Muriel Spark

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Dame Muriel Spark , DBE (born February 1, 1918 in Edinburgh ; died April 13, 2006 in Florence ; born Muriel Sarah Camberg ) was a British writer .

Together with Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh, she is one of the British writers who converted to Catholicism. After Greene's death in 1991, she was repeatedly referred to as the greatest living British writer. She established her reputation with the 1961 novel The heyday of Miss Jean Brodie , to which the magazine The New Yorker devoted an entire issue. This novel is still regarded as a classic of English-language literature in the 20th century. The British newspaper The Guardian included the novel in its 2009 list of 1000 must-read novels. The Time chose him as one of the 100 best English-language novels published 1923 to 2005, and 2015 selected 82 international literary critics and scholars it one of the most important British novels .

Life

Muriel Spark was born to a Jewish father and an Anglican mother. She was the second child, her brother Philip was a little more than five years older. The place of birth was the parents' small rented apartment at 160 Brunsfield Place, in the Morningside District of Edinburgh, a working-class district. Her paternal grandparents were Russian Jews who immigrated to Britain in the late 19th century. Her father, Bernard "Barney" Camberg, who was born in Great Britain, had trained as an engine mechanic, but was a worker for the North British Rubber Company until he retired at the age of 70 due to a lack of suitable positions. Her mother Sarah "Cissy" Bamberg, née Uezzell, had been brought up as a Christian as a child, but had married him in a synagogue. To supplement her husband's salary, Cissy took on lodgers during Spark's early childhood. Cissy was a good-looking, serene woman who cared about her appearance. However, she was also addicted to alcohol. At first she drank small amounts of port wine every day, but ended up drinking a bottle of Madeira a day. When Spark was nine years old, her grandmother Adelaide joined the family and from then on shared the bedroom with Spark. Adelaide was 73 at the time, still physically and mentally fit. However, three years before her death, she suffered two strokes and was in need of care. Spark looked after the grandmother and her mother together. Muriel Sparks biographer Martin Stannard grants the grandmother a great influence on Spark. Adelaide had campaigned for women's suffrage early on and led a largely independent life. Stannard believes that the example of Muriel's grandmother formed the image of the independent artist who is isolated and is classified as strange by a male-dominated environment. Adelaide lived with the family for a little over six years, she died on August 10, 1933.

Barney and Cissy both attached great importance to a good school education for their children and, despite the limited family income, took it upon themselves to have the children taught at private schools that were subject to fees. Spark was educated at James Gillespie's High School for Girls in Edinburgh's Marchmont neighborhood. It was not one of Edinburgh's best schools, but it had a good reputation and some of the students went on to university. However, this does not apply to Muriel. She did well enough in school to win a scholarship, but after finishing school she attended business correspondence courses at Heriot-Watt College .

Literature hadn't played a role in Muriel Spark's family. The mother read no more than simple women's novels, the father the sports page of the daily newspapers. Muriel, on the other hand, took the opportunity to borrow books from the public library and read British classics such as William Wordsworth , Robert Browning , Alfred Tennyson and Algernon Swinburne . More contemporary authors included Edmund Blunden , Rupert Brooke , Walter de la Mare , William Butler Yeats , Alice Meynell , Robert Bridges, and John Masefield . When she later experimented with literary forms herself, TS Eliot , Marcel Proust , Charles Baudelaire , Max Beerbohm , Evelyn Waugh and Ivy Compton-Burnett had a great influence on her. In fact, she had already made a name for herself in her school with her poetry. Because of its remarkable quality, twelve-year-old Spark had already included five and not just one poem in the school magazine, as usual. When a selection of poems previously published in Edinburgh school magazines was compiled in 1931, Spark's early works were also conspicuously frequent. Muriel only regretted the lack of university education because it would have given her better opportunities on the job market. Even when she graduated from school, she was sure that she wanted to become a writer and saw jobs primarily as a way to a certain financial independence with which she could finance her attempts at writing.

After completing her secretary courses at Heriot-Watt College, Muriel, now 18, worked as a secretary for the owner of Edinburgh's Small department store, an exclusive shop on Edinburgh's upscale Princes Street . Before that she had given lessons in English, natural history and arithmetic at a small private school and was able to take a shorthand course at this school. Accompanied by her brother, she regularly visited the Overseas Club, also located on Princes Street, in her free time to dance. She made a number of male acquaintances, but they always remained superficial. Muriel later stated that she was hardly an adult at the time and that these relationships almost inevitably remained chaste: Since everyone still lived at home, there was hardly any opportunity for greater physical closeness. She only slept with a man for the first time when she got married.

She also met the man Muriel married in 1937 at the age of nineteen at the Overseas Club. Sydney Oswald Spark was 13 years older than Spark, a Jew who was born in Lithuania before his parents emigrated to the UK. He had studied at Edinburgh University, worked as a math teacher, and saw himself as an intellectual. He planned to go to the colonial service in Africa and asked Muriel Spark to accompany him there. On August 13, 1937, Muriel left Great Britain for Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe , to marry Sydney Oswald. On September 3, 1937, the two married in what is now Harare , which at that time was still called Salisbury.

