The table talk of W.H. Auden
In New York, between 1946 and 1948, the scholar and poet Alan Ansen made rapid notes of Auden's inimitable conversation. This book is a record of Auden's private, offhand and sometimes wayward remarks and opinions about art, literature, music, politics, religion and sexuality.
'The north, my world':W. H. Auden's pennine ways
Where, in England, does the South end and the North begin? Despite a recent survey suggesting that on the western side of the country the economic boundary now falls between Gloucester and Worcester (a finding which the still more recent economic downturn may have rendered obsolete), other definitions have been more persuasive. Philip Larkin’s novel Jill (1946) shows Lancashire-born John Kemp, newly up at Oxford, meeting the mother of his public school roommate. She observes, ‘You’re northcountry, aren’t you?’ and herself admits, ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve never been farther north than Crewe.’ His response, ‘That’s funny – I’d never been farther south than Crewe’ (Larkin 1975: 91), confesses his own provincialism rather more than it offers a rebuke to her implied indifference: but for both of them, Crewe marks the spot where the South turns into the North – and, characteristically, southerners turn back. The following year, from across the Atlantic, W. H. Auden agreed: ‘Years before I ever went there, the north of England was the Never-Never Land of my dreams. Nor did those feelings disappear when I finally did; to this day Crewe Junction marks the wildly exciting frontier where the alien South ends and the North, my world, begins’ (2002: 335). Writing from New York City, he was even more remote than he had been when, in infancy, the family moved to Birmingham from his birthplace in York; but, distance notwithstanding, his attitude is resonantly different from Mrs Warner’s calm incuriousness: the ‘north of England’ constitutes for Auden a landscape of belonging, attachment to which repudiates the worldview of people like her in his active disdain for the ‘alien South’. Indeed, such is the power of Auden’s imaginative propulsion northward that Crewe Junction becomes a ‘wildly exciting’ point of transition – in a transfiguration likely to be at odds with most rail-travellers’ experience of its stubbornly prosaic actuality.
Effects of thyrotropin-releasing hormone and a thyrotropin releasing hormone analog on growth and selected plasma hormones in lambs.
An 8-wk growth trial was conducted to assess the effects of continuous infusion of thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH) and an active TRH analog less than Aad-His-Pro-NH2 (the less than Aad is L-pyro-alpha-aminoadipic acid) on growth trial performance, carcass composition and hormone profiles of growing lambs. Both drugs were infused at 600 micrograms X lamb -1 X d -1 with 16 lambs/treatment. Both TRH and less than Aad-His-Pro-NH2 decreased average daily gain (ADG; P less than .01) and increased feed conversion (FC; P less than .01) compared with saline infused controls. Average daily feed intake was not altered. Carcasses of lambs given TRH or less than Aad-His-Pro-NH2 contained fewer kilograms of moisture (P less than .05) and appeared to contain fewer kilograms of protein. Thyrotropin-releasing hormone and less than Aad-His-Pro-NH2 increased thyroid gland weights (P less than .05), but pituitary gland weights were not different. Plasma thyrotropin (TSH) concentrations were increased by both drugs compared with control lambs, peaking at 4 to 7 d after initiating infusion. However, by 14 d, TSH concentrations returned to control levels. Triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4) were elevated by both drugs over the entire 8-wk trial, with peak levels reached at 10 d and maintained for the duration of the study. Both TRH and less than Aad-His-Pro-NH2 increased prolactin over the entire period. Growth hormone levels were not altered by either drug. The effects of less than Aad-His-Pro-NH2 infusion on growth trial performance, carcass composition and hormone profiles of growing lambs were very similar to TRH. The negative effects of TRH and less than Aad-His-Pro-NH2 infusion on ADG, FC and carcass protein appear to be the result of elevated T3 and T4 levels.