RAK Mason

Ronald Allison Kells Mason (born January 10, 1905 , † July 13, 1971 ) was a New Zealand poet , playwright , journalist , trade unionist and political activist . The New Zealand cultural scientist Allan Curnow described it as 'New Zealand's first real, unmistakable talent for poetry'.

The early years

Mason was born in Penrose , Auckland . The Irish family on their mother's side came to New Zealand in the 1840s. His father died in 1912 under unknown circumstances. From 1917 Mason attended the Auckland Grammar School , where he met his lifelong friend, the later poet ARD Fairburn . After school, Mason worked for a while as a tutor and private tutor at the University Coaching College in Auckland. During this time he produced his first small poetry publications, which appeared in low editions.

Literary publications, political engagement

Mason's first major publication, The Beggar , was published by the renowned New Zealand publisher Whitcome & Tombs in 1924, but sold only very slowly, although many of the texts contained in this collection of poems were later published in various New Zealand anthologies and some in the early New Zealand canon Literature can be expected. An unsecured tradition, but one that is instructive for Mason's generation of poets, says that out of desperation over the public lack of interest in his poetry and the general utilitarianism of his compatriots, he threw 200 copies of the book into Waitemata Harbor .

In 1926 Mason began studying ancient languages at Auckland University College . During this time he wrote only a few poems, but was intensely involved in radical student politics. Some of his lyric texts have appeared in The Sun newspaper in Auckland and Christchurch. In order to spread his Marxist political convictions to a larger audience through literature, Mason wrote political plays, including a. the play Squire Speaks , which was released in 1938 as a radio play version for the radio.

After losing his position as a tutor, Mason went to work as a farm worker in the Waikato region in 1929 , and in 1930 he worked on an autobiographical novel. In addition, a number of political essays emerged, including a. about the New Zealand colonial regime in Samoa , for the socialist New Zealand Worker . During a trip to Samoa and Tonga in 1931, Mason obtained first-hand information about the political situation on the islands, especially about the second Samoan Mau uprising.

From 1931 to 1934 Mason published poetry in the Auckland academic culture magazine Phoenix , whose editor he became in 1933. During the time of its editing, the Phoenix became a critical and combative journal that protested against the consequences of the troubled world economy and the economic impoverishment of New Zealand workers and petty bourgeoisie, and tried to put literary aesthetics at the service of social protest, which some did displeased more traditional readers and made the journal a target of attacks by the conservative press.

In 1934 Mason's poems from the 1920s appeared in Unicorn Press under the title No new things ; at the Caxton Press in 1936 a poetry collection End of day . His most extensive anthology of poems, This dark will lighten: Selected Poems, 1923 - 1941 , followed in the war year 1941 , an exemplary overview of his poetic work up to then. The book was dedicated to the German-Jewish exile poet Karl Wolfskehl , who had lived in exile in Auckland since 1938 and whose late work was written there. Although Wolfskehl saw himself as a representative and custodian of Stefan George's literary tradition, even in exile , he had a close personal and artistic friendship with the New Zealand socialist Mason, not least because Mason's (early) poetry contained many allusions to ancient poetry and religion. Wolfskehl spent the last days of his life with Mason and his wife Dorothea Beyda. Mason's German-speaking contacts also included the poet Peter Dane and the pedagogue Werner Droescher .

The middle and late years, Auckland and Dunedin

Since the mid-1930s, Mason wrote mainly political plays, radio plays and journalistic articles. After the war, his political ideas were increasingly oriented towards Chinese communism . He was involved in New Zealand trade union work, u. a. as editor of the union- related magazine Challenge , but also for a New Zealand national theater, from which he hoped to have a cultural and political educational role. In 1957 he had to cancel a planned trip to China, on which he, as a New Zealand delegate, wanted to get his own picture of the conditions there, due to health problems. His health forced him to take early retirement. In 1958 he became president of the New Zealand-Chinese Friendship Society.

In 1962 his Collected Poems were published by Pegasus Verlag. In the same year he received the Robert Burns Fellowship from the University of Otago in Dunedin and married his long-time partner Dorothea Mary Beyda. In 1965, the couple moved back to Auckland , where Mason taught part-time schools and adult education in Takapuna. Mason, diagnosed with bipolar disorder , died in Auckland in 1971 in economically precarious circumstances before a pension proposed by the New Zealand Literary Fund Advisory Committee could be set up for him.

In contrast to most of the other New Zealand poets of his generation, dedicated New Zealand locations and artistic contexts rarely play a role in Mason's poetry. His humanistic and socialist internationalism focused in his poetry above all on protagonists who try to assert themselves in social conflicts or against strokes of fate without betraying their ethical convictions. Mason's poems, however, often have a melancholy tone; in some there are also unexpectedly comical and grotesque interludes. Like his famous New Zealand painter friend Colin McCahon , Mason dealt in his late poetry with the biography of Jesus , whose story of suffering is shown in Mason's poetry non-metaphysically and in the context of modern everyday life.

Works

Poetry

• The Beggar (Whitcombe & Tombs, 1924)
• Penny Broadsheet (Whitcombe & Tombs, 1924)
• No New Thing (Spearhead Publishers, 1934)
• End of Day (Caxton Press, 1936)
• This Dark Will Lighten: Selected Poems (Caxton Press, 1941)
• China Dances and Other Poems (John McIndoe, 1962)
• Collected Poems (Pegasus Press, 1962)

Radio plays radio

• Squire Speaks (Caxton Press, 1938)

prose

• Frontier Forsaken: An Outline History of the Cook Islands (Challenge, 1947)
• Four Short Stories 1931-1935 (Holloway Press, 2003)

literature

• Rachel Barrowman, Mason: The Life Of RAK Mason, Victoria University Press, Wellington, 2003, ISBN 0864734638 .
• WS Broughton, Ronald Allison, Kells, In: https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/4m46/mason-ronald-allison-kells
• Norman Franke, 'Jewish, Roman, German at the same time ...'? An investigation into the literary self-construction of Karl Wolfskehl with special consideration of his exillyricism. Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg 2006, pp. 1 - 628, ISBN 3-8253-5106-8 S. especially the chapter 4.4.2 'The witness of the "secret Germany" among New Zealand socialists. Karl Wolfskehl and RAK Mason ', pp. 352-360.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Mason, RAK . Read NZ Te Pou Muramur , 2020, accessed August 15, 2020 .  (Original quote in English)
2. ^ New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage Te Manatu Taonga: Mason, Ronald Allison Kells. Retrieved August 13, 2020 . 
3. ^ Mason, RAK . Read NZ Te Pou Muramur , 2020, accessed August 15, 2020 . 
4. ^ New Zealand in Samoa - The rise of the Mau movement . In: New Zealand History . New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage , September 2, 2014, accessed August 15, 2020 . 
5. ^ Franke, 'Jüdisch, Roman, Deutsch ...' p. 352
6. ^ Franke, 'Jüdisch, Roman, Deutsch ...' , p. 353
7. ↑ NZCFS History. In: New Zealand China Friendship Society Inc - nzchinasociety.org.nz. Retrieved August 13, 2020 (American English). 
8. ↑ NZ Books: Forerunner or footnote? Kim Worthington. June 1, 2003, Retrieved August 13, 2020 (American English). 
9. ^ New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage Te Manatu Taonga: Mason, Ronald Allison Kells. Retrieved August 13, 2020 . 
10. ^ New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage Te Manatu Taonga: Mason, Ronald Allison Kells. Retrieved August 13, 2020 .