Frank Budgen

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Portrait session of Frank Budgens with Rosemarie Streuli in Zurich 1962
Plaster relief by August Suter (1927), August Suter Museum, Eptingen

Frank Budgen (born March 1, 1882 in Crowhurst (Surrey) , England, † April 26, 1971 in London ) was an English painter and writer and a deserving friend of the Irish writer James Joyce .

Life

As a young man, Frank Budgen initially spent six years at sea. He worked in various professions before traveling to Paris in 1910 to study painting at the Académie Julian . There he earned his living as a model. For example for the Swiss sculptor August Suter (1887–1965), with whom he was to become a lifelong friend. Through Suter he became known to his friends, the Swiss poet and translator Siegfried Lang and the French writer Blaise Cendrars .

Shortly before the outbreak of World War I, Budgen followed August Suter to Switzerland. In Zurich he found a job at the British consulate and worked for the information ministry there, which was responsible for the distribution of British propaganda in the neutral states. In Zurich he also met the Irish writer James Joyce , with whom he maintained a regular, stimulating exchange of ideas, which accompanied the creation of the works of Ulysses and later Finnegans Wake from afar . After the novel was published in 1922, together with James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses, he wrote an introduction to the work that is still unsurpassed today, which is particularly unique due to her authentic insights into Joyce's world of thought during the many years of work on his novel.

After the war Budgen returned to London, where he worked as a painter and writer until his death. Budgen was temporarily a leading member of the Socialist Labor Party in England. With Lily G. Aitken he translated and published a cheap edition of Marx 's Communist Manifesto in 1919 . Budgen never lost touch with his friends from his time in Paris and Zurich and was guest of honor at the first James Joyce Symposium in Dublin in 1967.

Frank Budgen was married to Francine Budgen (June 11, 1896– April 16, 1977). The daughter Joan was born from the marriage. Frank and Francine Budgen are buried in the graveyard of St George's Church, Crowhurst, Surrey.

Budgen's friend, Joyce researcher Clive Hart, wrote about him:

One of Frank Budgen's many good qualities was his ability to make new friends with people of all ages. Although he occasionally complained about the negative effects of technical progress on life in London and other places, he was always open to new life and new developments, even in the last years of his life. In his thirties, when he and Joyce were most intimate, he must have been an extraordinarily stimulating companion. Even the eighty-year-old was a brilliant entertainer who enjoyed the company of people from all backgrounds and was embraced by many men and almost all women. He spoke enthusiastically and could listen enthusiastically like few. In a company of friends, one could most clearly see the energetic, intelligent, infinitely alert, and curious man Joyce was once familiar with.

Artistic works

  • St Peter's Church, Belsize Park , (1900) Burgh House and Hampstead Museum
  • Finnegans Wake , oil painting, Fales Library & Special Collections, Bobst Library, New York University
  • Self-portrait of Budgens with James Joyce (1918), Zurich James Joyce Foundation
  • Sixteen charcoal drawings of human figures, one oil painting by James Joyce, and three oil paintings by James and Nora Joyce (ca.1919) are owned by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Austin Texas

Literary works

  • James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses with a portrait of James Joyce and four drawings to Ulysses by the author, 1934. German translation by Werner Morlang : James Joyce and the emergence of Ulysses , 1977
  • Myselves When Young , London: Oxford UP, 1970. An autobiography.

Sound recording

  • Frank Budgen My Friend James Joyce - A Spoken Appreciation UK 1961 LP Decca

Web links

  • Digital copy of James Joyce and the making of 'Ulysses', and other writings

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ There is a statue of Budgen on the Uraniastraße 9 building in Zurich. [1] Suter's sculpture
  2. ↑ August Suter: 1927, Frank Budgen, study for the Prometheus of the Spitteler monument and for the male figure of the allegory "State and Family". Retrieved August 5, 2019 .
  3. ↑ http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/challinor/1977/british-bolshevism/ch05.htm
  4. ^ The Socialist Labor Press, Glasgow, 1919
  5. ^ A Wake Newslitter , New Series, Vol. IX, No. 1, February 1972, "Frank Budgen Issue"
  6. ^ Wayne F. Cooper, Claude McKay: rebel sojourner in the Harlem Renaissance: a biography , Schocken Books, 1990
  7. ^ Clive Hart: Introduction . In: James Joyce and the Making of "Ulysses" . Oxford University Press. Retrieved March 1, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Budgen, Frank
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English painter and writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 1, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Crowhurst (Surrey) , England
DATE OF DEATH April 26, 1971
Place of death London