Kenneth White

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Kenneth White

Kenneth White (born April 28, 1936 in Glasgow ) is a Scottish writer who publishes in both English and French , and a so-called "intellectual nomad" as well as the founder of geopoetics .

Life

White was born in 1936 in Glasgow, in the infamous Gorbal neighborhood , where he spent the first years of his life in a working class environment . His father was a class-conscious switchman , but also an avid book reader. In 1939 he was transferred to the west coast of Scotland and his son Kenneth attended schools in Fairly, Largs and Ardrossan , worked on farms and collected mussels and crabs for the Billingsgate fish market. Subsequent jobs as a postman and on a river steamer broadened his horizons.

After local self-studies of geology , ornithology and archeology, White published his first essay on the archeology of the county of Ayrshire . From 1954 to 1956 he studied German, French, Latin and philosophy at the University of Glasgow . White interrupted his studies to spend a year in Germany. From 1956 to 1957 he lived in Munich and worked on texts by Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger . On his return he completed his studies in Glasgow with a Magister Artium until 1959 and moved to Paris on a doctoral scholarship, where he continued his studies at the local art faculty . In Paris, White married Marie-Claude Charlut from France in 1959. Two years later the company moved to Meudon .

White gave English lessons while working on a new manuscript , the later Letters from Gourgounel . In 1961 he bought a farm in the mountains of the Ardèche and dealt with Far Eastern literature on Taoism and Chan - Buddhism . From 1962 to 1963 he taught at the Sorbonne in Paris and published his first volume of poetry, White Coal . In 1963 White returned to Scotland to work as a lecturer at the University of Glasgow, in particular he imparted his knowledge of 20th century literature and the French encyclopedists to the student deans . In 1966 White published two books with the renowned Jonathan Cape publisher, The Cold Wind of Dawn and the Letters from Gourgounel .

After a stay in Edinburgh he was disaffected by the British cultural scene, so White moved to France again in 1967, where he then taught at the University of Bordeaux in Pau . He was expelled from the university after showing solidarity with the protesting students in May 1968 . From 1969 to 1976 further teaching positions followed as a lecturer at Paris University and trips to Dublin , Marseille , Amsterdam and Barcelona as well as to Southeast Asia ( Hong Kong , Macao , Taiwan , Thailand ). In 1979 White defended his doctoral thesis on the subject of "intellectual nomadism", which the examination board, which Gilles Deleuze also belonged to, declared as a new field of study, geopoetics .

A journey along the St. Lawrence River inspired him for his book The Blue Road / La Route bleue (1990), the concept and basis of his poems called “Geopoetics”. In 1981 he collaborated with the musician Jean-Yves Bosseur on Erik Satie's dream . In 1983 White moved from the Pyrenees to the north coast of Brittany and got a new chair in 20th century poetry at the Paris Sorbonne. For his book La Route bleue he was awarded the Prix ​​Médicis étranger . This was followed by more trips and awards, such as the 1985 Grand Prix of the Académie française for his complete works .

His work as a writer encouraged him to organize think tanks and action groups here and there, of which the International Institute for Geopoetics, which he founded in 1989, can be regarded as the highlight. Further geopoetics centers were later set up in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Serbia, Canada and France and in 1995 at Burns Supper in Edinburgh, Scotland.

In 1991 Kenneth White was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Glasgow. In 1996 he finished his work at the Chair of 20th Century Poetics at the Sorbonne in Paris. Numerous trips followed in the years 1998 to 2003. In 2003 a symposium Horizons of Kenneth White - literature, thought, geopoetics was organized in Bordeaux . In 2004, the University of Geneva held an international colloquium on geopoetics in honor of Kenneth White . White published three new books and lectured in France on the poets Arthur Rimbaud and Saint-John Perse . In 2004, he received the Édouard Glissant Prize from the University of Paris 8 for his openness to foreign cultures . In 2005 he received an honorary doctorate from the Open University . As a traveling lecturer , he took part in numerous international congresses in 2006 and was invited to the Scottish University of the Highlands and Islands as a visiting professor . White published his book Les Affinités extrême in 2009 , a homage to some French-speaking writers such as Saint-John Perse, André Breton , Emil Cioran , which can also be read as a kind of intellectual autobiography . This book received the Prix ​​Maurice Genevoix of the Académie française. In the years 2009 to 2010 numerous participations in literature festivals and further lecture tours followed. In 2012 a selection of the bibliography of Kenneth White's works was published. In 2017, the library there hosted the Carte Blanche à Kenneth White conference in Le Havre , in which White participated with lectures and film screenings.

Kenneth White's books have been translated into the following languages: German , Italian , Spanish , Portuguese , Dutch , Bulgarian , Serbian . Croatian , Macedonian , Polish , Turkish and Russian .

