Saunders Lewis

Portrait of Saunders Lewis on a memorial (see below)

John Saunders Lewis (born October 15, 1893 in Poulton-cum-Seacombe, Wallasey , Cheshire , England , † September 1, 1985 in Cardiff , South Glamorgan , Wales ) was a Welsh politician ( Plaid Cymru ), playwright , poet , literary critic , Academics and historians . He was instrumental in founding Plaid Cymru and was party leader for over a decade. He held teaching positions at various universities. TheCandidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature is considered one of the most important Welsh writers and politicians of the 20th century.

Life

Saunders Lewis (1916)

Lewis was born in 1893 in Poulton-cum-Seacome, today's Poulton, a district of Wallasey in England near the border with Wales at the mouth of the River Mersey opposite Liverpool , as the second of three sons of the Calvinist-Methodist pastor Lodwig Lewis (1859– 1933) and his wife Mary Margaret, née Thomas, (1862–1900). His parents spoke Welsh, so Lewis learned the Welsh language from an early age. He attended a school in the Liscard district before he began studying English and French at Liverpool University in 1911 . In 1914 he interrupted his studies to volunteer in the First World War to serve. From February 1916 he was a lieutenant and served in France from the summer of the same year . He then took part, among other things, in the Battle of the Somme . In April 1917 he was injured near the village of Gonnelieu in northern France and brought back to the United Kingdom to recover. After returning to France one more time, he finally ended his military service in early 1919. During the war he read works by Thomas Gwynn Jones and Maurice Barrès , which had a lasting influence on him.

In 1920 he made his bachelor's degree in Liverpool; to his professors included not only Oliver Elton also Lascelles Abercrombie . A year later he published his first play under the title The Eve of St John . In the same year he was hired to organize a sponsorship program for local libraries in Glamorganshire . In 1922 he received his Masters degree with a study of the influence of English poets on Welsh colleagues during the 18th century. At the same time he was given a teaching position in the Welsh language at University College Swansea , which was followed by the publication of his first play in Welsh language . In 1924 Lewis published his work A School of Welsh Augustans , a literary work based on his master’s degree , and married Margaret Gilcriest (1891-1984) in Workington , Cumberland , with whom he had a daughter Mair in 1926. At the beginning of his time in Swansea, Lewis was regularly criticized publicly for his support for the Irish Sinn Féin and his desire for a counterpart in Wales. Gradually, there was also tension between him and the then Welsh professor in Swansea, Henry Lewis. In 1925 he founded the Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru party , which is now called Plaid Cymru . From 1926 Lewis was the party chairman and in this capacity pleaded for a party course that advocated Wales' independence under the British crown. He was also the author of the party journal and ran unsuccessfully for the House of Commons in 1931 . In the meantime, Lewis published various works, including on historical topics and a novel. Shortly after his father's death in 1933, Lewis converted to the Catholic Church.

Memorial to Lewis, Valentine and Willians in memory of the act of sabotage (portrait of Lewis far right)

At the beginning of the 1930s, Lewis stepped up his public engagement as South Wales was in an economic recession and a certain degree of poverty. In Dowlais he organized a regular soup kitchen . From 1935 onwards, Lewis campaigned against plans by the Royal Air Force for a training area on the Lleyn Peninsula (later RAF Penrhos ), as a property from the 16th century was to be demolished in favor of the training area and was later also demolished. At first he and his party comrades tried to prevent the camp through petitions and public campaigns, but they did not succeed. Together with two party friends, former party chairman Lewis Valentine and a pastor named D. J. Williams, Lewis therefore set a fire on September 8, 1936 in the homes of the workers for the project. The group confessed to the crime at a nearby police station and was charged with the destruction of property belonging to the British Crown in court. A jury in Wales initially came to no conclusion before the group in the Old Bailey in London was sentenced to nine months in prison in January 1937. The University of Swansea had already ended its collaboration with Lewis. That led to disputes on campus. There were both supporters and opponents of the measure among students and academics. Calls for a strike were loud among the ranks of the students, but the majority rejected it in a vote.

After the group was released in September 1937, a crowd met them on their return in Wales. Lewis then moved to Llanfarian near Aberystwyth and subsequently earned his living from farming, journalism and other teaching activities on a smaller scale, but also as a school inspector. In 1939 he resigned from the position of party leader of Plaid Cymru. In 1942/1943 he returned to politics for a short time and ran for his party for the then still existing parliamentary seat of the University of Wales , but was defeated by William John Gruffydd . After a play and a volume of poetry, Lewis published other plays, including two comedies, after the end of World War II . From 1946 to 1955 he was also the author and editor of a magazine for literary criticism . Meanwhile, Griffith John Williams had become a close friend of Lewis' Welsh professor at University College Cardiff , who offered him a position as a teacher in 1952. Lewis accepted the offer and remained in this role until 1957. He then retired to Penarth in South Wales and wrote other works, including several with historical references. In 1962 he found national attention with a radio broadcast that was originally intended as a criticism of Plaid Cymru's language policy, but which led to the establishment of a Welsh language society and made Lewis popular even among younger Welsh people. In the post, Lewis warned of the existing threat to the Welsh language.