Sydney Oswald Spark had not told his young wife that he had been treated by a psychiatrist before their marriage and that he had gone to Africa less out of a thirst for adventure than because he was unable to get a permanent job at a British school because of his nature Find. The situation was similar in Rhodesia. Just a few weeks after their arrival in Fort Victoria , today's Masvingo, he had problems with the school authorities there. However, by then Muriel was already pregnant. During her pregnancy, Muriel's husband moved from school to school and became increasingly depressed. Muriel's son Robin was born on July 9, 1938, and the problems in the relationship only worsened. After Sydney beat them, the couple lived in separate rooms at their hotel. Two years after the marriage, Muriel found herself in a very difficult situation: she was financially dependent on a man whose violence she increasingly feared, had a young child, and because of the outbreak of World War II, there was no possibility for her to return to Britain. Muriel Spark was always vague about the events of the next two years. What is certain is that in the end she moved to one of the Rhodesian cities with her son, but separated from her husband, where she laboriously survived with secretarial work. Her husband found it difficult to break up, watched her and became violent towards men she met during this time, which drove Muriel into increasing isolation and made a normal life largely impossible. The divorce from the man Muriel now referred to as a psychopath dragged on from 1939 to 1943. Returning to the UK was very difficult and made even more complex by the UK government's decision not to allow children of British people living abroad into the country. She finally decided to put her young son in a foster family while she undertook the very risky voyage to Great Britain: She had only recently lost a close friend whose ship had been torpedoed by the German Navy off the African coast . The return to England was marked by the hope of convincing the authorities there of an exception and allowing her to bring her son to Great Britain.

In 1944 Muriel Spark returned to her home country, where she worked in the reconnaissance until the end of the Second World War and mainly wrote false reports that were supposed to cause confusion on the German side. Her son lived in a convent in Rhodesia; his father suffered a nervous breakdown when he was next released, spent time in a Rhodesia mental institution, and then went through such a depressive phase that he was unable to take any action. Father and son left Africa on 9 September on the same ship; However, Sydney Oswald Spark was under medical surveillance for his mental health, Robin had been given to a Royal Air Force family for care.

Muriel published his first poems in Rhodesia, won prizes and read them on the local radio. After the war, she began working as a writer in Europe and published poetry and literary criticism under the new surname that she had adopted from her husband . In 1947 she became the editor of Poetry Review . In her private life, this time was marked by the struggle for custody of her son. He lived with her parents in Edinburgh, but the guardianship of the child in Rhodesia was awarded to Sydney Oswald Spark. In 1954 she joined the Catholic Church , which she saw as crucial for her career as a writer and which represented a much older tradition for her than Anglicanism. Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh supported her ideally and financially.

Her first novel, The Comforters (dt. The Comforter ) was published in 1957, but it was five years later published novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (dt. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie , previously under the title The teacher appeared) which established her reputation and which she regarded as her main work. This book was in 1969 with Maggie Smith in the lead role filmed what those with the Oscar was awarded.

Muriel Spark Poeta

After living in New York City for a few years , she moved to Italy , Tuscany , in the late 1960s , where she died in 2006. Her grave is in the Chiesa di Sant'Andrea Apostolo in Olivieto in the municipality of Civitella in Val di Chiana .

