Ralph Bates (writer)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ralph Bates (1938), photograph by Carl Van Vechten

Ralph Bates (born November 3, 1899 in Swindon , England , † November 26, 2000 in New York City , USA ) was a British writer, journalist and political activist . His best known novel is The Olive Field , which is about the life and struggle of anarchist workers in the olive groves of Andalusia and the mines of Asturias in the period before the Spanish Civil War in 1936. The novel was published in 1936 and had several editions in Great Britain and the USA. Until the 1960s, The Olive Field was named in English-language literary encyclopedias along with André Malraux ' Die Hope , Ernest Hemingway's Whom Takes the Hour and George Orwell's My Catalonia .

biography

Bates was born in Swindon, England, in 1899 and worked there as a teenager in the workshop of the Great Western Railway . In 1917 he was drafted into the military and took part in the First World War in France . After the war he traveled to France, then to Spain in 1923. He worked with anarchist workers in Barcelona , moving across the country, making a living from casual work and writing short stories, which he published in 1933 in the volume Sierra . The novel The Lean Men followed in 1935 . His second novel, The Olive Field , came out almost at the same time as the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, received positive reviews from book critics and aroused the interest of English-speaking political activists who came to Spain to fight the Spanish republic against the coup plotters in militias and international brigades support under General Franco. For them, The Olive Field was an introduction to the political situation in Spain and the mentality of Spanish anarchists and revolutionaries. Bates joined the International Brigades and took part in several battles. On behalf of the Spanish government, he traveled several times to Mexico and the USA from 1937 to appear as a speaker at solidarity events and to raise money for the purchase of weapons. Even during the civil war, he had doubts about the politics of the communists. But it was only after its end, on the occasion of the Red Army invasion of Finland in November 1939, that he publicly renounced communism with an article in the magazine The New Republic . After the end of the Spanish Republic, he lived in Mexico for a few years, but then moved to New York City, where he taught creative writing and English literature at New York University from 1947 until his retirement in 1966. He refused to testify before the Committee on Un-American Activities . In July 1996 he took part in an event dedicated to him in the German Historical Museum in Berlin as part of the exhibition Art and Power in the Europe of the Dictators from 1930 to 1940 . He died in New York City on November 26, 2000 at the age of 101. His ashes were scattered on the Greek island of Naxos, where he spent the summers after his retirement.

Works

Novels

  • 1935 - The Lean Men
  • 1936 - The Olive Field
  • 1937 - Rainbow Fish
  • 1939 - The Undiscoverables
  • 1941 - The Fields of Paradise
  • 1950 - The Dolphin in the Wood

Short stories

  • 1933 - Sierra
  • 1939 - The Miraculous Horde and Other Stories (Jonathan Cape) (expanded US edition as Sirocco and Other Stories )

Essays, reports

  • 1936 - Compañero Sagasta burns a church ; German: Compañero Sagasta burns down a church. Comino-Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-945831-09-0 .

Biographies

  • 1934 - Franz Schubert (1934)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Twentieth century authors, A biographical dictionary of modern literature, New York, 1942 and Choice, Magazine of the American Library Association, 1966
  2. ↑ Interview with Ralph Bates in "die tageszeitung" (taz), Berlin, on July 3, 1996
  3. ^ "The daily newspaper" (taz), from July 3, 1996
  4. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from September 15, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.theralphbatesproject.co.uk
  5. ^ "The daily newspaper" (taz), from July 3, 1996
  6. ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/dec/12/guardianobituaries

Web links

Commons : Ralph Bates  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Bates, Ralph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer, journalist and political activist
DATE OF BIRTH November 3, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Swindon , England
DATE OF DEATH November 26, 2000
Place of death New York City , USA