Christian Matras (philologist)

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Just a few months before his death, Christian Matras was honored with a stamp from Postverk Føroya on June 6, 1988 .

Christian Matras (born December 7, 1900 in Viðareiði , Faroe Islands , † October 16, 1988 in Tórshavn ) was a Faroese linguist and poet . He was the first Faroese to become a professor.

Together with William Heinesen (1900–1991), Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen (1900–1938) and Heðin Brú (1901–1987), they are known as the “four greats” of their generation in the Faroe Islands.

Life

The family name Matras goes back to an immigrant from France.

Christian Matras was born in 1900 in the village Viðareiði on Borðoy in the far north of the Faroe Islands. He attended elementary school there until he started secondary school in Tórshavn in 1912 . He was in a class with Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen and William Heinesen. In 1917 he graduated from secondary school. In the same year he moved to Sorø in Denmark, where he graduated from high school in 1920.

After graduating from high school, Matras studied Scandinavian Studies at the University of Copenhagen . He also spent a semester in Norway, where he studied Norwegian poetry, which was to shape him very much. In 1928 he made his master's degree in linguistics, and in 1933 he received his doctorate with a thesis on place names in the Faroe Islands.

From 1936 Christian Matras worked at the University of Copenhagen, where he became professor of linguistics in 1952. He was the first Faroese ever to become a professor and, until 2009, the only one in Copenhagen. - Faroese, who was a professor in Copenhagen.

It was not until 1965 that Matras returned to the Faroe Islands, where he was head of the Faroese faculty at the University of the Faroe Islands from the start. At that time he was the only professor in the Faroe Islands. In 1971 he was retired for reasons of age.

Christian Matras died on October 16, 1988. A few months earlier he was honored with a postage stamp from Postverk Føroya .

In October 2006 his birthplace Viðareiði was given street names for the first time. One of the twelve streets and paths is named Kristjansgøta ("Christian Street ") - after Christian Matras.

plant

Christian Matras' great work includes Faroese literature , linguistics and cultural studies, but he is also considered one of the most outstanding poets of the Faroe Islands.

The Faroese-Danish dictionary from 1928/1961, which he started as a student, was particularly valuable. For decades it was the only modern dictionary that made the Faroese language and literature accessible to the outside world. Co-editor was Mads Andreas Jacobsen (1891-1944).

Of linguistic historical interest are Matras' editions of Jens Christian Svabo's Faroese dictionary Dictionarium Færoense , which was only available in manuscripts for almost 200 years, and Johan Henrik Schrøter's Gospel of Matthew. Both were pioneers of the written Faroese language. However, their peculiar sound-related orthographies could not prevail.

The monumental work Føroya kvæði: corpus carminum Færoensium (CCF), which Svend Grundtvig and Jørgen Bloch compiled in the 19th century , is a timeless standard work of Faroese dance ballads . The CCF contains the collective oral legacy of the Faroese, which they have been able to salvage over centuries in their ballads into modern times. This seven-volume work is provided with comments in German.

Matras contributed to most of the Faroese school books of the 1930s. The first Faroese literary history also came from his pen.

When he returned to the Faroe Islands, he had a large collection of notes with Faroese vocabulary in his luggage, which grew to 500,000 at the Faroese faculty and formed the basis of the 1998 Føroysk orðabók .

Catalog of works

  • 1926: Grátt, kátt og hátt: yrkingar (drawings by William Heinesen ) - 48 p. ( Volume of poems)
  • 1927–1928: Føroysk-donsk orðabók = Færøsk-dansk ordbog (Faroese- Danish dictionary , together with Mads Andreas Jacobsen , 469 p., Other editions: 1961, supplementary volume 1974, 1977, 1995)
  • 1933 - Heimur og heima: yrkingar - 59 p. ( Collection of poems)
  • 1935 - Føroysk bókmentasøga - 104 p. (Faroese literary history)
  • 1939 - Indledning til Svabos færøske visehaandskrifter - lxxxv S. (Introduction to Jens Christian Svabo's folk tunes manuscripts)
  • 1941 - Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen . Gyldendals julebog - 45 p. (In Danish with texts by Jacobsen)
  • 1957 - Drunnur - 33 pp.
  • 1970 - Bygd og hav: myndir úr seglskipatíð (pictures by Ingálvur av Reyni ) - 16 pp.
  • 1972 - Á hellu eg stóð: gamalt og nýyrkt - 103 p.
  • 1975 - Av Viðareiði: fólk í huganum (pictures by Fridtjof Joensen ) - 14 pp.
  • 1978 - Úr sjón og úr minni (yrkingar) - ("From personal contemplation and memory" - poems)
    • 1986 - Úr sjón og úr minni - ørindi = Seeing and remembering - verse - 47 p. (Poems, Faroese-English)
  • 1980 - Ulf Zachariasen (Ed.): Christian Matras: ritskrá í úrvali - 32 pp.
  • 1993 - Anne-Kari Skarðhamar (transl.): Dikt fra Færøyene: et utvalg dikt - 120 p. (In Norwegian)
  • 2000 - Martin Næs and Jóhan Hendrik W. Poulsen (eds.): Greinaval - málfrøðigreinir - 353 pp. - ISBN 99918-41-81-4 (linguistic articles)
  • 2002 - Turið Sigurðardóttir (Ed.): Chr.Matras - aldarminning - 118 pp.
  • 2004 - Anne-Kari Skarðhamar (Ed.): Chr.Matras - Yrkingar: heildarsavn við yrkingum og týðingum - 397 p. - ISBN 99918-1-418-3 (volume of poetry)