Awards and honors

bibliography

Novels and plays
  • The Comforters (1957)
    • English: The Comforter. Translated by Peter Naujack. Diogenes, 1963.
  • Robinson (1958)
  • Memento Mori (1959)
    • German: Memento Mori. Translated by Peter Naujack. Diogenes, 1960.
  • The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960)
    • English: The Ballad of Peckham Rye. Translated by Elisabeth Schnack . Diogenes, 1961.
  • The Bachelors (1960)
    • German: bachelors. Translated by Elisabeth Schnack. Diogenes, 1961.
  • The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1962)
  • The Girls of Slender Means (1963)
    • German: Girls with limited options. Translated by Kyra Stromberg . Rowohlt, 1964.
  • Doctors of Philosophy (1963, play)
  • The Almond Tree Gate (1965)
  • The Public Image (1968)
    • German: In the public eye. Translated by Christian Ferber. Rowohlt, 1969.
  • The Very Fine Clock (1968, children's book illustrated by Edward Gorey )
    • German: The very good watch. Translated by Gerd Haffmans . Diogenes (Bibliomaniac Club # 27), 1971.
  • The Driver's Seat (1970, filmed as Identikit 1974)
  • Not to Disturb (1971)
    • German: Please do not disturb. Translated by Otto Bayer. Diogenes, 1990, ISBN 3-257-01829-0 .
  • The Hothouse by the East River (1973)
    • English: The hothouse on the East River. Translated by Otto Bayer. Diogenes, 1991, ISBN 3-257-01879-7 .
  • The Abbess of Crewe (1974)
    • English: The Abbess of Crewe. Translated by Gisela Petersen. People and World (People and World Spectrum # 109), Berlin 1977. Also as: Ullstein books # 4802, 1977, ISBN 3-548-04802-1 .
  • The Takeover (1976)
  • Territorial Rights (1979)
    • German: In equal parts. Translated by Mechtild Sandberg. Ullstein, 1980, ISBN 3-550-06321-0 . Also as sovereign rights.
  • Loitering with Intent (1981)
    • German: Deliberately loitering. Translated by Hanna Neves. Diogenes, 1982, ISBN 3-257-01622-0 .
  • The Only Problem (1984)
  • A Far Cry From Kensington (1988)
    • English: I am Mrs. Hawkins. Translated by Otto Bayer. Diogenes, 1989, ISBN 3-257-01813-4 .
  • Symposium (1991)
  • The French Window and the Small Telephone (1993, with illustrations by Penelope Jardine, children's book)
  • Reality and Dreams (1996)
    • German: dreams and reality. Translated by Hans-Christian Oeser. Diogenes, 1998, ISBN 3-257-06186-2 .
  • Aiding and Abetting (2000)
    • German: Frau Dr. Wolf's method. Translated by Hans-Christian Oeser. Diogenes, 2001, ISBN 3-257-06273-7 .
  • The Finishing School (2004)
    • German: The final touch. Translated by Hans-Christian Oeser. Diogenes, 2005, ISBN 3-257-06475-6 .
Collections
  • The Fanfarlo and Other Verse (1952, poems)
  • The Go-away Bird (1958, short stories)
    • English: The Seraph and the Zambezi and Other Tales. Translated by Peter Anujack and Elisabeth Schnack. Diogenes, 1963. Also as: Portobello Road and other short stories. Translated by Peter Naujack. Diogenes paperback # 20894, 1982, ISBN 3-257-20894-4 .
  • Voices at Play (1961, short stories and plays)
  • Collected Poems I (1967, poems)
  • Collected Stories I (1967, poems)
  • Bang-bang You're Dead (1982, short stories)
  • Going Up to Sotheby's and Other Poems (1982, poems)
  • Complete Short Stories (2001, short stories)
  • All the Poems (2004, poems)
Non-fiction
  • Child of Light (1951, biography of Mary Shelley , revised 1987 as Mary Shelley )
  • John Masefield (1953, biography)
  • Emily Brontë: Her Life and Work (1953, with Derek Stanford)
  • Curriculum Vitae (1992, autobiography)
as editor
  • Tribute to Wordsworth (1950, with Derek Stanford)
  • Selected Poems of Emily Brontë (1952)
  • My Best Mary (1953, with Derek Stanford, selection of letters from Mary Shelley)
  • The Brontë Letters (1954)
  • Letters of John Henry Newman (1957, with Derek Stanford)

literature

Web links

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Stannard: Muriel Spark: the biography . S. XV.
  2. ↑ Muriel Spark: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie . October 7, 1961, ISSN  0028-792X ( newyorker.com [accessed February 28, 2019]).
  3. ↑ 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read: The Definitive List , accessed June 9, 2016.
  4. ^ The Guardian: The best British novel of all times - have international critics found it? , accessed June 9, 2016
  5. ↑ Stannard: Muriel Spark: the biography . P. 1.
  6. ↑ Stannard: Muriel Spark: the biography . P. 5.
  7. ↑ Stannard: Muriel Spark: the biography . P. 2.
  8. ↑ Stannard: Muriel Spark: the biography . P. 7.
  9. ↑ Stannard: Muriel Spark: the biography . P. 15.
  10. ↑ Stannard: Muriel Spark: the biography . P. 16.
  11. ↑ Stannard: Muriel Spark: the biography . P. 17.
  12. ↑ Stannard: Muriel Spark: the biography . P. 23.
  13. ↑ Stannard: Muriel Spark: the biography . P. 37.
  14. ↑ Stannard: Muriel Spark: the biography . P. 38.
  15. ↑ Stannard: Muriel Spark: the biography . P. 40.
  16. ↑ Stannard: Muriel Spark: the biography . P. 43.
  17. ↑ Stannard: Muriel Spark: the biography . P. 44.
  18. ↑ Stannard: Muriel Spark: the biography . P. 47.
  19. ↑ Stannard: Muriel Spark: the biography . P. 49.
  20. ↑ Stannard: Muriel Spark: the biography . P. 50.
  21. ↑ Stannard: Muriel Spark: the biography . P. 55.
  22. ↑ Stannard: Muriel Spark: the biography . P.56.
  23. ↑ Stannard: Muriel Spark: the biography . P. 57.
  24. ↑ Stannard: Muriel Spark: the biography . P. 71.
  25. ↑ Stannard: Muriel Spark: the biography . P. 72.
  26. ^ Honorary Members: Muriel Spark. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 23, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Spark, Muriel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Camberg, Muriel Sarah (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 1, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Edinburgh , Scotland
DATE OF DEATH April 13, 2006
Place of death Florence , Italy