Zelda Fitzgerald

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Zelda Fitzgerald (1919)

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald (born July 24, 1900 in Montgomery , Alabama , as Zelda Sayre , † March 10, 1948 in Asheville ) was an American author , painter and dancer.

Zelda Fitzgerald was seen by many contemporaries as the embodiment of the typical " flapper girl ". After a dissolute life at the side of her husband, the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald , which was becoming increasingly difficult, she suffered a first psychological low point in 1930, which was later linked to a diagnosis of schizophrenia . She spent most of the last few years in psychiatric clinics until her death. In 1932 she published the autobiographical novel Save Me the Waltz .

biography

Childhood and youth

Zelda Fitzgerald was born on July 24, 1900 as the youngest of six children to Anthony Dickinson Sayre (1858–1931) and his wife Minerva Buckner Make (1860–1958). Her father was a judge on the Alabama Supreme Court. She was a good student with special strengths in English and math, and was considered a beauty.

Relationship with F. Scott Fitzgerald

In 1918, at the age of 18, she met F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was serving in the US Army near Montgomery, at a dance evening. The relationship soon ran into trouble when Scott got in touch with another young girl and Zelda, in turn, kept her distance. Nevertheless, they got engaged in March 1919, which Zelda broke off in the summer of that year because she had doubts about Scott's character - his penchant for alcohol, his quick temper and his interest in other girls had become evident to her. For her part, Zelda caused a stir when she was picked up at the Atlanta train station by four young men who all thought they had a dance date with her. The couple got back together in late autumn 1919, and on April 3, 1920, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald were married in a brief and unadorned ceremony in New York. The marriage was weighed down by Scott's increasing alcoholism - he became a consistently heavy and regular drinker until his untimely death in 1940 - and violence.

Married life

The couple first settled in New York, where they met the greats of American literature. Because of Prohibition and because the cost of living in France was lower due to the cheap franc, the couple often lived in France for long periods of time in their twenties. During this time, Zelda and Scott were hailed by the press as images of the youthful zeitgeist of the Roaring Twenties and achieved a status similar to that of the great film stars of their time. Never-ending parties and large amounts of the alcohol Scott consumed resulted in exhausting lives. The couple spent nearly the entire revenue that Scott moved from his writing, about 30,000 US $ per year. Zelda viewed her husband's close friendship with Ernest Hemingway , which began in spring 1925, with suspicion, above all because of her disgust for drinking together.

The birth of their only child, Frances Scott Fitzgerald, in 1921 did little to slow their pace of life. The girl was raised mainly by nannies.

Work as a writer

In 1924 Zelda made a brief acquaintance with the French pilot Edouard Jozan, with whom she fell in love. This prompted her husband to lock her up in her rented holiday villa on the Côte d'Azur to keep her from meeting Jozan.

From 1923 Zelda wrote short stories, which were published under Scotts or under their names, as it brought several times the fee. She had written her first story as a high school student. During her time in Paris, at the age of 26, Zelda became enthusiastic again about classical ballet, which she had practiced from the age of 9 to 18. She trained with immense diligence. Her Parisian ballet teacher Lyubow Jegorova got her an engagement as a prima ballerina at the Naples Opera, which Zelda refused to accept out of concern for her daughter, who would have had to stay behind in Paris. Scott was hostile to his wife's desire to become a professional dancer.

The conflicts between Zelda and Scott intensified when Zelda pursued an independent career as a ballet dancer, writer and painter, which Scott tried to suppress because he feared that his wife would leave him if he was financially independent. Zelda expressed his intention to get a divorce in February 1930, at which point Scott threw a vase at her. A little later she collapsed for the first time with a burnout . In the Les Rives de Prangins mental hospital on Lake Geneva, she wrote a ballet libretto and three stories that were lost, as were another five later.

In October 1931, after the couple returned to Montgomery from Europe, Zelda began her first novel, which she finished in late March 1932 at the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic in Baltimore , where, with the permission of her doctor Mildred Squires, she was allowed to write two hours a day. The novel was published in October 1932 under the title Save Me The Waltz and was designed by Zelda as a revelatory novel, but was shortened by a third (approx. 100 pages) by Scott and his editor Perkins at Scribner's Verlag. The original version, which contained attacks against Scott as a husband and writer, as well as scandalous material about the couple's personal lives, disappeared.

