AE Housman

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Sculpture by Housman in Bromsgrove

Alfred Edward Housman (born March 26, 1859 in Fockbury , Worcestershire , † April 30, 1936 in Cambridge ), usually known as AE Housman , was an English scholar and poet best known for his book of poetry, A Shropshire Lad , published in 1896 . The poems contained therein describe the lost youth in rural areas of England. They use concise, expressive language and symbols. As a result, they were popular with English composers of the early 20th century and were often set to music. Housman's poems are closely tied to the era and Shropshire itself.

Housman was one of the leading classical scholars of his time and has been described as one of the greatest scholars of all time. He gained his reputation as a private scholar and was appointed professor of Latin at University College London and later at Cambridge because of the quality of his publications .

Life

Alfred Edward Housman was born in Fockbury, a hamlet near Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, the eldest of seven children of a lawyer. His mother died on his twelfth birthday and her place was taken by his stepmother Lucy. She was an older cousin of his father, whom he married in 1873. His brother Laurence Housman and sister Clemence Housman also became writers.

Housman attended King Edward's School in Birmingham and later the Bromsgrove School, where he received an in-depth academic education and has already won prizes for his poetry. In 1877 he got a scholarship to St John's College in Oxford , where he studied classical philology. Although Housman was rather reserved, he made close friendships with his two roommates, Moses Jackson and AW Pollard. Jackson became the love of his life but did not reciprocate Housman's feelings because he was straight. Although Housman was an excellent classical scholar, he failed to pass the exams required for a degree. The reason for this failure is unclear. It is possible that Housman overestimated himself, paid too little attention to subjects he thought were unimportant, spent too much time with Jackson, or was concerned about his father's illness. Housman felt humiliated by his unexpected failure and was determined to defend his genius.

When Jackson got a job in the Patent Office in London, he organized a job for Housman there too. They shared an apartment with Jackson's brother Adalbert until 1885, when Housman moved into his own apartment. Moses Jackson went to India in 1887 and only returned briefly to England in 1889 to get married. Housman only found out about this after the couple had already left the country. Adalbert Jackson died in 1892. Housman continued his ancient language studies and wrote articles on authors such as Horace , Properz , Ovid , Aeschylus , Euripides and Sophocles . Gradually he gained such prestige that in 1892 he was appointed Professor of Latin at University College London. Many years later, the UCL Academic Staff Common Room was renamed the Housman Room in his memory .

Although Housman's early work and professorial duties included both Latin and Greek, he began to focus on Latin poetry. When asked later why he stopped writing about Greek poetry, he replied, "I found that I could not attain excellence in both" (something like, "I found that I couldn't excel at both"). In 1911 he became Kennedy Professor of Latin at Trinity College , Cambridge, where he stayed for the rest of his life. Between 1903 and 1930 he published his critical edition of Manilius ' Astronomica , in 1905 also works by Juvenal and in 1926 by Lucan . He annoyed his colleagues with insulting attacks on their scientific achievements, and drove his students into despair. Only Enoch Powell received his attention and support - at the age of 25, appointed to the chair of Greek studies in Sidney, the great polemicist was considered his most gifted student.

Housman found his true calling in ancient language studies, treating poetry as a secondary occupation. He never spoke about his poetry in public until he gave a lecture in 1933 - The Name and Nature of Poetry - in which he argued that poetry should appeal to the emotions rather than the intellect. He died in Cambridge three years later at the age of 77. His ashes were buried next to the walls of St Laurence's Church in Ludlow, Shropshire .

Poems

A Shropshire Lad

During the time he was in London, Housman wrote his book of poems, A Shropshire Lad , which contains 63 poems. Because several publishers rejected his poems, he published them in 1896 at his own expense. Both his colleagues and his students were very surprised, since they had not known about Housman's poetry. A Shropshire Lad sold slowly at first but later became a huge success. Even before the First World War, Housman's poems were often set to music by English composers and thus gained greater popularity. A Shropshire Lad has been printing continuously since May 1896.

The poems are characterized by a strong pessimism and a constant preoccupation with death, without offering consolation in religion. Housman wrote most of them while he was living in Highgate, London, and before ever visiting the part of Shropshire he described, about 30 miles from his home. He idealized Shropshire and called it his 'land of lost content' (roughly: 'The land of lost happiness'). Housman himself confirmed that his poems were influenced by the songs of William Shakespeare, by the Scottish Border Ballads and Heinrich Heine , but denied any Greek and Latin influence.

The poem To an Athlete Dying Young from A Shropshire Lad achieved great fame because it was used in the 1985 film Out of Africa : Karen Blixen (played by Meryl Streep ) reads it in an abridged version during Denys' funeral Finch Hatton ( Robert Redford ).

Alice Munro named one of her stories in the book "Too Much Luck" after "On Wenlock's Edge".

Works (selection)

  • 1896 A Shropshire Lad
  • 1922 Last Poems
  • 1936 More Poems
  • 1939 Complete Poems

Settings

  • George Butterworth : Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad and Bredon Hill and other Songs from A Shropshire Lad , Roderick Williams and Ian Burnside, Naxos 8. 57 2426
  • Ralph Vaughan Williams : On Wenlock Edge (1909), for tenor, piano and string quartet, later orchestrated
  • Ralph Vaughan Williams: Along the field (1927), for tenor and violin
  • John Williams : Five Housman Settings and Other Jazz Works with Jacqui Dankworth & New Perspectives Orchestra. 1996

The Argentine composer Juan María Solare has set the following poems by Housman to music:

  • Pope (1996) for solo voice
  • Lost content (2004) for voice and drum

literature

  • Martin Blocksidge: AE Housman: a single life . Sussex Academic Press, Brighton / Chicago / Toronto, 2016, ISBN 978-1-84519-761-2
  • David Butterfield, Christopher Stray (Eds.): AE Housman: Classical Scholar. Duckworth, London, 2009, ISBN 978-0-7156-3808-8
  • ASF Gow : AE Housman. A sketch, together with a list of his writings and an index to his classical papers. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1936, (online) .
  • Peter Parker: Housman country: into the heart of England . Little, Brown, London, 2016, ISBN 978-1-4087-0613-8
  • Edgar Vincent: AE Housman: hero of the hidden life . Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 2018, ISBN 978-1-78327-241-9

Web links

Commons : Alfred Edward Housman  - Collection of Images
Wikisource: Alfred Edward Housman  - Sources and full texts (English)
personal data
SURNAME Housman, AE
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Housman, Alfred Edward (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English classical philologist and poet
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1859
PLACE OF BIRTH Fockbury
DATE OF DEATH April 30, 1936
Place of death Cambridge