I’ve had a curious experience over the past couple of days that has set me thinking about the ways in which our tastes change as we grow older. I like to vary my reading, alternating fiction and non-fiction, and also poetry. Having had a fairly solid slab of non-fiction recently, and no clear inclination to take up any particular novel, I decided to take a diversion through poetry again.
Browsing along my bookshelves my eye was caught by a book of poems by W.H. Auden. It is ages since I read anything by him. In fact, inside the flyleaf was the date when it was purchased …. 1963! My curiosity was aroused, and I discovered that the other volume of his poems I have was bought in 1960. Clearly, as a university student I was “into” Auden.
The odd thing about this experience, however, was the degree to which I rapidly found myself put off by his verse. I was securing no real enjoyment from reading, finding him rather self-consciously clever, but without the capacity to draw me into his world. My response was very much like that to the poetic diet you are offered in the London Review of Books …. rather self-consciously obscure and lacking in much emotional interest. I shall move on to something more congenial tonight.
It did set me thinking, however, about the way in which our tastes change as we get older, and I tried to remember what I found to be exciting in the visual arts back in the early ‘sixties. To my surprise I started to think about “primitive art”. (This is, of course, not a term that would enjoy much currency today!) During my year in Canada in 1963-4 I became very excited by the stone-cut prints of Inuit artists, and also by the designs of the native peoples of the North-West coast …. Tlingit and Kwakiutl. I discovered that this was an interest I shared with Norbert Elias, on my return to Leicester as a teaching assistant. I haven’t given any attention to this material for years, however, until discovering the current fashion for the art of native peoples in the posh auction houses. Experiences that at one time of our lives occupy the centre of our attention can sink, in time, entirely from our awareness.
It is only when we have encounters such as this that we really appreciate how much we have changed as persons. On reflection, I believe that it is probably a good thing that I am no longer the earnest young man who read Auden back then. I know that I am happier.