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...poets--I am thinking of Bertolt Brecht and Wystan Auden (who had ties between them, as Auden collaborated with Brecht in 1946 and later translated his play The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny)--these texts, brimming with fervor, show that she regarded poets as having not just an exceptional gift, "divine gift," but, by virtue of this gift, a kind of authority that holds true for everyone. It is to this particular kind of authority in the modem world that I should like to call attention.
Arendt believed in poetry (diction, echoes, rhythms, rhymes). Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, who quotes and translates several of Arendt's poems, tells us Arendt started writing poems when she was 17 years old, dark poems that seem to seek consolation, through rhythms and recurrent resonances, for loss and for those moments that had been so dark in her life and in the world. They also seek elucidation and the solace elucidation provides (Young-Bruehl, 1982: 478-489).
Did her poems provide it? That is uncertain. But she continued to expect solace from poetry, a kind of salvation. And not just for herself, but for everyone. Arendt was eager to familiarize herself with the culture of the
English-speaking world, especially through its poetry; and thanks to the poet Randall Jarrell, she came to know Auden's poems, and the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Yeats. She liked Auden's poetry (Young-Bruehl, 1982: 191). When later she met him she thought highly of him, but said it was too late in their lives for him to become her intimate friend (Arendt, 2007: 294). Nevertheless, when he proposed to her after the death of her husband, Heinrich Bluecher, in the hope that she would take care of him, she was not outraged; she understood Auden's misery as a betrayed lover and aging homosexual. She turned him down, but she was moved, seeing this as an instance of the pain caused by unrequited love.
Arendt liked poets (just as she liked narrators); she quoted them, drew on them (Char, Kafka), praised them (Auden, Jarrell, Brecht--the latter with extraordinary lenience).
Auden in turn read Arendt with enthusiasm, particularly The Human Condition, a book in which he was delighted to find elements of his own thought. (He wrote a review...
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