Admired but sometimes criticized Auden could not be so ambiguous as usually believed.
In the first part of his life and work tried to denounce the reduction of the human being. First attracted by Marxism and psychonalism, Auden, very soon, discovered the danger of any ideology. After being exposed to the Civil War in Spain hetried to understand the world and decided to travel especially to China also affected by another civil war. He understood that the world and human beings were more complex than the solutions proposed by any system of thinking. So, when he decided to leave Europe in 1939 it was reasonable to think that it was less thought than to remain faithful to a certain vision of humanity. This vision is deployed differently in the second part of his life, but a continuity is certain and may provide a key to understand the ambiguity of his work. Auden was always to face his own contradictions and to denounce the excesses of modernity, tending to reduce the place of humanity.