At the same time, some of his Welsh works were translated into English and broadcast on the BBC . In addition to another novel and a lecture, he published several other Welsh-language plays, in which he made the then depressing situation in Wales and his personal religious background the subject. It was last published in 1980, a year after a stroke . After a long illness, Lewis died on September 1, 1985 at St Winifred's Hospital in Cardiff at the age of 91 . He was buried next to his wife Margarete, who had died the previous year, in the Catholic cemetery in Penarth; the eulogy at the funeral was given by Bishop Daniel Joseph Mullins . At the end of his life he was considered to be "one of the most celebrated Welsh politicians and writers". The then Plaid Cymru party leader Dafydd Elis-Thomas compared Lewis in a sympathy expression with TS Eliot and William Butler Yeats . In retrospect, he is commonly regarded as one of the greatest Welsh writers and politicians of the 20th century. In 2005, he was voted 10th most important Welsh person in a BBC poll. For the BBC itself, Lewis is an "icon" who can be considered a "national hero."

Positions and Criticism

Lewis was considered an advocate of Welsh nationalism , he himself was also influenced by Christian-conservative to arch-conservative. His vision was an agricultural Wales. After the Second World War, he criticized the lack of use of Plaid Cymru for the Welsh language and the insufficient use for him against the destruction of a village by a (planned) reservoir. For Lewis, the entire party took on more and more “communal socialist ” and pacifist features. Critics accused Lewis of snobbish and anti-Semitic positions based on the content of various poems . Even at the beginning of his career, he showed sympathy for similar currents beyond Welsh nationalism, for example Sinn Féin on the Irish island. In addition, there is a debate about whether or not Lewis and the Plaid Cymru under him can be ascribed a closeness to fascism . Furthermore, for Tim Williams, member of the Think Tanks Institute of Welsh Affairs , he is guilty of a considerable polarization of the Welsh public.

Publications

Drama

• The Eve of St John (1921)
• Gwaed yr Uchelwyr (1922)
• Buchedd Garmon: Mair Fadlen (1937)
• Blodeuwedd (1948)
• Eisteddfod Bodran (1952)
• Gan Bwyll (1952)
• Siwan a Cherddi Eraill (1956)
• Gymerwch chi Sigarét? (1956)
• Brad (1958)
• Esther (1960)
• Cymru Fydd (1967)
• Problemau Prifysgol (1968)
• Dwy Briodas Ann (1973)

Non-fiction

• A School of Welsh Augustans (1924)
• An Introduction to Contemporary Welsh Literature (1926)
• Egwyddorion Cenedlaetholdeb (English: The Principles of Nationalism ; 1926)
• Williams Pantycelyn (1927)
• unknown title, study on Ieuan Glan Geirionydd (1931)
• Braslun o Hanes Llenyddiaeth Gymraeg Hyd 1536 (1932)
• Daniel Owen: Yr Artist yn Philistia: II (1936)
• Tynged yr Iaith (English: The Fate of the Language , radio report; 1962)
• Ann Griffiths: Arolwg Llenyddol (1965)

Epic

• Monica (1930)
• Merch Gwern Hywel (1964)

Poetry

• Byd a Betws (1941)

Honors

• Nomination for the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature
• Commander of the Order of Gregorius (at the time of Paul VI )
• Honorary Doctorate from the University of Wales (1983)

literature

• Darryl Jones: 'I Failed Utterly': Saunders Lewis and the Cultural Politics of Welsh Modernism . In: Cork University Press (Ed.): The Irish Review . No. 19 . Cork 1996, p. 22-43 , doi : 10.2307 / 29735810 , JSTOR : 29735810 .
• Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost: Saunders Lewis Buchedd Garmon (1937) . In: Welsh Writing, Political Action and Incarceration. Palgrave Studies in Minority Languages ​​and Communities. Palgrave Macmillan, London 2013, ISBN 978-1-349-34870-1 , pp. 36-55 , doi : 10.1057 / 9781137372277_3 .
• Emyr Williams: The Social and Political Thought of Saunders Lewis . ProQuest LLC, Ann Arbor 2013 ( cf.ac.uk [PDF] electronic dissertation at Cardiff University , 2005).
• Tudur Hallam: 'Curse, bless, me now': Dylan Thomas and Saunders Lewis . In: The British Academy (Ed.): Journal of the British Academy . tape 3 , April 2, 2016, p. 211-253 , doi : 10.5871 / jba / 003.211 .
• Tudur Hallam: The Legacy of Saunders Lewis . In: Cambridge University Press (Ed.): The Cambridge History of Welsh Literature . Cambridge 2019, Part V - The Path to Nationhood in the Late Twentieth Century, pp. 507-528 , doi : 10.1017 / 9781316227206.028 .

Web links

Commons : Saunders Lewis  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Saunders Lewis in the WorldCat bibliographic database
• Saunders Lewis in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q} T. Robin Chapman: LEWIS, JOHN SAUNDERS (1893-1985), politician, critic and dramatist. Dictionary of Welsh Biography, September 16, 2014, accessed December 15, 2020 .  
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Saunders Lewis. BBC , accessed December 15, 2020 .  
3. ^ ^{A b} Lewis, Saunders, 1893-1985. National Library of Wales , accessed December 15, 2020 .  
4. ^ ^{A b c d e f g h} Prys Morgan: "Two He-Bears in a Cage": Henry Lewis and Saunders Lewis at Swansea, 1921-1937. Swansea University , 2020, accessed December 15, 2020 .  
5. ↑ ^{a b} Saunders Lewis, Welsh Author and Nationalist, Dead at 91. Associated Press , September 2, 1985, accessed December 15, 2020 .  
6. ↑ ^{a b} Saunders Lewis. Swansea , accessed December 15, 2020 .  
7. ↑ Tim Williams: Know a hero by his heroes: Saunders Lewis beyond apologetics. Institute of Welsh Affairs, September 29, 2014, accessed December 15, 2020 .