Zelda had hoped for a bestseller with her novel that would give her the financial security she needed to file for divorce from Scott and start a new life for herself and her daughter. Scott Fitzgerald, on the other hand, noted in his notebook in the spring of 1933: “Attack on all levels: play (suppress), novel (delay), images (suppress), character (attack), child (alienate), daily routine (confuse to cause difficulties ). No typing. Probable result: another nervous breakdown. "In a recorded therapy conversation Zelda said:" It is impossible to live with you. I'd rather go to the insane asylum, wherever you'd like to put me. ”Scott always refused the divorce that Zelda had called for since February 1930, except for one time at the beginning of June 1933, after the couple had had a long conversation with Zelda's psychiatrist. But he quickly dismissed the thought, as in this case he would not be able to control what Zelda was writing in her new, second novel. Scott tried in April 1933 to have Zelda hospitalized again in a psychiatric clinic - even against her will. The written medical authorization required by Scott to be allowed to admit his wife to psychiatry at any time was rejected by Zelda's attending physician. Her second novel, Caesar's Things , started in late 1932 or early 1933, remained unfinished.

Stays in psychiatric hospitals and death

Zelda Fitzgerald lived from mid-1930 until her death in March 1948, with some interruptions, in privately operated psychiatric clinics.

  • June 5, 1930 to September 15, 1931 - Les Rives de Prangins , Switzerland
  • February 1932 to June 1932 - Phipps Psychiatric Clinic of Johns Hopkins Hospital , Baltimore
  • January 1934 to February 12, 1934 - Sheppard Pratt Hospital, Baltimore
  • February 12, 1934 to March 8, 1934 - Phipps Psychiatric Clinic of Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore
  • March 8, 1934 to May 19, 1934 - Psychiatric Clinic Craig House, Beacon, New York
  • May 19, 1934 to April 8, 1936 - Sheppard Pratt Hospital, Baltimore
  • Apr. 8, 1936 to April 15, 1940 - Highland Mental Hospital, Asheville , North Carolina
  • August 1943 to February 1944 - Highland Mental Hospital, Asheville (intermittently living with Tom Wolfe's mother in Asheville and with her mother in Montgomery)
  • July 1946 to September 23, 1946 - Highland Mental Hospital, Asheville
  • November 1947 to March 10, 1948 - Highland Mental Hospital, Asheville.
Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald's grave in Rockville, Maryland

Zelda was released from the Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville in April 1940 because the clinic's psychiatrist and operator was Dr. Robert Carroll was shown to be involved in the rape of a patient. Zelda also fell victim to the doctor. At the same time she was Dr. Carroll's Associate; she gave her fellow patients therapeutic art, sports and dance lessons. At the end of 1939 she was also commissioned to paint the patient rooms with flower panels. She thought the assignment was a waste of her professional talent, but was afraid of turning it down in order not to be diagnosed as psychotic again. The remuneration for your work should be offset against your clinic costs.

F. Scott Fitzgerald died on December 21, 1940. Zelda Fitzgerald died in 1948 at the age of 47 in a fire at the Highland Mental Hospital in which eight other patients lost their lives. She found her final resting place in Saint Mary's Cemetery in Rockville, Maryland . Her daughter Frances Scott Fitzgerald (1921–1986) became a journalist, author and prominent member of the Democratic Party.

Publications

posthumously
  • Bits of Paradise , unpublished stories by Scott Fitzgerald and all stories by Zelda Fitzgerald, USA 1973.
  • Ritzberries with whipped cream. Stories , German translation by Eva Bonné , Manesse Verlag, Zurich 2016, ISBN 978-3-7175-2400-7 .

reception

Blythe Danner played her role in F. Scott Fitzgerald and 'The Last of the Belles' (1974) . In the biography F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood (1975) Fitzgerald was played by Tuesday Weld . In the 1993 film Zelda , she was portrayed by Natasha Richardson . In Last Call , the last on the memoirs of F. Scott Fitzgerald's secretary Frances Kroll Ring is based, took Sissy Spacek their role. In Woody Allen's comedy Midnight in Paris (2011), Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald are played in a short scene by Alison Pill and Tom Hiddleston . Christina Ricci took over her role in the Amazon video series Z: The Beginning of Everything , which portrays her life in partly fictionalized form . In the film drama Genius - The Thousand Pages of a Friendship (2016) about Max Perkins , Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald are portrayed by Vanessa Kirby and Guy Pearce .

