Carson McCullers

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Carson McCullers, July 31, 1959
Photograph by Carl van Vechten , from the Van Vechten Collection of the Library of Congress

Carson McCullers [ ˈkɑːɹsn̩ məˈkʌlɚz ] (born  February 19, 1917 in Columbus , Georgia , †  September 29, 1967 in Nyack , New York ; actually Lula Carson Smith ) was an American writer .

Life

1917-1940

Lula Carson Smith was the first child of Lamar and Marguerite Waters Smith. As the daughter of a watchmaker and jeweler, she spent a sheltered, if somewhat precocious, childhood. She started playing the piano at the age of five, took piano lessons from the age of ten and decided three years later to become a concert pianist. In 1932 she suffered a first attack of rheumatism - a disease that would seriously affect her health for the rest of her life. She decided to become a writer and began writing short stories and plays in 1933. After graduating from high school, she left Georgia and moved to New York at the age of 18 , where she originally wanted to study music at the Juilliard School of Music, but lost her tuition and therefore tried her now-envisaged writing with a series of odd jobs Finance activity. She also took classes in creative writing at New York University .

In December 1936, her first short story, Wunderkind , appeared in Story magazine ; The first severe attacks of her rheumatoid arthritis occurred during the same period. In the fall of 1937 she married Reeves McCullers and moved with him to Charlotte , North Carolina . In the same year she began working on her first novel, The Mute , which she completed in 1939. Also in 1939 she wrote a second novel, Reflections in a Golden Eye . In 1940 The Mute was published under the title The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (German The heart is a lonely hunter ) and brought Carson McCuller's breakthrough to success. Likewise, Reflections in a Golden Eye appeared in Harper's Bazaar . The publisher gave her the new title for her book The Mute . McCullers liked the new title very much.

In New York she met the Swiss writer and journalist Annemarie Schwarzenbach and fell head over heels in love with her. She did not reciprocate her feelings, but remained friends with the McCullers during her time in the United States and wrote several benevolent reviews of McCuller's debut novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter .

1941-1967

Over the years, McCuller's health deteriorated significantly. She suffered from heart and circulatory problems, suffered a stroke with impaired vision and partial paralysis, as well as pneumonia. She initiated a divorce from her husband and joined the artists' commune February House in Brooklyn Heights, New York. a. and WH Auden , Christopher Isherwood , Benjamin Britten , Richard Wright , Salvador Dalí and Virgil Thomson belonged. She married Reeves for the second time in February 1945 and lived with him for the next two years in Europe, where she suffered her second and third strokes that left her left-sided. In 1946 she published The Member of the Wedding (dt. Das Mädchen Frankie , 1947); In 1948 she tried to commit suicide and was hospitalized in New York.

In 1950, the play The Member of the Wedding took place in New York, which received the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for the best new play that same year . In 1951 the novella The Ballad of the Sad Café was published . In 1952 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters . In 1953 there was another marital crisis that led to her husband's suicide .

In 1955, McCullers stayed with Tennessee Williams for some time in Key West , where she worked on theater versions of The Ballad of the Sad Café and The Square Root of Wonderful , among other things . The latter premiered in New York in 1957; however, the response was mixed. The novel Clock Without Hands was published in 1961 . At that time McCullers was already severely handicapped and largely dependent on a wheelchair. In 1962 she had to undergo several operations, including amputation of her left breast. In 1964, she broke several bones in a fall. In 1967 she suffered another stroke, from the consequences of which she died a short time later.

Complete literary works

The literary work that Carson McCullers left behind is relatively narrow in scope, but weighty, albeit marked by a number of contradictions. Her early fame is offset by a life that was completed at an early age and characterized by serious illness and personal relationship problems, which is also reflected in the themes of her literary work.

In her overall work, the subject of love as well as physical and mental illness play a special role and, in a general sense, can also be understood as being entirely autobiographical . The lack of communication of humans, the impossibility of fulfilling love relationships, the mental and spiritual isolation expressed in physical abnormality are also manifested in her most personal work The Member of the Wedding - against the background of a sheltered youth in the American South in a gray, if not terrible form taking off.

This existentialist basic trait in her entire work, which, in accordance with the zeitgeist , as Popp notes, brings her quite close to Sartre , is also recognizable in The Ballad of the Sad Café , which is considered the culmination of her work in literary criticism .

The existentialist basic orientation of Carson McCullers is related to their portrayal of mostly one-sided love relationships, in which their characters try to find or maintain their identity . This interplay between, from McCullers' point of view, natural isolation and the individual's inability to communicate, and the often failed attempts to overcome this isolation or lack of communication through love, commitment and compassion , can be seen as an essential core of Carson MCCuller's literary statement.

