47

Uh

Presenter1:47

Um there is of course no such thing as as as a professional young poet. You did have a a modest private income that could make such an ambition feasible.

Stephen Spender1:55

Yes, I had about three hundred a year when I left Oxford, and so I travelled a good deal, and I was able to live quite happily on this little income.

Presenter2:04

Yes. You've mentioned Wordsworth as a first influence. What were later influences?

Stephen Spender2:10

I was very influenced by the Romantic poets because when I was young the Romantic poets seemed to us the sort of most perfect poets that had ever been.

Stephen Spender2:21

Uh

Presenter2:23

Well you told us of your the first appearance of your poetry, and that shortly after that you published your first book of poems.

Stephen Spender2:29

Yes. I published my first complete book in nineteen thirty three. Mhm, which made a considerable impact. Yes, it yes it did. Uh that is to say it got a very good critical reception. Uh I don't think it had very many readers. I think that within two years it had only sold a thousand copies or so.

Presenter2:46

mister Spender, in the thirties you and WH Orden and Cecil Day Lewis were looked upon together as a group. Had you, in fact, so much in common?

Stephen Spender2:54

Uh

Stephen Spender2:55

De Luis and I had the friendship of Auden in common.

Stephen Spender2:59

Orden was a great influence. He was a very powerfully intelligent man, and he was also uh scientific.

Stephen Spender3:07

And he was anti-romantic. De Lewis and I were both romantics, and I suppose that therefore Auden influenced both of us a good deal.

Presenter3:16

Yes. You were assessed as poetical come political writers as a as very socially conscious.

Stephen Spender3:21

Well we became involved in politics, I think, simply as a result of the events of the nineteen thirties, because I think if you were human beings then it was impossible not to feel strongly about, say, the concentration camps of the Nazis and so on.

Presenter3:36

Yes. And you went to Spain uh as an observer during the Civil War.

Stephen Spender3:39

Is

Presenter3:40

Uh to use a phrase that we're tired of, I mean, could you call yourselves the the angry young men of of of that decade?

Stephen Spender3:45

Well, I think we were angry, but

Stephen Spender3:48

This is because we had something to be angry about, which was fascism. We weren't intrinsically angry, I don't think.

Presenter3:56

In nineteen thirty nine you planned with Cyril Connolly a a monthly magazine that was to have a long life and have considerable influence, Horizon. Was there a feeling of carrying on a family tradition?

Stephen Spender4:05

Cat

Stephen Spender4:07

And then doing this. Yeah.

Stephen Spender4:08

Well, not really, because from the point of view of my family, monthly journalism isn't journalism at all, it's just sort of amateur play.

Presenter4:18

Then after the war you began encounter.

Presenter4:21

Yes. Now, can a literary magazine of this nature be self-supporting?

Stephen Spender4:24

sporting in these days.

Stephen Spender4:25

No, I don't think so, because you can never make the public pay for the cost of the magazine. You can't pass o on the i the cost, it's too expensive.

Presenter4:34

Although Encounter has, I believe, a a record-breaking uh circulation for a magazine of its type.

Stephen Spender4:40

Yes, it has a circulation of about thirty-five thousand, but this isn't large enough to interest advertisers who or the kind of advertisers who will pay. And in order to get the advertisers you have to lower the standard of the magazine in order to reach a wider public. It's a sort of vicious circle, really.

Presenter4:59

Yes. But it has an influence far beyond its circulation.

Stephen Spender5:02

Yes, it's read by a great many uh serious people, I think. It's read, for instance, by the President of the United States and it's read by mister Nehru.

Stephen Spender5:11

and it's r rarely read all over the world.

Presenter5:14

Mr. Spender, since the war you've done a a great deal of teaching, mostly in American universities. Do you find this rewarding?

Stephen Spender5:20

Yes.

Stephen Spender5:22

It's very interesting to work there. It's very valuable to me because it puts me in touch with young Americans. Young Americans are intelligent and they don't feel that there's this gap between generations that people over here seem to think. They don't really feel that they belong to a different generation if they have tastes which are similar to yours.

Stephen Spender5:46

Yeah.

Presenter5:46

Right through your career you've done a great deal of travelling, sometimes to travel spots like um Spain as an observer during the Civil War, uh and and taken part in many different kinds of activities. You've never felt the desire for an ivory tar existence as a poet. Uh

Stephen Spender6:02

Uh

Stephen Spender6:03

Well, an an ivory tower existence in the sense of being on my desert island, that's to say in the sense of of cutting myself off from uh the kind of life I lead the whole time. But otherwise, no, I haven't wanted to be cut off from events.

Presenter6:18

Do you think the public for poetry is is bigger today than it was thirty years ago?

Stephen Spender6:22

I should say so.

Stephen Spender6:24

I should say that uh a young poet who had anything like the same reputation that Auden de Lewis and Spender had in the nineteen thirties uh would have more people buy his poems than happened then.

Presenter6:39

The long

Stephen Spender6:39

Complain.

Presenter6:39

Uh

Stephen Spender6:40

Discs of of poetry of of today help of course.

Stephen Spender6:48

They often know your poems without knowing your name, but that's the name of the anthology.

Presenter6:53

Which single piece of your own

Stephen Spender6:56

WIP

Presenter6:56

Uh

Stephen Spender6:56

Due value most.

Stephen Spender6:59

Well, I think there's a poem

Stephen Spender7:01

called Nocturne, which I wrote shortly after the war.

Stephen Spender7:04

uh which I like very much. But otherwise I don't really like my past work at all. I like what I am going to write. That's really all that interests me.