Patrick White

Patrick White, 1973

Patrick Victor Martindale White (born May 28, 1912 in London , † September 30, 1990 in Sydney ) was an Australian writer. In 1973 he was the only writer on his continent to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature and is considered one of the most important English-speaking authors of the 20th century. His oeuvre includes twelve novels , plus poems , short stories , dramas , essays and an autobiography .

Life

Childhood and youth

White's parents, Victor White and Ruth Withycombe, were Australians whose smallholder ancestors had emigrated to Australia from Somerset , England. The White family had acquired considerable estates there as ranchers, and the couple toured Europe and the Middle East for about two years after the marriage , so that Patrick White was born in 1912 in the Knightsbridge district of London. When he was six months old, the family returned to Australia and settled in Sydney. They lived in two neighboring apartments, one for their parents and one for Patrick, his younger sister Sue and the nannies and servants; a distance that became characteristic of White's relationship with his parents.

After the family bought a large property in Sydney in 1916, Patrick fell ill with asthma at the age of four, from which his maternal grandfather had already died. The compromised health, which kept him from sporting activities and "boy games", may have contributed to more intellectual pursuits: Patrick read a lot, went to the theater with his mother and gave his own little dance performances among his mother's friends. While playing in the extensive gardens, he developed his own childish secret rituals, but also a deep relationship with nature.

At the age of ten, Patrick was sent to a boys' boarding school in Moss Vale, New South Wales , where it was hoped that the highland climate would improve his health. Although it took him a while to get used to living with other children, he eventually acclimatized himself and began writing his own plays - although the "adult" topics are likely due to the environment and the age of the adolescent boy. In 1924, however, the school ran into financial difficulties and White's parents, at the suggestion of the boarding school, sent the boy to Cheltenham College in England, where he spent four years of his youth, what he later referred to as a "four-year prison sentence."

White withdrew into himself and had few friends in college. He was aware of his homosexuality from an early age , which reinforced his introversion in the school environment. During the school holidays he toured Europe with his parents; the inner distance to his parents could not be bridged. His closest friend became Ronald Waterall, an older student with whom he shared a passion for the theater. They attended theater and dance performances in London together and raved about their favorite dancers. When Waterall left school after graduation, White was alone again.

Patrick White persuaded his parents to quit college early to become an actor . They agreed on the condition that he first come home to Australia to try a life in the country. Patrick and his cousin Alf were the only male heirs to White's livestock farms.

Education

White worked as a farm hand for two years, first on Monaro, a farm on the edge of the Snowy Mountains in New South Wales, then on a property of one of the Whitycombs near Walgett in the north of the country. His parents still hoped his artistic ambitions would fade once he got to know the tough life on the farm. White developed a close relationship with the nature around him, but began writing again at the same time.

Especially his mother supported his plan to go to Cambridge University after the unsuccessful farm episode ; from 1932 to 1935 he studied French and German literature at King's College . An initially unhappy love for a fellow student frustrated him; like many homosexuals of his generation, he dared not speak about his feelings and feared a life of solitude. Nevertheless, his friendship with the fellow student ultimately resulted in a love affair.

In 1933 he traveled to Germany for the summer vacation. Despite the incipient National Socialism , he enjoyed his stay and spent almost all of his vacation time in Germany until 1935. He developed a passion for German romantic literature , traveled all over the country and tried to ignore political developments.

“… In the early stages of my love affair with Germany, in spite of some disturbing personal clashes with the Nazi mentality, the burning of the books while I was in Heidelberg, and shadowy, persecuted Jews living along the same street, Hitler was still an object for scorn and cynicism among liberal-thinking Germans. We laughed our heads off drinking Schnapps on the safe balcony above the Holzgraben in Hanover. ”

“... despite some disturbing encounters with the Nazi mentality, the book burnings during my time in Heidelberg, despite the persecuted Jews who lived a shadowy existence in the same street, Hitler was still a target of derision and ridicule for liberals at the beginning of my love affair with Germany thinking Germans. We sat on our safe balconies over the Holzgraben in Hanover, drank schnapps and laughed hard. "

While White was still a student at Cambridge, two of his poems appeared in The London Mercury in 1934 : Meeting Again and The Plowman , which was also included in the 1935 yearbook The Best Poems of 1935 , the most important recognition of his literary work up to that point. The printing of a first collection of poems under the title The Plowman and Other Poems was financed in Australia by White's mother; she also organized the performance of one of his plays by an amateur troupe.

