Julian Bell

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Julian Heward Bell (born February 4, 1908 in London , † July 18, 1937 in Brunete near Madrid ) was a British painter , art critic and poet .

Julian Bell with Elizabeth Watson (1930)

Life

Julian Bell was the eldest son of Arthur Clive Howard Bell (1881–1964) and Vanessa Stephen (1879–1961), and the nephew of Virginia Woolf . The writer Quentin Bell was his younger brother, the painter and writer Angelica Garnett was his half-sister. Together with his siblings, he grew up in the legendary Bloomsbury artist circle.

Julian Bell studied at Leighton Park School and King's College , Cambridge . There he became a communist under the influence of his friend Anthony Blunt (1907-1983) ; both were members of the Marxist- infiltrated secret society of the " Cambridge Apostles ". After graduation, Bell worked towards a college scholarship, but to no avail.

In 1935 the young poet traveled to China to attend the Wuhan University in the province of Hubei English literature to teach. In Wuhan , the womanizer began an affair with the writer Ling Shuhua (1900–1990), his dean's wife , who was also Bell's student.

In the early summer of 1937, Julian Bell traveled to Spain , where, like many other British and American intellectuals, he criticized his country's passive attitude in the face of the threat of fascism in Europe and Asia . As a compromise with his mother's pacifist stance and the pacifism of the Bloomsbury Group, he did not join the International Brigades as a combatant , but rather as a driver of an ambulance with the British unit, Spanish Medical Aid . Half of this unit was killed in the Battle of Brunete . Bell was hit by shrapnel that penetrated deep into the chest while helping repair a road under fire and refusing to take cover. He was taken to the Escorial Palace, which was then used as a hospital , where he died 6 hours later. His last words were: "I always wanted a lover and an opportunity to go to war: now I've had both."

Works

  • 1930 Winter Movement
  • 1935 We Did Not Fight: 1914–1918 Experiences of War Resisters (Ed.)
  • 1936 Work for the Winter
  • 1938 Essays, Poems and Letters , ed. by Quentin Bell

literature

Web links

Commons : Julian Bell  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nigel Nicolson: Virginia Woolf. Munich 2001, p. 177f
  2. ^ Louise DeSalvo: Virginia Woolf. Munich 1990, p. 99
personal data
SURNAME Bell, Julian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bell, Julian Heward (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British painter, art critic and poet
DATE OF BIRTH 4th February 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH July 18, 1937
Place of death Brunete near Madrid