Anthony Powell (writer)

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Anthony Dymoke Powell , CH , CBE (born December 21, 1905 in London , † March 28, 2000 in Frome , Somerset ) was a British writer and literary critic.

Life

Anthony Powell (/ ˈpoʊəl / POH-əl) attended Eton College in Eton and studied history from 1923–1926 at Balliol College , Oxford . Among his peers were Evelyn Waugh , Henry Green , Graham Greene, and George Orwell . In 1926 he joined the well-known London publishing house Duckworth & Co. and worked in various positions (editor, agent, editor). In 1934 he married Lady Violet Pakenham . The sons Tristram (* 1940) and John (* 1946) resulted from the marriage. In 1936 - five years after his first novel was published - Powell moved to Hollywood on a six-month contract as a copywriter with Warner Brothers film studios . Here he met F. Scott Fitzgerald , who was also working for the film at the time. Powell returned to England a year later, contributing regularly to The Spectator and the Daily Telegraph , while devoting as much time as possible to writing novels until the start of World War II . During the war Powell served first in a Welsh battalion of the land forces, later in the military intelligence service as a liaison officer to the Allies , especially to the governments-in-exile of Belgium , Luxembourg and Czechoslovakia . During this time he began work on the 1948 biography of John Aubrey . In 1947 he became literary editor ("fiction editor") of the Times Literary Supplement , from 1953 to 1958 he worked in the same position at the satirical magazine Punch . From 1958 to 1990 he wrote regular reviews for the Daily Telegraph. In 1977 he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

His main work is the twelve-volume series of novels " A Dance to the Music of Time " (1951–1975). Since it is in many ways comparable to Proust's In Search of Lost Time , and not just because of its volume , Powell is also referred to as the English Proust . Some literary scholars find the reference or comparison "obvious, but superficial".

Powell was inspired by the painting of the same name by Poussin in the Wallace Collection for the title for this work . It can often be read that the work depicts the decline of the English "upper class" in the 20th century. However, many of the 400 or so characters in the series are not recruited from the "upper class"; this is especially true of the "War Trilogy" (Volumes 7-9): officers, common soldiers, English-speaking Welsh commoners and workers. One theme of the series of novels is social mobility , ascent and descent. Nicholas Jenkins, the first-person narrator , does not lament the decline of the aristocracy , but is an objective, contemplative, melancholy observer of social change.

Apart from an abundance of intertextual references to literature not only in English, the volumes are rich in allusions to history, politics, music, visual arts and architecture, through which characters comment on the plot directly and indirectly, and so on. a. the one-dimensionality of the narrative perspective can be broken up.

The complete translation of all twelve novels, begun in 2015 by Berlin-based Elfenbein Verlag , was completed in October 2018. It follows on from the transmissions of the first three volumes by the literary scholar Heinz Feldmann that appeared in the 1980s.

Before “ A Dance to the Music of Time ” five novels were already published; after the completion of the twelve-volume series of novels Powell wrote two more novels; In addition, two stage plays, memoirs, diaries (“journals”) and three volumes with collected reviews and essays were published.

Works

A Dance to the Music of Time

(consists of the following 12 volumes :)

  • A Question of Upbringing (1952)
    • A question of education , German by Heinz Feldmann; Ehrenwirth, Munich 1985. Revisited: Elfenbein Verlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-941184-36-7 .
  • A Buyer's Market (1952)
    • Trend: increasing , German by Heinz Feldmann; Ehrenwirth, Munich 1986. Revised: Elfenbein Verlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-941184-37-4 .
  • The Acceptance World (1955)
    • The new gentlemen , German by Heinz Feldmann; Ehrenwirth, Munich 1987. Revisited and under the title Die Welt des Wechsels : Elfenbein Verlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-941184-38-1 .
  • At Lady Molly’s (1957)
  • Casanova's Chinese Restaurant (1960)
    • Casanovas Chinese Restaurant , German by Heinz Feldmann; Elfenbein Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-941184-40-4 .
  • The Kindly Ones (1962)
  • The Valley of Bones (1964)
  • The Soldier's Art (1966)
  • The Military Philosophers (1968)
  • Books Do Furnish a Room (1971)
  • Temporary Kings (1973)
  • Hearing Secret Harmonies (1975)
    • The sound of secret harmonies , German by Heinz Feldmann, Elfenbein Verlag, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-941184-47-3 .

Novels, biographies and more

  • 1928 The Barnard Letters
  • 1934 Caledonia: A Fragment (pamphlet, private print)
  • 1931 Afternoon Men (novel)
  • 1932 Venusberg (novel)
  • 1933 From a View to a Death (novel)
  • 1934 The Watr'y Glade, in The Old School: Essays by Divers Hands , ed. by Graham Greene
  • 1936 Agents and Patients (novel)
  • 1939 What's Become of Waring (novel)
  • 1948 John Aubrey and His Friends (biography)
  • 1983 O, How the Wheel Becomes It! (Novel)
  • 1986 The Fisher King (novel)
  • 1987 The Album of Anthony Powell's "Dance to the Music of Time" [Hardcover, with 224 illustrations], Anthony Powell ( Preface ), Violet Powell (Ed.), John Bayley ( Introduction )
  • 1988 John Aubrey and His Friends Newly Revised by the Author (Biography)
  • 2001 A Writer's Notebook
  • 2011 Caledonia: A Fragment. By Anthony Powell. With an Introduction by Gray Gowrie. Greville Press Pamphlets (Reprint of private print 1934; previously available in New Oxford Book of Light Verse , 1978, edited by Kingsley Amis )