White graduated from university in 1935 with a Bachelor of Arts degree and settled in a bohemian district of London with the help of £ 400 a month from his father. He flourished, wrote some that went unpublished, and revised the novel Happy Valley, written during his farm days . He met his old school friend Ron Waterall again, became close friends with the Australian painter Roy de Maistre and immersed himself in the world of James Joyce ' Ulysses .

Writer's life

When his father died in 1937, leaving him £ 10,000, he was able to get on with his life as a writer without worrying too much about material success. He wrote two more dramas and finally found a publisher for Happy Valley in 1939 ; The novel found benevolent reception in London, for example, it was praised by Graham Greene , Elizabeth Bowen and Herbert Read , although the too clear influences of Ulysses were criticized. Critics in Australia were less enthusiastic about the description of Australian country life.

White left his second novel, Nightside , unfinished after hearing some negative opinions about it - he later spoke of regretting his decision.

In 1939 White traveled to the United States to find a publisher for Happy Valley and start a new novel. He toured California and New Mexico and Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where The Living and the Dead was written.

“Happy Valley may have shown a certain number of critics and readers that I was an author; now I had to show myself by keeping it up. I imagine this is how most second novels get written. "

“Happy Valley may have shown some critics and readers that I was a writer; now I had to prove it to myself by moving on. I guess that's how most second novels are written. "

The second novel quickly found a publisher in New York, but not one in London. When Britain entered World War II, White returned to London and was inducted into the Royal Air Force as an intelligence officer . During the war he was used in the Middle East, Egypt, Palestine and Greece. In Alexandria he met the Greek officer Manoly Lascaris, who was to become his partner.

Success as a writer

After his discharge from the military, White and Lascaris moved to Australia in 1946 and bought an old house in Castle Hill outside Sydney. They spent 18 years on the Dogwoods baptized property, raising flowers, vegetables, and dairy cattle, and White published The Aunt's Story and The Tree of Man in 1955 . The Tree of Man was translated into German in 1957 under the title The tree of man never came to rest by Annemarie and Heinrich Böll . Although successful in the USA and England, however, the Australian critics partially panned them as "un-Australian" and the public ignored the novels. The breakthrough in his home country only came with the novel Voss in 1957; White received the first Miles Franklin Award .

The 1961 novel Riders in the Chariot ( German  Die im fierigen Wagen , 1969), which describes the monotony of life in the fictional Australian town of Sarsaparilla, became a bestseller and White received the Miles Franklin Award again.

Sarsaparilla remained a motif in White's work in the 1960s; in the short story collection The burnt ones (1964, Eng . Die Verbrannten , 1992) and the play The season of Sarsaparilla one encounters it again.

In 1964, White and Lascaris sold Dogwoods and moved closer to central Sydney.

White had made a name for himself among the great English-speaking writers. Nevertheless, he led a withdrawn life and avoided interviews and public appearances, even if his circle of friends had expanded. In 1968 White wrote The Vivisector (published in 1972, The Painter , 1974), an artist's character study. However , he vehemently denied parallels to his friend Sidney Nolan . It was around this time that White decided not to accept any more awards for his work. He turned down the US $ 10,000 Britannia Award as well as another Miles Franklin Award. However, he took part in the selection process for other award winners.

An offer from Harry M. Miller to develop a script for Voss was not realized.

White was politically active against censorship, which was still common in Australia at the time; so he fought for the admission of Philip Roth's novel Portnoy's Complaints . He also signed a statement by Australian politicians, artists and academics against their country's participation in the Vietnam War .

The 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Patrick White for his epic and psychological storytelling, which brought literature to a new continent . White sent his friend Sidney Nolan to Stockholm, who accepted the award on his behalf.

