W.H. Auden on Liturgical Reform

I have, of late, been feeling mighty contrary, especially in matters liturgical. This mood was prompted, in part, by reports that suggest I am not alone in my reactionary tastes. When complaining about artless, ugly, and unnecessary liturgical reforms one need not look far to find kindred cantankerous spirits, though few of them appear to be involved in the bodies that decide such things. (One can at least take some comfort in being right, I suppose.) I present here one such spirit, W.H. Auden, whose work I generally enjoy. This letter (dated November 26th, but without a year; it was written while Auden resided at St. Mark's Place in New York) was apparently prompted by alterations to the Episcopalian liturgy.

Dear Father Allen:
Have you gone stark raving mad? Aside from its introduction of a lesson and psalm from the O.T., which seems to me admirable since few people go any more to Mattins or Evensong, the new 'liturgy' is appalling.

Our Church has had the singular good-fortune of having its Prayer-Book composed and its Bible translated at exactly the right time, i.e., late enough for the language to be intelligible to any English-speaking person in this century (any child of six can be told what 'the quick and the dead' means) and early enough, i.e., when people still had an instinctive feeling for the formal and the ceremonious which is essential in liturgical language.

This feeling has been, alas, as we all know, almost totally lost. (To identify the ceremonious with 'the undemocratic' is sheer contemporary cant.) The poor Roman Catholics, obliged to start from scratch, have produced an English Mass which is a cacophonous monstrosity (the German version is quite good, but German has a certain natural sonority): But why should we imitate them?

I implore you by the bowels of Christ to stick to Cranmer and King James. Preaching, of course, is another matter: there the language must be contemporary. But one of the great functions of the liturgy is to keep us in touch with the past and the dead.

And what, by the way, has happened to the altar cloths? If they have been sold to give money to the poor, I will gladly accept their disappearance: I will not accept it on any liturgical or doctrinal grounds.

With best wishes,
[signed]
W.H. Auden