In contrast, her late work, which was created in the early 1960s after a more or less almost 10 year break in writing, falls sharply and shows her creative power, which was exhausted a decade before her death: Compared to her early work, Clock without Hands is rather banal in terms of content and largely conventional in terms of artistic and technical design , although Carson McCullers bravely tried to stand up against her physical and artistic decline during this creative phase.

In literary history , Carson McCullers' work can be placed in the Southern Renaissance of this century; The sense of place and time that is characteristic of the literature of the American South is found in her, similar to Faulkner, in a very special way: in her most important prose works , the small town of the South is always included their everlasting summer both scene and actor . The time is from her not only jahreszeitlich- symbolic , but certainly also historically designed. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter reflects the American social and racial problems of the 1930s, The Member of the Wedding the period of World War II and Clock Without Hands the civil rights movement of the 1950s.

Despite the southern atmosphere that pervades McCullers' work, her work is not restricted by southern regionalism , but more urban and cosmopolitan . Likewise, the “genteel tradition” (ie the specifically feminine note of elegance or refinement) that characterizes female writers of the South such as Katherine Anne Porter is missing in her work . Carson McCullers' poetic - melancholy , sometimes almost melodramatic , always rich in images and metaphors is more comparable to that of Tennessee Williams or Truman Capote .

The Member of the Wedding also has - in the tradition of the Bildungsroman standing - to thematic in the details parallels to JDSalingers The Catcher in the Rye (dt. The Catcher in the Rye ) on; McCullers also shapes the process of self-discovery of the youthful protagonist Frankie Addams, as with Holden Caulfield in Salinger's novel, as “radical innocence” (meaning: “radical innocence” ), i.e. a transition from the ideal children's world to the false or fake ( “phony “ ) Adult world.

In addition to the southern element and the development and initiation themes, the main focus of Carson Mccullers’s literary work is the theme of unlived life or perseverance in a life recognized as unlivable, which gives her work a very special position in the more recent American one Literature lends.

The subject McCullers constantly changes is that of painful self-discovery , the frustrated relationship between the self and the other or the world, the escape into the comforting community of a café or camp. In its portrayal of the existential need of humans and the hopelessness of human existence as well as in the economy of design, McCullers' literary work is also comparable to that of Ernest Hemingway . Her style and character portrayals are predominantly designed sparingly and often with poetic or symbolic intentions strongly condensed in the “symmetry of a literary composition ”, reminiscent of the pianist who was gifted to the point of paralysis .

Works

  • 1940 The Heart is a Lonely Hunter . Novel.
    • The heart is a lonely hunter. German from Karl Heinrich. Kantorowicz, Berlin 1950.
    • The heart is a lonely hunter. German by Susanna Rademacher. Scherz & Goverts, Stuttgart / Hamburg 1952.
    • Audio book, read by Elke Heidenreich, director: Leonie v. Kleist. Random House Audio, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-89830-687-9 .
  • 1941 Reflections in a Golden Eye. Novel.
    • The soldier and the lady. German by Richard Moering. Goverts, Stuttgart 1958.
    • Reflection in the golden eye. same translation. Diogenes, Zurich 1966. (1974, ISBN 3-257-20144-3 )
  • 1946 The Member of the Wedding. Novel.
    • The girl Frankie. German by Richard Moering. Parnass, Stuttgart 1951.
    • Frankie. same translation. Diogenes, Zurich 1965. (1974, ISBN 3-257-20145-1 )
  • 1950 The Member of the Wedding. Stage play.
    • One of the party. Drama, German by Annie u. Peter Capell. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main approx. 1955.
  • 1951 The Ballad of the Sad Café. Stories.
  • 1958 The Square Root of Wonderful. Stage play.
    • The square root of wonderful. Piece in 3 acts; German by Maria Carlsson. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1962.
  • 1961 Clock Without Hands. Novel.
    • Clock without hands. German by Elisabeth Schnack. Diogenes, Zurich 1962. (1972, ISBN 3-257-00917-8 )
  • 1964 Sweet as a Pickle and Clean as a Pig. Poems.
  • 1967 The March. Novella.
    • The march. German by Elisabeth Schnack. Diogenes, Zurich 1968. (1973, ISBN 3-257-20092-7 )
  • 1972 The Mortgaged Heart. postponed texts.
  • 1999 Illumination and Night Glare. posthumously published autobiography
    • The autobiography. Edited and with an introduction by Carlos L. Dews, German by Brigitte Walitzek. Schöffling, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-442-73159-3 .
  • Collected stories (translated by Elisabeth Schnack), Diogenes, Zurich 2005, ISBN 978-3-257-23502-9 .
  • Novels , 4 volumes, Diogenes, Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-257-06800-9

