William Arthur Satchell

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William Arthur Satchell  (born February 1, 1861 in London - † October 21, 1942 ) was a New Zealand novelist , publisher , journalist and entrepreneur . He is considered one of the most important New Zealand writers of the colonial era , who also tried to take Māori perspectives in his novels , which were often set during or shortly after the New Zealand Wars ( Land Wars ) . In the Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature (1998), his most important novel, "The Greenstone Door", is described as one of the 'humanistic major works' of New Zealand literature.

life and work

Satchell was born in London. He came from a well-off and culturally interested middle-class family. His father had studied Egyptology and worked on the Oxford English Dictionary . Family friends included Alfred Lord Tennyson and Wilkie Collins . Satchell had an artistic friendship and extensive correspondence with the English historian Allan Fea.

Satchell attended Hurstpierpoint and Grove House Academy in England. He also studied a. a. in Heidelberg , where in 1877 - at the time of the philosophy historian and Goethe, Schiller and Lessing researcher Kuno Fischer - he attended lectures on German literature of the early 19th century as a guest auditor . A lasting echo of the preoccupation with classical and romantic German literature can be found in a number of Satchell's New Zealand texts, especially in his main work “The Greenstone Door”. Satchell et al. Received important impulses from English-language literature. a. by Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy .

In 1886 Satchell emigrated to New Zealand after unsuccessful attempts as a poet, essayist and publisher in London , where he initially ran a general store in the natural harbor of Hokianga, which is strongly influenced by the Māori culture . In 1892 he moved to Auckland with his young family , where he a. a. wrote journalistic articles and poetry for the Auckland Star . At the time of the beginning gold rush in Thames he was earning a small fortune as a land broker, gold washer and shares, but continued his writing activities in his free time. In 1901 he founded the magazine The Maorilander , of which he was the lead author. In 1902 Satchell's first novel "The Land of the Lost" , set among the amber seekers ( Gum Diggers ) in the north of New Zealand, appeared in England. His narrative style, which combines psychological and social observations with numinous motifs of fate, was compared in laudatory English reviews with Thomas Hardy's novels. The novels "The Toll of the Bush" followed in 1905 and "The Elixir of Life" in 1907, which were also published in England and were more popular there than in New Zealand. Excursions into theatrical literature and horticulture failed after Satchell's capital from earlier property trading and gold prospecting was practically exhausted and he and his wife Susan (née Bryers) had to look after nine children.

After extensive and time-consuming planning, Satchell's most famous novel "The Greenstone Door" was published in 1914. Because of its reception of German literature, which - according to passages from Schiller's Lied von der Glocke - is sometimes quoted directly in German, the novel largely lost its effect when the First World War broke out in both New Zealand and Great Britain; however, it was reissued several times later (1935, 1957).

In another war year of World War II , a 1942 Sydney Bulletin acknowledgment said William Satchell was one of New Zealand's best novelists, "if not, the best because of 'The Greenstone Door'". The novel tells the friendship of a young Pakeha - (Europeans) colonists with a young Māori chief and his sister, who ended tragically during the war in the Waikato region and the Battle of Orakau (1864). Recent research has identified the intertextual dimension of this New Zealand historical and educational novel. A reading instruction in “The Greenstone Door” refers directly to Goethe's fundamental educational novel Wilhelm Meister , a key passage is played in a to Novalis Heinrich v. Ofterdingen-like cave scene, in which the protagonists, as with Novalis, see their own future prophetically . There are parallels to Karl May's Winnetou trilogy , especially in the friendship between the indigenous and the European hero . The ambiguous end of the novel in the garden of the governor and later Prime Minister of New Zealand, George Edward Gray, is in turn marked by the reception of Schiller. The New Zealand cultural historian Nelson Wattie called the novel "a New Zealand Nathan the Wise " because of his efforts to promote intercultural understanding .

In 1928 Satchell wrote a story for children called "The Book of Joso". His other writing activities focused on shorter journalistic texts. Satchell's novels later acquired new meaning for some post-colonial authors such as Frank Sargeson, partly as a model, partly as a contrast film. Satchell made his living for the ten years before his retirement as an accountant for a timber trading company in Kopu near Thames. In 1939 the New Zealand government issued him a small private pension. Satchell died in Auckland in 1942; his nine children survived him.

literature

  • Norman Franke: Romantic specters in the Waikato caves: William Satchell's The Greenstone Door as a chronotopical intertext and a critique and affirmation of bourgeois modernity. In: Journal of New Zealand & Pacific Studies, (3, 1/2015), 39–57 (in English; on the reception of German-language literature in 'The Greenstone Door')
  • William Satchell , In: Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie (Eds.), The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature. Oxford, Auckland, New York 1998, ISBN 0 19 558348 5 , pp. 476-477
  • PJ Wilson: The Maorilander: A Study of Wiliam Satchell. Christchurch 1961, OCLC 173405691

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nelson Wattie et al. (Ed.): Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature . Oxford University Press, 1998, ISBN 978-0-19-558348-9 .
  2. ↑ Kendrick Smithyman: Satchell, William Arthur. In: Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Ministry for Culture & Heritage, accessed August 7, 2020 .
  3. ^ Franke, Romantic Specters , p. 40
  4. ↑ a b Satchell, William Arthur. Ministry for Culture and Heritage, accessed August 7, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Wattie, William Satchell, S. 476 (English)
  6. ↑ Wilson, The Maorilander , p. 96 (English)
  7. ^ Franke, Romantic Specters , p. 55
  8. ↑ Wattie, William Satchell, p. 477 (English)
personal data
SURNAME Satchell, William Arthur
BRIEF DESCRIPTION New Zealand novelist, publisher, journalist and entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH February 1, 1861
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH October 21, 1942