“[Edward] Mendelson’s special connection with Auden was studiously based on the work, and what it revealed of Auden’s world view, his ideas on poetry, art, religion and morality. To hear Mendelson expound on Auden is to hear a man who, over four decades of scholarship, has caught the cast of another’s mind perfectly, deeply, and eloquently. Even though he never knew it then, in that 20-year-old dumbstruck student, WH Auden had found a clearer afterlife than the rest of us will ever manage to find.”