Stephen Spender

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Stephen Spender

Sir Stephen Harold Spender , CBE , (born February 28, 1909 in London ; † July 16, 1995 ibid) was an English poet, author and university professor who concentrated in his works on social injustices and their political overcoming.

Childhood, adolescence and young adult

Spender was born in London to a journalist. Donor visited u. a. the Gresham's School in Holt ( Norfolk ) and the University of Oxford . At Gresham's School he met WH Auden . Spender did not finish his studies, but went to Germany (although he was made an honorary fellow of the college in 1973 ). At this time in Germany he became a friend of Christopher Isherwood , Macspaunday member Louis MacNeice , Cecil Day Lewis and the German photographer Herbert List . Later he met William Butler Yeats , Allen Ginsberg , Ted Hughes , Joseph Brodsky , Isaiah Berlin , Mary McCarthy , Roy Campbell , Raymond Chandler , Dylan Thomas , Jean-Paul Sartre and TS Eliot , and as a member of the Bloomsbury Group, especially Virginia Woolf know.

His first poems, known as Poems (1933), were often inspired by social protest.

Spender began his work in 1929 with the novel The Temple , which was not published until 1988. The novel is about a young man who travels to Germany and finds more culture there than in England and in particular learns a lot about relationships with men. In this novel, the character of "Joachim" portrayed Herbert List, who was initially an important reference person for him in Germany. For Joachim's friend in the novel, "Willi Lassel", Spender was very likely to use the future educator Willi Lassen as a model.

War years

When the Spanish Civil War began, Spender was accepted into the party by the secretary of the British Communist Party (CPGB) Harry Pollitt. Spender reported for the Daily Worker on the struggle of the International Brigades against coup troops. He supported the Popular Front movement in Spain.

Together with Cyril Connolly and Peter Watson , Spender founded the magazine Horizon and helped as a writer from 1939 to 1941. In 1949 he separated from the Communist Party and published the book The God that failed, which was critical of Stalin with other writers . Furthermore, Spender was employed as an editor at Encounter magazine from 1953 to 1966 . Donors stopped this work when it was found that the Congress for Cultural Freedom , which published the magazine, was funded by the CIA .

In 1954 he first took over the "Elliston Chair of Poetry" professorship at the University of Cincinnati . In 1961 Spender became Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College , London.

Late years

Spender became professor of English at University College London and taught from 1970 to 1977. He then became Professor Emeritus. Spender received the title of Commander (CBE) of the Order of the British Empire in 1962 and was knighted in 1983 . In 1966 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1969 to the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

Trivia

In 1980, after a lecture in Oneonta , Spender's plane had to land due to bad weather. So Spender took a taxi to Manhattan for the 287 miles to meet with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis . He said: "I simply had to get there."

Debate about the sexual identity of donors

Donor's sexuality has been the subject of debate. Spender attacked author David Leavitt in 1994 for portraying his relationship with "Jimmy Younger" in Leavitt's While England Sleeps . The case was brought to court and Leavitt removed certain content from its text.

Donor's sexual identity seems to boil down to bisexuality . Many of Spender's friends in his early years were gay, and Spender had several affairs with men during those years, the most famous being Tony Hyndman (referred to as "Jimmy Younger" in his memoir, World Within World ). After his affairs with men, a relationship with Muriel Gardiner followed . He shifted his focus to bisexuality. Relations with Hyndman and Gardiner became more complicated, so he ended them and married Inez Maria Pearn in 1936 . The marriage lasted only three years until 1939. His second marriage to concert pianist Natasha Litvin took place in 1941. This seems to mark the final end of his relationships with men. He gradually reduced homosexual allusions in the later editions of his poems. The following lines are from an older edition of a poem:

Whatever happens, I shall never be alone. I shall always have a boy, a railway fare, or a revolution. Later in a new publication of the same poem you can read:
Whatever happens, I shall never be alone. I shall always have an affair, a railway fare, or a revolution.

Selected Works

Poems

  • Nine Experiments , 1928 (privately printed)
  • Twenty Poems , 1930
  • Poems , 1933 (2nd edition 1934)
  • Vienna , 1934
  • The Still Center , 1939
  • Ruins and Visions , 1942
  • Spiritual Exercises , 1943 (privately printed)
  • Poems of Dedication , 1947
  • The Edge of Being , 1949
  • Collected Poems, 1928-1953 ; 1955
  • Selected Poems , 1965
  • The Generous Days , 1971
  • Selected Poems , 1974
  • Recent Poems , 1978
  • Collected Poems 1928-1985 , 1986
  • New Collected Poems , (edited by Michael Brett ), 2004

Letters and journals

  • Letters to Christopher: Stephen Spender's Letters to Christopher Isherwood , 1980
  • Journals, 1939-1983 , 1985

Reviews, travel literature and non-fiction

  • The Destructive Element , 1935
  • Forward from Liberalism , 1937
  • Life and the Poet , 1942
  • European Witness , 1946
  • Poetry Since 1939 , 1946
  • The God That Failed . Edited by Richard Crossman. Together with Arthur Koestler , Ignazio Silone , André Gide , Louis Fischer , Richard Wright . Hamilton, London 1949. In German: A god who wasn't. Parma Edition publisher, Frankfurt 1950
  • Learning Laughter , 1952
  • The Creative Element , 1953
  • The Making of a Poem , 1955
  • The Struggle of the Modern , 1963
  • The Year of the Young Rebels , 1969
  • Love-Hate Relations , 1974
  • Eliot , 1975 (Modern Masters series)
  • WH Auden: A Tribute (edited by Spender), 1975
  • The Thirties and After , 1978
  • China Diary (with David Hockney ), 1982

drama

libretto

memoirs

  • World Within World . Hamilton, London 1951. In German, world between worlds. Publishing house of the Parma Edition, Frankfurt a. M. 1952.

fiction

  • The Burning Cactus , 1936 (stories)
  • The Backward Son , 1940
  • Engaged in Writing , 1958
  • The Temple (written 1928; published 1988)

Literature about donors (selection)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Stephen Spender in the photo book "Herbert List - Sons of Light", Hamburg 1988, p.2
  2. ^ Nicolaus Schmidt, Willi Lassen - a biographical sketch, in "Democratic History" Vol. 26, Schleswig-Holsteinischer Geschichtsverlag, 2015, p. 196
  3. ↑ Stephen Spender: World Between Worlds. Parma Edition publisher, Frankfurt 1952, p. 244.
  4. ↑ Elliston Chair of Poetry ( Memento of the original from May 19, 2011 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 / asweb.artsci.uc.edu
  5. ^ Honorary Members: Stephen Spender. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 23, 2019 .
  6. ↑ [1]
  7. ↑ MS letter, September 14, 1934 , Huntington Library, quoted in John Sutherland, 'Spender, Sir Stephen Harold (1909–1995)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [2] , found October 24, 2006

Web links

Wikiquote: Stephen Spender  - Quotes
personal data
SURNAME Donor, Stephen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Donor, Sir Stephen Harold
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British poet and author
DATE OF BIRTH February 28, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH July 16, 1995
Place of death London