Fury over Auden's role in 'distorting' UN chief's memoirs

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Fury over Auden's role in 'distorting' UN chief's memoirs
By David Usborne in New York
27 May 2005
The Independent

A feud has erupted in New York and Stockholm over the literary legacy of the former UN secretary general Dag Hammars-kjold, whose posthumous memoirs were translated and, allegedly, wilfully distorted by W H Auden.

The United Nations is preparing to celebrate the centenary of the Swedish diplomat, one of its most mourned and venerated heroes, who died in a plane crash in 1961. But scholars are calling into question the integrity of the highly contemplative - and ultimately bestselling - journal translated by the English poet, entitled Markings.

According to critics, the English version is full of Auden in-jokes, private references intended to be understood by friends, and even allusions to the poet's pain at a failed love affair. One of the most vociferous scholars, a former Swedish diplomat, has accused Auden of having committed a "crime" in producing such a cavalier translation.

Compiled from a type-written manuscript found in a bedside drawer in his New York apartment after his death, Markings was published in Swedish and then in English, but only after the US publisher demanded that its translation be overseen by a figure with a famous name.

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