Aidan Higgins

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Aidan Higgins (2007)

Aidan Higgins (born March 3, 1927 in Celbridge , County Kildare , Ireland , † December 27, 2015 in Kinsale ) was an Irish writer . He wrote short stories, travel pieces, radio plays and novels. His published works include Langrishe, Go Down (1966), Balcony of Europe (1972) and the biography Dog Days (1998). His writing is characterized by non-conventional foreign attitudes and a narrative mode of the stream of consciousness . Most of his early narratives are autobiographical.

Life

Aidan Higgins was born in Celbridge. He attended local schools and Clongowes Wood College private boarding school. In the early 1950s he worked as a copywriter for the Domas advertising agency in Dublin . He then moved to London and worked in light industry for about two years. There he married Jill Damaris Anders on November 25, 1955. From 1960, Higgins lived in southern Spain, South Africa, Berlin and Rhodesia . In 1960 and 1961 he worked as a screenwriter for the Filmlets advertising agency in Johannesburg . These trips provided material for much of his later work, including his three autobiographies, Donkey's Years (1996), Dog Days (1998) and The Whole Hog (2000).

Higgins lived from 1986 with the writer and journalist Alannah Hopkin in Kinsale, County Cork. They married in Dublin in November 1997. He was a founding member of the Irish artists' association Aosdána . Higgins died in Kinsale on December 27, 2015.

Works

His upbringing in a Catholic landowning family provided material for his first novel Langrishe, Go Down (1966, German A late summer, 1969). The novel is set in a shabby “big house” in County Kildare in the 1930s, inhabited by the last members of the Langrishe family, three Spinster sisters, Catholics, who lived in a not-so-noble poverty in a once-so living in great surroundings. One sister, Imogen, has an affair with a German intellectual, Otto Beck, who transgresses the moral code of the time and brings her a brief experience of happiness. Otto's intellectual aspirations contrast with the moribund cultural life in Ireland in the mid-20th century. The book was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction and was later adapted as a BBC television film by British playwright Harold Pinter in collaboration with RTÉ . Langrishe also received the Irish Academy of Letters Award.

His second great novel, Balcony of Europe (German An Irishman on the Sun Coast , 1979), takes its name from the Spanish fishing village of Nerja in Andalusia , where it is located. The novel is carefully crafted and rich in embedded literary references. He uses Spanish and Irish settings and various languages, including Spanish and some German, in his account of the everyday life of a largely foreign community on the beaches and bars of Nerja . The protagonist, an artist named Dan Ruttle, is obsessed with the young American wife of his friend Charlotte and with the contrast between his life in a cosmopolitan artistic community in the Mediterranean and his Irish roots. The book was revised in collaboration with Neil Murphy and published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2010, with the Irish editing and the affair between Dan Ruttle and Charlotte in the foreground.

Later novels include the acclaimed Bornholm Night-Ferry and Lions of the Grunewald . Various writings have been collected and reprinted by the Dalkey Archive Press, including his three-volume autobiography A Bestiarary and a Collection of Short Stories, Flotsam and Jetsam , both of which demonstrate his extensive experience and his life and travel experience in South Africa, Germany and London, which is what his writing is largely cosmopolitan feel, in which different European languages ​​are used alternately.

Awards

  • Felo de Se - Somin Trust Award, 1963
  • Langrishe, Go Down - James Tait Black Memorial Prize, 1967
  • DAAD scholarship of Berlin, 1969
  • American Irish Foundation grant, 1977
  • DDL, National University of Ireland, 2001

bibliography

  • A bestiary . Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press, 2004.
  • As I was Riding Down Duval Boulevard with Pete La Salle. Dublin: Anam Press, 2003.
  • Balcony of Europe . London: Calder & Boyars, 1972; New York: Delacorte, 1972; Illinois, Dalkey Archive Press, 2010.
  • Bornholm Night-Ferry . London: Allison & Busby; Ireland: Brandon Books, 1983; London: Abacus, 1985; Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press, 2006.
  • Darkling Plains: Texts for the Air . Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press, 2010.
  • Dog Days: A Sequel to Donkey's Years . London: Secker & Warburg, 1998.
  • Donkey's Years: Memories of a Life as Story Told . London: Secker & Warburg, 1995.
  • Felo de Se . London: Calder & Boyars, 1960; as Killachter Meadow , New York: Grove Press, 1960; as * Asylum and Other Stories , London: Calder & Boyars, 1978; New York: Riverrun Press, 1979.
  • Flotsam & Jetsam . London: Minerva, 1997; Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press, 2002.
  • Helsingor Station & Other Departures: Fictions and Autobiographies 1956–1989 . London: Secker & Warburg, 1989.
  • Images of Africa: Diary (1956-60) . London: Calder & Boyars, 1971.
  • Langrishe, go down . London: Calder & Boyars, 1966; New York: Grove Press, 1966; London: Paladin, 1987; Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press, 2004; Dublin: New Island, 2007.
  • Lions of the Grunewald . London: Secker & Warburg, 1993. Also as Weaver's Women. London: Secker & Warburg, 1993.
  • March Hares . Dalkey Archive Press, 2017.
  • Ronda Gorge & Other Precipices: Travel Writings 1959–1989 . London: Secker & Warburg, 1989.
  • Scenes from a Receding Past . London: Calder, 1977; Dallas: Riverrun Press, 1977; Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press, 2005.
  • The Whole Hog: A Sequel to Donkey's Years and Dog Days . London: Secker & Warburg, 2000.
  • Windy Arbors . Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press, 2005.

literature

  • Neil Murphy (EDITORIAL) Aidan Higgins: The Fragility of Form (essays and commentaries). Dalkey Archive Press, 2010.

Web links

Commons : Aidan Higgins  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Acclaimed Irish writer Aidan Higgins dies aged 88. In: The Irish Times. December 28, 2015, accessed March 7, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Portrait in "Aosdána"
  3. ↑ Kevin O'Farell: Phenomenological fiction: Aidan Higgins via Edmund Husserl. In: Irish University Review. September 22, 2013, accessed March 7, 2019 .
  4. ^ Neil Murphy, Aidan Higgins: The Fragility of Form , Dalkey Archive Press. ( Memento from March 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Aidan Higgins Biography (English)
personal data
SURNAME Higgins, Aidan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Irish writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Celbridge , County Kildare , Ireland
DATE OF DEATH December 27, 2015
Place of death Kinsale