Translations

Editions

  • 1930 - Føroysk fólkanøvn: navnalisti til leiðbeiningar ( Faroese personal names , together with Mads Andreas Jacobsen , 16 p.)
  • 1939 - Føroysk lesibók (together with Hans A. Djurhuus and Mads Andreas Jacobsen - Faroese reader, 2 vol.)
  • 1941–1944 - Svend Grundtvig and Jørgen Bloch : Føroya kvæði: corpus carminum Færoensium (Volume 2)
  • 1944–1946 - Svend Grundtvig and Jørgen Bloch: Føroya kvæði: corpus carminum Færoensium (Volume 3)
  • 1946 - Svend Grundtvig and Jørgen Bloch: Føroya kvæði: corpus carminum Færoensium (volume 4.1)
  • 1951–1963 - Svend Grundtvig and Jørgen Bloch: Føroya kvæði: corpus carminum Færoensium (together with Napoleon Djurhuus - Volume 1)
  • 1951–1953 - Johan Henrik Schrøter : JH Schrøters optegnelser af Sjúrðar kvæði
  • 1966–1970 - Jens Christian Svabo: Dictionarium Færoense: færøsk-dansk-latinsk ordbog (2 volumes)
  • 1967 - Svend Grundtvig and Jørgen Bloch: Føroya kvæði: corpus carminum Færoensium (Volume 4.2)
  • 1968 - Svend Grundtvig and Jørgen Bloch: Føroya kvæði: corpus carminum Færoensium (Volume 5)
  • 1972 - Svend Grundtvig and Jørgen Bloch: Føroya kvæði: corpus carminum Færoensium (Volume 6) - ISBN 87-500-1170-7
  • 1973 - Johan Henrik Schrøter: Evangelium Sankta Matteusar (Schrøter's Gospel of Matthew from 1823 - 2 volumes)
  • 1996 - Svend Grundtvig and Jørgen Bloch: Føroya kvæði: corpus carminum Færoensium (Volume 7 - History, manuscripts, indexes / ed. By Michael Chesnutt & Kaj Larsen) - ISBN 87-7876-018-6

Secondary literature

  • Anne-Kari Skarðhamar: Poetikk and livstolkning i Christian Matras' lyric: med et tillegg om Matras and færøysk lyrikk . Oslo: Unipub Forl, 2002 (Annales Societatis Scientiarum Færoensis: Supplementum; 31) - ISBN 82-7477-086-2 , ISBN 99918-41-31-8
  • Anne-Kari Skarðhamar: "Det farlige, det frygtelige, det mægtige '. Christian Matras' natural poetry ”. In Edda , 2001, p. 396-405.
  • Anne-Kari Skarðhamar: "'Hella, hugur og tið' - tidserfaring i Christian Matras' diktning". In: Nordisk literature and mentalitet . 2000. pp. 485-92.
  • Anne-Kari Skardhamar: »'Growing up on the Edge of the Abyss'. Childhood Impressions in the Poetry of Christian Matras «. in: Scandinavica , XXXV, 1996, s. 71-104.
  • W. Glyn Jones: "Nature and Man in Christian Matras's Poetry". In: Scandinavica , XIX, 1980, p. 181-97.

Web links

  1. ↑ portal.fo : Føroyingur professari í Keypmannahavn  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.portal.fo   “Faroese Professor in Copenhagen”, March 19, 2009
  2. ↑ Viðareiði received addresses  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Portal.fo, October 30, 2006@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.portal.fo  
personal data
SURNAME Matras, Christian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Faroese linguist and poet
DATE OF BIRTH 7th December 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Viðareiði , Faroe Islands
DATE OF DEATH October 16, 1988
Place of death Tórshavn