"Geopoetics" and the "intellectual nomad"

The Slavist Tatjana Petzer explained the task of “geopoetics” as follows: “Geopoetics describes aesthetic procedures and programs of mapping - a process in which connections between geography and people, territory and power, depoliticized through aestheticization , (anthropo) poetically transforms geographic mappings Erika Schellenberger-Diederich used the principle in her book Geopoetics, which sounds less abstract because it is practically applied . In it, she examines the rock metaphor in poems by, for example, Hölderlin , ETA Hoffmann , Stifter and Celan . The term “geopoetics” is a well-known term in literary studies . The term or the characterization of “intellectual nomad” has also been a part of literary history for a long time; think of Arthur Rimbaud, who roamed around Europe, Africa and Asia. White just adorned it further. In his 2007 book Streifzüge des Geistes, Nomadenwege zur Geopoetik - L´Esprit nomade, he characterizes it as free of cultural and scientific restrictions and conventions . The intellectual nomad roams, he adds, with his spirit all areas of the earth, without a fixed goal, but always in search of expansion of his own knowledge and capacity for knowledge. “In the case of the intellectual nomad, learning and wandering are mixed up,” writes Kenneth White - but this wandering is fruitful and invigorating for the civilization-weary intellect. “If we try to continue thinking - and do not forget that the most extreme, deepest thinking may not be realized in philosophical discourse , but in the exact or extravagant language of a poem - we try to preserve the possibility of the mind to inhabit the earth in a more liberal way. "

Works in German

  • The white land. Essays . Dianus-Trikont-Buchverlag, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-88167-105-6 .
  • The blue way. A trip . Arche Verlag, Zurich 1984, ISBN 3-7160-2014-1 .
  • Letters from Gourgounel . (With drawings by Ruedi Baumann). The bear guardian in the forest estate, Wald 1987, ISBN 3-7294-0041-X .
  • Elements of geopoetics . Kellner Verlag, Hamburg 1988, ISBN 3-922035-43-4 .
  • The way of the shaman . Translated from the French by Beat Brechbühl . Waldgut Verlag, Frauenfeld 1995, ISBN 3-7294-0208-0 .
  • Out and about on the coast. Walking the coast. Poem . Waldgut Verlag, Frauenfeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-03740-370-9 .
  • Outside - La figure du dehors . Waldgut Verlag, Frauenfeld 2007. (From the 2nd edition udT Poetry from Outside. La figure du dehors. Essay . 2014, ISBN 978-3-03740-371-6 ).
  • Forays of the mind. Nomadic routes to geopoetics . Waldgut Verlag, Frauenfeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-03740-225-2 .

Translations

  • Bordeaux memories. A poem followed by 5 letters. Friedrich Holderlin . Translated from the German by Kenneth White. Blake, Bordeaux 1984, ISBN 3-86577-059-1 .

Awards

In addition to various honorary awards, White received the following literary prizes:

  • 1983: Prix Medicis étranger
  • 1985: Grand prix du rayonnement française de l'académie française
  • 1986: Grand prix "Question de"
  • 1987: Grand prix Alfred de Vigny
  • 1996: Premio di Poesia " Sibilla Aleramo "
  • 1997: Insignia poeta de la Generación del 27 , Málaga
  • 1998: Prix Roger Caillois
  • 2002: Prix ARDUA (Association Régionale des Diplômés des Universités d'Aquitaine), Bordeaux
  • 2004: Prix Édouard Glissant (Université de Paris 8)
  • 2006: Prix Breizh (before: "Prix Bretagne")
  • 2008: Premio Grinzane-Biamonti, San Remo
  • 2010: Grand Prix Maurice Genevoix de l'Académie française
  • 2011: Prix Alain Bosquet, Paris

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Norman Bissell: Kenneth White. In: scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk. 2012, accessed March 7, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x Biography. In: kennethwhite.org. Retrieved March 7, 2019 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f portrait. In: kennethwhite.org. Retrieved March 7, 2019 .
  4. ^ Carte blanche à Kenneth White. In: lireauhavre.fr. 2017, accessed March 7, 2019 (French).
  5. ^ Tatjana Petzer: Topographies of the Balkanization. Programs and artistic manifestations of demarcation and disintegration . In: Sabine Rutar (Ed.): Südosteuropa . Journal of Politics and History. 55th year, issue 2–3. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2007, ISSN  2364-933X , p. 255–275 ( Academia.edu [accessed March 7, 2019]).
  6. ↑ Erika Schellenberger-Diederich: Geopoetics. Studies on the imagery of rock in poetry from Hölderlin to Celan . Aisthesis-Verlag, Bielefeld 2006, ISBN 978-3-89528-535-6 .
  7. ^ "Geopoetics": Literature as topography. (PDF; 74 kB) In: hu-berlin.de. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Institute for Slavic Studies, 2006, accessed on March 7, 2019 .
  8. ^ A b Matthias Koch: Kenneth White, Lettres de Gourgounel. In: wordpress.com. June 5, 2009, accessed March 7, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Quote Arthur Rimbaud: I have stretched ropes ... Notes. In: haikuscope.de. Gerd Börner, Michael Denhoff, Hubertus Thum, January 29, 2009, accessed on March 7, 2019 (Project Sperling No. 99).

literature

  • Claudia Grimm: Permit: Geopoetic Kenneth White (=  literary studies . Volume 72 ). Frank & Timme, Publishing House for Scientific Literature, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-7329-0469-3 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME White, Kenneth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 28, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Glasgow