Robertson Davies

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Robertson Davies , CC , O.Ont , FRSC , FRSL (born August 28, 1913 in Thamesville, Ontario ; † December 2, 1995 in Orangeville , Ontario) was a Canadian writer ( novels , drama ), critic , journalist and professor . He was one of the most famous and most distinguished Canadian writers. Some of his works appeared under the pseudonym "Samuel Marchbanks".

Life

Early years

Robertson Davies 'father, Senator William Rupert Davies, was associated with the newspaper medium from an early age, and Davies' parents were avid readers. Davies himself participated in theatrical performances as a child and would remain inclined to the theater throughout his life. He attended Upper Canada College in Toronto from 1926 to 1932 and then studied at Queen's University in Kingston , Ontario until 1935 . He then went to England to study literature at Balliol College , Oxford . In 1939 he published his thesis Shakespeare's Boy Actors , and then played minor roles in theaters in the London area. In 1940 he married Brenda Mathews from Australia.

The experiences of this time, for example as a Canadian looking for an education in England, or the theater life, found their way into the later novels.

Middle years

Davies and his wife returned to Canada in 1940, where he was responsible for the literature section of Saturday Night Magazine . Two years later he became an editor at the Peterborough Examiner in the small town of Peterborough , in northeast Toronto . During his tenure as editor at the Examiner (1942–1955), as well as during his time as editor (1955–1965), Davies published 18 books, wrote articles for magazines and organized performances of several of his plays. He had presented his theory of acting in 1947 in Shakespeare for Young Players , and then wrote the one-act Eros at Breakfast in 1948 . The Dominion Drama Festival named Eros at Breakfast the best Canadian play of 1948. It was followed by Fortune, My Foe in 1949 and At My Heart's Core in 1950 , a three-act play. In addition, Davies wrote funny essays in the Examiner under the pseudonym Samuel Marchbanks, some of which were later compiled in books.

In the 1950s, Davies was a driving force behind building the Stratford Shakespearean Festival of Canada . He later wrote three books on the festival's early years with the festival's director, Tyrone Guthrie . Although his great love was drama and his essays were well received, his novels became the most successful. His first three novels, Tempest-Tost (1951), Leaven of Malice (1954) and A Mixture of Frailties (1958), later known as the Salterton Trilogy, are set in the small town of Canada. A constant theme is the problem of maintaining art and culture in this environment.

The 1960s

In 1960 Davies found a position to teach literature at Trinity College, University of Toronto . The following year he published a series of literary essays under the title A Voice From the Attic and won the Lorne Pierce Medal for his literary work. In 1963 he became a Masters at Massey College in Toronto, where he started the tradition of writing and telling ghost stories at the annual Christmas celebrations. His stories were published in 1982 under the title High Spirits .

The 1970s

Davies' interest in Jungian analytical psychology grew into what is probably his most famous novel, Fifth Business , published in 1970 . The autobiographical book reflects his fascination with mythology and magic . The first-person narrator is a child of immigrants whose father publishes a newspaper in a small Canadian town. The characters in the novel follow Jungian archetypes , according to Davies' belief that the spirit dominates the material world. Davies was able to build on the success of Fifth Business with two follow-up novels: The Manticore (1972) and World of Wonders (1975) complete the Deptford trilogy.

The 1980s and 1990s

After his retirement, the seventh novel, The Rebel Angels , appeared in 1981 , a satire about university life. Together with What's Bred in the Bone (1985) and The Lyre of Orpheus (1988), these novels form his third, the Cornish , trilogy. Davies was also able to build on his popular successes in the following two novels ( Murther and Walking Spirits , 1991 and The Cunning Man , 1994). However, he could no longer complete the last novel of this planned fourth trilogy.

Davies continued a long-cherished dream by writing the libretto for the opera The Golden Ass (after the Metamorphoses of Apuleius ), just as he granted one of the characters in the novel A Mixture of Frailties (1958). The opera premiered in 1999 after Davies' death by the Canadian Opera Company at the Hummingbird Center in Toronto.

