Albert Wendt (poet)

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Albert Wendt, 2013

Albert Wendt , CNZM , ONZ (born October 27, 1939 in Apia , Western Samoa ) is a Samoan poet, writer and university scholar of great importance for Polynesian literature of the 20th century and to our day.

Life

Albert Wendt was born in Apia, the capital of the independent state of Samoa, as a descendant of German and Polynesian ancestors. At the age of thirteen he moved to New Zealand , where he received a government-sponsored scholarship to New Plymouth High School . After leaving school, he stayed in the country and earned a master's degree in history from Victoria University of Wellington .

Grown up in New Zealand and Samoa alike, he maintained a strong bond with both countries and their respective cultures throughout his life, which plays a role in all of his books and also in his professional career as a teacher at various colleges; first in New Zealand and at the age of 29 also at the newly founded Samoa College in Apia together with his wife Jenny, a white New Zealander, where he soon held the post of rector.

In 1974 he accepted a position as a lecturer in English at the University of the South Pacific . In the following years he made it up to the deputy dean.

From 1988 until his retirement he was employed at the University of Auckland , first in the department of English, then later as professor for the newly established chair for Pacific Studies, which included the literature of the native Māori and the distant Pacific. In 1999 he was visiting professor in Hawaii .

Create

When Sons appeared in 1973 , it was the first novel by a Samoan author, as Vilsoni Hereniko discovered decades later. He gave the form of the novel, which was considered "something European, a colonial artifact" (something European, a colonial remnant), a Samoan touch, written in an English that does not stop at a Samoan pidgin in the dialogues . The successful amalgamation of myths, history, culture and politics of his Polynesian heritage and the New Zealand reality of many exiled Samoans and other “coconuts” in New Zealand (and thus the New World) was thanks to the young Albert Wendt.

Many other publications followed, with his Leaves of the Banyan tree (1979) receiving the best critical response. In 1980 he won the award at the New Zealand Book Awards . He has also published anthologies and the literary journal Mana at the University of South Pacific under his auspices . Numerous volumes of poetry, novels, collections of short stories, a play and scripts followed.

In 1993 the Université de Bourgogne in Dijon awarded him an honorary professorship for his efforts to achieve cultural balance. At times he also worked for the UNESCO Program on Oceanic Cultures .

In 2012 he received the Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement .

Great influence on his work - as he himself admits - had u. a. the work of Albert Camus and William Faulkner .

Fonts

  • Guardians and Wards. Study, Victoria University of Wellington, 1965
  • Sons for the Return Home. 1973.
  • Flying Fox in a Freedom Tree: And Other Stories. 1974.
  • Inside us the dead. Poems 1961 to 1974. 1976.
  • Pouliuli. 1977.
  • Leaves of the Banyan Tree. 1979.
  • The Samoa clan. Hammer, Wuppertal 1982 ISBN 3-87294-204-2 .
  • The Birth and Death of the Miracle Man. 1986.
  • Black Rainbow. 1992.
  • The leaves of the banyan tree. Zürcher Unionsverlag, Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-293-20122-9 .
  • The Best of Albert Wendt's Short Stories. 1999.
  • The Book of the Black Star. 2002.

Movies

  • Sons for the return home , New Zealand, 1979, feature film, 117 min., Written and directed by Paul Maunder
  • LOOKOUT: Auckland Faa Samoa , New Zealand, 1982, documentary, 50 min., Book: Albert Wendt, director: Keith Hunter
  • Samoa - Rebel between 2 Worlds (Flying Fox in a Freedom Tree) , New Zealand, 1989, feature film, 92 min., Written and directed by Martyn Sanderson

literature

  • Wendt's crippled Cosmos, Genesis and Form of his Novels, Subramani. In: South Pacific Literature (from Myth to Fabulation). Chapter 6. Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific, 1992.
  • Paul Sharrad: Albert Wendt and the Pacific Literature - circling the void. Auckland University Press, 2003.

See also

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement website, accessed January 18, 2015
  2. ↑ see: http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-WenGua.html
personal data
SURNAME Wendt, Albert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Samoan poet and writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 27, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Apia , Western Samoa