Funeral Blues

Funeral Blues ( " Funeral Blues" ) is a poem that the English writer WH Auden, published in 1936.

Formation

The poem, which Auden himself had given no title, which appeared but overwritten in an anthology published in 1938 with Funeral Blues, exists in two very divergent versions. The little-known original version consists of five stanzas. Auden wrote the original version fünfstrophige 1936 as a parody of a funeral poem for a political leader in the poetic drama " The Ascent of F6", which he wrote together with his partner Christopher Isherwood. The first two verses are identical in the four - and five-line version, the end is, however, completely different content.

The vierstrophige version was to be sung by the English soprano Hedli Anderson in an arrangement of the composer Benjamin Britten. This version was released in the compiled by Denys Kilham Roberts and Geoffrey Grigson anthology " The Year 's Poetry, 1938 " and in Auden's book " Another Time " and titled as "Funeral Blues", while the fünfstrophige version has no title. In the edition of Another Time for the United Kingdom there was a typo: instead of the correct wood woods is written in the fourth stanza. This error appears in no other edition.

Adaptations

• Benjamin Britten published under the title " Cabaret Songs " musical settings of several Auden poems, including Funeral Blues.
• In the film Four Weddings and a Funeral, Matthew reads the poem at the funeral of Gareth.
• The poem is the English contribution to the memorial stone of the disaster at Heysel, in 1985, 39 people were killed.