Awards and honors

plant

Essays

Fictional essays
  • The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)
  • The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949)
  • Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack (1967)
  • The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks (1985)
Critical essays
  • Shakespeare's Boy Actors (1939)
  • Shakespeare for Young Players: A Junior Course (1942)
  • Renown at Stratford (1953) (with Tyrone Guthrie )
  • Twice Have the Trumpets Sounded (1954) (with Tyrone Guthrie)
  • Thrice the Brindled Cat Hath Mew'd (1955) (with Tyrone Guthrie)
  • A Voice From the Attic (1960)
  • A Feast of Stephen (1970)
  • Stephen Leacock (1970)
  • One Half of Robertson Davies (1977)
  • The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies (1979) Ed. Judith Skelton Grant
  • Well-Tempered Critic (1981)
  • The Mirror of Nature (1983)
  • Reading and Writing (1993) (two essays, later compiled in The Merry Heart )
  • The Merry Heart (1996)
  • Happy Alchemy (1997) (Eds. Jennifer Surridge, Brenda Davies)

Novels

The Salterton Trilogy
  • Tempest Tost (1951)
  • Leaven of Malice (1954)
  • A Mixture of Frailties (1958).
Übers. Richard Hoffmann : Shine and weakness. 1960
The Deptford Trilogy
  • Fifth Business (1970)
Translator Maria Gridling: The fifth in the game. 1984 ISBN 3-552-03612-1
Übers. Maria Seifert: The fifth in the game. 2019 ISBN 978-3-03820-068-0
  • The Manticore (1972)
Übers. Stefanie Schaffer: The mythical creature. 1985 ISBN 3-552-03704-7
  • World of Wonders (1975)
Übers. Stefanie Schaffer: World of Miracles. 1986 ISBN 3-552-03803-5
The Cornish Trilogy
  • The Rebel Angels (1981)
Übers. Stefanie Schaffer: Rebellious Angels. 1987 ISBN 3-552-03903-1
  • What's Bred in the Bone (1985)
Übers. Stefanie Schaffer: What you inherit from your fathers ... 1990
  • The Lyre of Orpheus (1988)
The Toronto Trilogy (unfinished)
  • Murther and Walking Spirits (1991)
Übers. Gesine Strempel : Walking shadows. 1992
  • The Cunning Man (1994)
Translator Renate Orth-Guttmann : Angels in the head. 1995

Short stories

  • High Spirits (1982)

Spectacles

  • Overlaid (1948)
  • Fortune My Foe (1949)
  • Eros at Breakfast (1949)
  • At My Heart's Core (1950)
  • A Masque of Aesop (1952)
  • A Jig for the Gypsy (1955)
  • A Masque of Mr. Punch (1963)
  • Question Time (1975)
  • Brothers in the Black Art (1981)
  • Hunting Stuart (1994)
  • The Voice of the People (1994)

Opera libretti

  • Jezebel (1993)
  • The Golden Ass (1999)

Letters

  • For Your Eye Alone (2000) Ed. Judith Skelton Grant
  • Discoveries (2002) Ed. Judith Skelton Grant

Miscellaneous

  • The Quotable Robertson Davies: The Wit and Wisdom of the Master (2005) (Compiled by James Channing Shaw)

literature

  • Judith Skelton Grant: Robertson Davies: Man of Myth . Viking, Toronto 1994 ISBN 0-670-82557-3
  • Ulrich Broich: New "Worlds of Wonder". On R. Davies' "Cornish Trilogy," in New Worlds. Discovering and constructing the unknown in anglophone literature. Commemorative publication Walter Pache. Writings of the Philosophical Faculties of the University of Augsburg , 59th ed. Martin Kuester , Gabriele Christ, Rudolf Beck. Verlag Ernst Vögel, Munich 2000

Web links

References and comments

  1. Werner Habicht: Der Literatur-Brockhaus in 8 volumes, 5, Bibliographisches Institut TB, Leipzig 1995 ISBN 3-411-11800-8 p. 283
  2. ^ Honorary Members: Robertson Davies. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 8, 2019 .
  3. cf. A practice-oriented analysis of translation strategies in a literary translation: The Canadian novel "The Rebel Angels" by Robertson Davies in the German translation by Stefanie Schaffer , full text, Bachelor thesis 2014, TH Köln , by Sergej Sajzew. This is one of the few academic studies on the standards of literary translation in general