As an immediate response to the Nobel Prize was the rest of the novel The Eye of the Storm (1973, dt. In the Eye of the Storm , 1974) doubled and the advance increased to the next novel. Patrick White used the prize money to fund the Patrick White Award for long-time, but so far unsuccessful writers. In 1973, White was also named Australian of the Year .

Retirement

White supported the laboratory government of Gough Whitlam and, after the latter fell over two scandals in 1975, developed an anti-royalist attitude, which he made clear in one of his rare television appearances.

The 1970s brought health problems for White; Eye problems and chronic lung problems were among them. When his novel The Twyborn Affair ( Eng . The Twyborn Affair , 1986) was nominated for the Booker Prize in 1979 , White asked the jury to remove him from the nomination list in order to give younger writers a chance. Soon after, he announced that the Twyborn Affair was his last novel and that he would only write for the radio or the stage in the future.

1981 White published his autobiography, Flaws in the Glass: A Self-Portrait (dt. Cracks in the mirror , 1994), in which he addressed some aspects of his life, which he had not spoken until then, such as his homosexuality and his decision not accepting the Nobel Prize yourself. On Palm Sunday 1982 he addressed an audience of 30,000 people and spoke out against uranium mining and nuclear weapons .

White's last novel was published in 1986 with Memoirs of Many in One . In the same year Voss was premiered as an opera. White declined to attend the premiere at the Adelaide Festival as Queen Elizabeth II was also invited, preferring to see the performance in Sydney. In 1987 White wrote Three Uneasy Pieces , in which he presented his thoughts on aging and the pursuit of aesthetic perfection, and assisted the author David Marr, who wrote his biography, in nine sessions with the questions of detail.

White died on September 30, 1990 at his Sydney home. His ashes were scattered a few days later by Manoly Lascaris and his agent Barbara Mobbs in a pond in Centennial Park.

Works

Volumes of poetry

• Thirteen Poems. approx. 1930 (under the pseudonym Patrick Victor Martindale)
• The Plowman and Other Poems. 1935

Novels

• Happy Valley. 1939
• The Living and the Dead. 1941
• The Aunt's Story. 1948
• The Tree of Man. 1955 (German. The tree of man never came to rest. 1957, translated by Heinrich and Annemarie Böll .)
• Voss. 1957 (German Voss . Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 1958)
• Riders in the Chariot. , 1961 (dt. The in chariot. 1969)
• The Solid Mandala. 1966 (German The Unequal Brothers. 1978)
• The Vivisector. 1970 (Ger. The painter. 1972)
• The Eye of the Storm. 1973 (German. In the eye of the storm. 1974)
• A fringe of leaves. 1976 (German loincloth. 1982)
• The Twyborn Affair. 1980 ( Ger . The Twyborn Affair. 1986)
• Memoirs of Many in One. 1986

Short stories

• The Burnt Ones. 1964 (Eng. The Burned. 1992)
• The cockatoos. 1974
• Three uneasy pieces. 1988

Dramas

• Return to Abyssinia. 1947
• Four plays. 1965
• Big toys. 1978
• Signal driver. 1983

Others

• Flaws in the Glass: A Self-Portrait. 1981 (German cracks in the mirror. 1994)
• Patrick White Speaks Essays. 1990
• Letters. Edited by David Marr, 1994

literature

• David Marr: Patrick White: A Life. Cape, London 1991, ISBN 0-224-02581-3 .
• Karin Teetzmann: Patrick White and the journalistic literary criticism in the Federal Republic of Germany in comparison with Great Britain. Dissertation, 1993, ISBN 3-925348-32-8 .

Web links

Commons : Patrick White  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Patrick White in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Patrick White  in the German Digital Library
• Patrick White in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Lexicon article ( Memento from January 11, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
• Information from the Nobel Foundation on the 1973 award to Patrick White
• Why bother with Patrick White - very comprehensive website about Patrick White ( Memento from December 25, 2009 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://arts.abc.net.au/white/life/life3/life_C02.html ( Memento from October 4, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ http://arts.abc.net.au/white/life/life3/life_C10.html ( Memento from October 4, 2009 in the Internet Archive )