Dramas

  • 1971 Two Plays by Anthony Powell. The Garden God & The Rest I'll Whistle (two plays)

Collected reviews, essays and letters

  • 1990 Miscellaneous Verdicts. Writings on Writers 1946–1989
  • 1991 Under Review. Further Writings on Writers 1946–1989
  • 2005 Some Poets, Artists & 'A Reference for Mellors'
  • 2011 The Acceptance of Absurdity . Anthony Powell & Robert Vanderbilt: Letters 1952–1963. Edited by John Saumarez Smith & Jonathan Kooperstein. Maggs Brothers, London 2011

Autobiography

  • To Keep the Ball Rolling: Memoirs of Anthony Powell
    • 1976 Infants of the Spring (vol. 1)
    • 1978 Messengers of Day (vol. 2)
    • 1980 Faces in My Time (vol. 3)
    • 1982 The Strangers All Are Gone (vol. 4)
    • 2001 To Keep the Ball Rolling: The Memoirs of Anthony Powell (one-volume, author-authorized, abridged version of the four-volume memoir)

Diaries

  • 1995 Journals 1982–1986
  • 1996 Journals 1987–1989
  • 1997 Journals 1990-1992

Audio book

  • A dance to the music of time
    • A question of education , German by Heinz Feldmann; read by Frank Arnold, speak low, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-940018-24-3
    • Tendency rising , German by Heinz Feldmann; read by Frank Arnold, speak low, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-940018-26-7
    • The world of change, German by Heinz Feldmann; read by Frank Arnold, speak low, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-940018-27-4
    • With Lady Molly , German by Heinz Feldmann; read by Frank Arnold, speak low, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-940018-58-8
    • Casanova's Chinese Restaurant , German by Heinz Feldmann, read by Frank Arnold, speak low, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-940018-59-5

literature

  • on the 12 volumes of A Dance to the Music of Time : Hilary Spurling : A Handbook to Anthony Powell's Music of Time , 1977 ( An Invitation to the Dance ; German: Invitation to dance . Translation by Sabine Franke. Berlin: Elfenbein Verlag 2018 ).
  • Robert Selig: Time and Anthony Powell . A Critical Study, Cranbury 1991
  • Peter Kislinger: Some Truths Seem Almost Falsehoods and some Falsehoods almost Truths. Narrative technique, poetics inherent in the novel and intertextual narration as a “constructive-ironic” demonstration of the truth of the novel in Anthony Powell's A Dance To The Music of Time . Dissertation to obtain a doctorate at the humanities faculty of the University of Vienna in 1993.
  • Peter Kislinger: Review of: Isabelle Joyau: Investigating Powell's ´A Dance to the Music of Time´ , London 1994, in: Sprachkunst 27 (1996/2), pp. 374–383 (in: Anthony Powell Society Newsletter 3 / Spring 2001).
  • Christopher Hitchens : Anthony Powell: An Omnivorous Curiosity (Review of To Keep the Ball Rolling ), in: Arguably. Essays by Christopher Hitchens , pp. 276-289, New York 2011 (first published in The Atlantic , June 2001).
  • Nicholas Birns: Understanding Anthony Powell , University of South Carolina 2004
  • Michael Barber: Anthony Powell. A Life , London 2004
  • Dirk-Gerd Erpenbeck: Not like that in Baedeker: Helsingval or Tallifors? Notes on Anthony Powell's Baltic novel Venusberg , in: Heinrich Bosse (u. A.) (Ed.): Buch und Bildung im Baltikum. Münster 2005, pp. 581-598.
  • Michael Maar : Leopards in the Temple . HC Andersen , Borges , Canetti , Chesterton , Kafka , Lampedusa , Thomas Mann , Robert Musil , Nabokov , Powell, Proust , Virginia Woolf , Berlin Berenberg Verlag 2007
  • Hilary Spurling: Anthony Powell: dancing to the music of time , [London]: Hamish Hamilton, 2017, ISBN 978-0-241-14383-4 (German: Anthony Powell. Dancing to the music of time . Translation by Heinz Feldmann. Berlin: Elfenbein Verlag 2019, ISBN 978-3-96160-002-1 ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Barber, Anthony Powell: A Life (London: Duckworth Overlook, 2004), 291
  2. ↑ Birns, Nicholas. Understanding Anthony Powell , University of South Carolina Press, 2004, xiii
  3. ↑ Barber, 52-53
  4. ↑ Birns, xiv-xv
  5. ^ Honorary Members: Anthony Powell. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 19, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Birns, ix
  7. ↑ Birns, 14
  8. ↑ Birns, 13-15
  9. ↑ Peter Kislinger: Some Truths Seem Almost Falsehoods and some Falsehoods almost Truths. Narrative technique, poetics inherent in the novel and intertextual narration ( intertextuality ) as a “constructive-ironic” demonstration of the truth of the novel in Anthony Powell's A Dance To The Music of Time . Vienna 1993, 166–280 and Birns, especially 60–256
  10. ^ Hilary Spurling, A Handbook to Anthony Powell's Music of Time , 1977, 209-308
  11. ↑ Kislinger, 121-165
personal data
SURNAME Powell, Anthony
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Powell, Anthony Dymoke
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer and literary critic
DATE OF BIRTH December 21, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH March 28, 2000
Place of death Frome, Somerset