Film adaptations

Audio books

  • The heart is a lonely hunter . Abridged audio book version, read by: Elke Heidenreich . Random House, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-89830-687-9 , new edition: 7 CDs (478 min.), Diogenes, Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-257-80311-2 .
  • The ballad of the sad café . Narrative. Speaker: Elke Heidenreich. Diogenes, Zurich 2006, ISBN 978-3-257-80014-2 .
  • Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland . Two stories. Speaker: Elke Heidenreich. Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-80082-1 (also contains: a tree, a rock, a cloud ).
  • Child prodigy . The most beautiful stories. Unabridged reading by Elke Heidenreich. 4 CDs, Diogenes, Zurich 2001, ISBN 978-3-257-80310-5 (also contains: Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland ; A tree, a rock, a cloud ; The nomad ; A domestic dilemma ; Who has the wind seen? ; Sucker ).

Others

The album Lover, Beloved: Songs from an Evening with Carson McCullers by US singer Suzanne Vega is about the life and work of McCuller. The plays included are based on the play Carson McCuller's Talks About Love , written by Vega and Duncan Sheik .

literature

Web links

supporting documents

  1. ↑ See the information and evidence in Klaus-Jürgen Popp: Carson McCullers . In: Martin Christadler (ed.): American literature of the present in individual representations. Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-520-41201-2 , pp. 19-21.
  2. ↑ See Klaus-Jürgen Popp: Carson McCullers . In: Martin Christadler (ed.): American literature of the present in individual representations. Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-520-41201-2 , pp. 19-21.
  3. ↑ See Klaus-Jürgen Popp: Carson McCullers . In: Martin Christadler (ed.): American literature of the present in individual representations. Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-520-41201-2 , pp. 19-21.
  4. ^ Members: Carson McCullers. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 13, 2019 .
  5. ↑ See in more detail the description in Klaus-Jürgen Popp: Carson McCullers . In: Martin Christadler (ed.): American literature of the present in individual representations. Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-520-41201-2 , p. 6 ff. And Karl-Heinz Schönfelder and Karl-Heinz Wirzberger : Literature of the USA at a glance · From the beginnings to the present . Röderberg Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1977, pp. 408-410. Elisabeth Schnack's explanations are similar in: Elisabeth Schnack (Ed.): American narrators · From Scott F. Fitzgerald to William Goyen . Manesse Verlag 1957, ISBN 3-7175-1010-X , pp. 604-606.
  6. ↑ See in more detail the description in Klaus-Jürgen Popp: Carson McCullers . In: Martin Christadler (ed.): American literature of the present in individual representations. Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-520-41201-2 , pp. 1-2. Also in a shorter form Karl-Heinz Schönfelder and Karl-Heinz Wirzberger : An overview of US literature · From the beginnings to the present . Röderberg Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1977, pp. 408f. and 464. See also Martin Schulze: History of American Literature From the Beginnings to the Present Propylaeen Verlag Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-549-05776-8 , p. 507 ff.
  7. ↑ See in more detail the description in Klaus-Jürgen Popp: Carson McCullers . In: Martin Christadler (ed.): American literature of the present in individual representations. Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-520-41201-2 , pp. 2-3.
  8. ↑ See more detailed Klaus-Jürgen Popp: Carson McCullers . In: Martin Christadler (ed.): American literature of the present in individual representations. Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-520-41201-2 , p. 3 ff.
  9. ^ Ihab H. Hassan: Carson McCullers: the aesthetics of love and pain (Radical innocence: The contemporary American novel , Princeton 1961), pp. 205–229, here quoted from Klaus-Jürgen Popp: Carson McCullers . In: Martin Christadler (ed.): American literature of the present in individual representations. Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-520-41201-2 , p. 4f.
  10. ↑ See Klaus-Jürgen Popp: Carson McCullers . In: Martin Christadler (ed.): American literature of the present in individual representations. Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-520-41201-2 , p. 5 f.
  11. ↑ See e.g. B. the presentation by Klaus-Jürgen Popp: Carson McCullers . In: Martin Christadler (ed.): American literature of the present in individual representations. Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-520-41201-2 , p. 6 ff. Likewise Martin Schulze: History of American literature · From the beginnings to the present. Propylaen Verlag, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-549-05776-8 , p. 507f. Similarly, in a more concise form, the explanations by Elisabeth Schnack in: Elisabeth Schnack (Ed.): American narrators · From Scott F. Fitzgerald to William Goyen . Manesse Verlag, 1957, p. 605 f.
personal data
SURNAME McCullers, Carson
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Smith, Lula Carson (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 19, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Columbus , Georgia
DATE OF DEATH 29th September 1967
Place of death Nyack , New York