ARD Fairburn

Grave site

Arthur Rex Dugard Fairburn ( February 2, 1904 , † March 25, 1957 ) was a New Zealand writer and journalist. Due to his lyrical work and his cultural-political essay writing, he is considered one of the most important representatives of early modern and post-colonial literature in New Zealand.

Early years, New Zealand and England

Arthur Rex Dugard (ARD) Fairburn, who simply called himself "Rex Fairburn", was born into a middle-class family in Auckland, where he spent his childhood and youth in the Parnell district and from 1918 to 1920 attended the Auckland Grammar School . There he met his friend RAK Mason with whom he discussed philosophical and political questions at an early age and with whom he had a lifelong friendship.

From 1920 to 1926 he worked for the New Zealand Insurance Company as an insurance employee. The unsatisfactory work caused him to flee to the lonely Norfolk Island for a time ; on his return he was passionate about rugby and golf, and hiked and swam a lot on the lonely coasts of New Zealand's North Island. He followed in the footsteps of his grandfather Edwin Fairburn, who had also undertaken adventurous journeys in New Zealand and used physical activity in Byronian style as a starting point for philosophical and literary reflections. Fairburn was to cultivate the Byronian style of the sporty, nature-loving man, the "Whole Man", throughout his life.

Fairburn's first collection of poems was created in collaboration with Geoffrey de Montalk, who traced his family history back to the Polish royal family. It was a collection of poetry that deals with the subjects of love, mortality and nature. This stylistically late romantic, partly symbolist phase, which, however, already reveals Fairburn's rhythmic talent, is also due to his first individual publication in London under the title He shall not rise .

Since 1930 Fairburn spent two years in England; During this time, however, also undertook extensive hiking trips in France and Spain. Although he wanted to escape the narrowness of bourgeois New Zealand, he found little pleasure in London's bohemian style . He had more intensive contacts with fellow writers for the magazine New English Weekly , for whom he wrote political essays, as well as with the sculptor Jacob Epstein and the painter Frances Hodgkins . In the English capital he also met the New Zealander Jocelyn Mays, who was studying art at the Slade School there . The two married in 1931; their daughter Corin was born the following year.

In his correspondence with RAK ​​Mason and the Auckland photographer Clifton Firth, Fairburn tried to be clear about his political and aesthetic position. Although Fairburn sympathized with socialist ideas, he rejected Marxist orthodoxy and the incipient Stalinism as well as the art doctrine of socialist realism . On his return to New Zealand, Fairburn worked as a farm laborer and from 1934 to 1942 for the New Zealand Farmers' Union. During this time three more children, Hanno, Janis and Dinah, were born. During the late war years and beyond until 1947, Fairburn worked for the New Zealand Broadcasting Service (National Broadcasting Service) as a manuscript writer and broadcaster.

The 1930s and 1940s were the most productive periods in Fairburn's writing. Fairburn's long political poem Dominon , published in 1941, described Denys Trussel as “ … arguably the most important political poem written in New Zealand. ”(German:“… probably the most important political poem that was written in New Zealand. ”); it takes u. a. a series of topics such as ecology and spirituality , which only gained wider social resonance in the second half of the century.

The late years

In 1949 Fairburn published his long poem To a Friend in the Wilderness , which is written in the form of a poetic dialogue. Denys Trussell described it as “ … a poetic dialogue covering his deepest concerns and employing language rare in twentieth century English poetry for its combination of rhythmic fullness, lucidity and breadth of feeling. ”(German:“… a [poetic] rarity in the English literature of the 20th century: due to a combination of rhythmic perfection, transparency and the range… of the expressed feelings. ”) In the forties it formed, with a focus on authors in the Auckland area, also a decidedly post-colonial New Zealand literature. Together with Allan Curnow , EP Dawson, RAK Mason and Frank Sargeson , with whom he was personally friends, Fairburn also worked on texts that tried to do justice to the special cultural, social and geographical conditions of New Zealand. With the painter Eric Lee-Johnson and the composer Douglas Lilburn , he shared a friendly common interest in the development of an independent cultural identity for New Zealand.

Fairburn also had contact with the Jewish-German exile poet Karl Wolfskehl , who had come to Auckland in 1938. Fairburn was so impressed by Wolfskehl's personal and poetic attitude and erudition that he dedicated his poems 1929–1941 to him together with EP Dawson . With age, Fairburn's literary allusions to antiquity became more ironic. The "bucolic serenity, his social sarcasm and a panentheistic conception of nature" (Franke), which is based on the New Zealand landscape, found less approval with Wolfskehl than the early texts in which Fairburn sang about "Hellas" and one fictional Odysseus landed briefly on New Zealand ("Odysseus, the old wanderer", 1929).

Fairburn wrote a number of journalistic and essayistic texts that strongly influenced the debate about a specifically New Zealand identity. Fairburn worked a. a. for publications such as Tomorrow, NZ Listener, New English Review, Compost Magazine (which Fairburn was editor from 1944 to 1949), Parsons Packet and Landfall . In his influential essay writing with regard to the formation of national identity is one of the article entitled "Aspects of New Zealand Art and Letters" (1934), one of the first and most important self-understanding texts of New Zealand artists as well as "We New Zealanders: An Informal Essay" (1944).

His vitalism related to DH Lawrence is evident in Fairburn's texts as well as in his biography. In addition to his diverse literary work as a poet, essayist, reviewer and critic, Fairburn was also active as a painter, designer and textile printer. a. as a sailor, but also as an organic gardener. His role as a social critic is controversial today, especially because of his image of women, his homophobia , but also his attacks on the painter Colin McCahon.

In 1946, Fairburn moved with his family to Devonport , where he hosted a large number of friends and visitors. 1948-1949 he was a lecturer at the Auckland University, from 1950 he also taught at the Elam School , a well-known New Zealand art school. His Turangawaewae , the place where he felt spiritually at home, was Mahurangi Harbor. In the last years of his life, Fairburn fell ill with cancer, which he succumbed to in 1957. His wife and children survived him.

Works (selection)

• He shall not rise (1930)
• Dominion (1938)
• Poems, 1929-41 (1943)
• Walking on my feet (1945)
• Strange rendezvous (1953)

literature

• James and Helen McNeish: Walking on my feet: ARD Fairburn, 1904–1957: a kind of biography . Collins, Auckland 1983, ISBN 0-00-216594-5 (English).

Web links

• Denys Trussel: Fairburn, Arthur Rex Dugard. In: Te Ara - The Encyclopedia of New Zealand. 1998 (English). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kai Jensen: Whole men: the masculine tradition in New Zealand literature . Auckland University Press, Auckland (New Zealand) 1996, ISBN 1-86940-145-X (English).
2. ↑ ^{a b} Denys Trussel: Fairburn, Arthur Rex Dugard. In: Te Ara - The Encyclopedia of New Zealand. 1998, accessed August 20, 2020 . 
3. ↑ 'Odysseus' brief landing in New Zealand. Karl Wolfskehl and Rex Fairburn. In: ' Jewish, Roman, German at the same time ...'? An investigation into the literary self-construction of Karl Wolfskehl with special consideration of his exillyricism. Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg 2006, ISBN 3-8253-5106-8 , pp. 350–352