The musical Waiting for the Moon with music by Frank Wildhorn and texts by Jack Murphy is dedicated to the lives of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. It premiered in 2005, with Jarrod Emick playing the role of writer and Zelda played by Lauren Kennedy .

In his novel "Alabama Song" the writer Gilles Leroy mixed biographical and fictional elements from the life of Zelda Fitzgerald and won the 2007 French literary prize Prix ​​Goncourt . The novel was published in German in 2008. In her novel "Zelda Fitzgerald - 'Live so that I can breathe freely'", Katrin Boese tells the life story of Zelda Fitzgerald as an author, painter and dancer from the perspective of Zelda's long-time friend Sara Mayfield.

The name of the video game series The Legend of Zelda goes back to Zelda Fitzgerald.

The Pet Shop Boys song "Being Boring" takes its title from a quote attributed to Zelda Fitzgerald: "She refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn't boring."

literature

  • Sally Cline: Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise , London: Murray, 2002, ISBN 0-7195-5466-7
  • Nancy Milford : Zelda. Nancy Milford wrote the biography of the American dream couple Zelda and Scott F. Fitzgerald . Transferred from the American by Gertrud Baruch. Kindler, Munich 1975, ISBN 9783463006277 .
  • Judith Mackrell: Flappers: Six Women of a Dangerous Generation . Macmillan, London 2013, ISBN 978-0-230-75233-7
  • Linda Wagner-Martin: Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald: An American woman's life , New York [u. a.]: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, ISBN 978-1-4039-3403-1

Web links

Commons : Zelda Fitzgerald  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ German translations (1972, 1984 and 2011) under different titles, see section publications
  2. ^ Sally Cline: "Zelda Fitzgerald. Her Voice in Paradise", Arcade Publishing, New York 2003, p. 32.
  3. ^ Sara Mayfield, "Exiles from Paradise. Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald," New York 1971, p. 148
  4. ^ Sara Mayfield: Exiles from Paradise. Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald. New York 1971, pp. 141 f.
  5. ↑ James R. Mellow: Hemingway: A Life without Consequences. London 1992, p. 291.
  6. ^ Sara Mayfield: Exiles from Paradise. Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald. New York 1971, p. 113 and p. 118
  7. ^ Sara Mayfield, "Exiles from Paradise. Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald," New York 1971, p. 148
  8. ↑ Kendall Taylor, "Sometimes Madness is Wisdom. Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald. A Marriage," New York 2001, p. 259
  9. ↑ Kendall Taylor: "Sometimes Madness is Wisdom. Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald. A Marriage", New York 2001, pp. 259 f.
  10. ^ Sara Mayfield, "Exiles from Paradise. Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald," New York 1971, p. 181.
  11. ^ Scott Donaldson, "Fool for Love. F. Scott Fitzgerald," New York 1983, p. 86
  12. ↑ Transcript of a therapy conversation between Zelda, Scott and Zelda's psychiatrist Dr. Rennie, May 28, 1933, in: Matthew J. Bruccoli: "Some Sort of Epic Grandeur. The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald", revised edition, Columbia, South Carolina 1991, p. 412
  13. ^ Sara Mayfield, "Exiles from Paradise. Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald," New York 1971, p. 199
  14. ↑ Kendall Taylor, "Sometimes Madness is Wisdom. Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald. A Marriage," New York 2001, p. 272.
  15. ↑ Matthew J. Bruccoli ". Some Sort of Epic Grandeur The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald," revised edition, Columbia, South Carolina, pages XXXII-XXXV
  16. ^ Sally Cline: "Zelda Fitzgerald. Her Voice in Paradise", Arcade Publishing, New York 2003, p. 391 and p. 400.
  17. ^ Sally Cline: "Zelda Fitzgerald. Her Voice in Paradise", New York 2003, pp. 375 and 457, footnote 26.
  18. ^ Sally Cline: "Zelda Fitzgerald. Her Voice in Paradise", New York 2003, pp. 373/374
  19. ^ Gilles Leroy: Alabama Song , Verlag Kein & Aber , ISBN 978-3-0369-5522-3
  20. ↑ Katrin Boese: Zelda Fitzgerald - »Live in such a way that I can breathe freely« , AvivA Verlag 2010, ISBN 978-3-932338-43-4
  21. ↑ Todd Mowatt. In the Game: Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto . Amazon.com. Found October 15, 2006.
personal data
SURNAME Fitzgerald, Zelda
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sayre, Zelda
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American author
DATE OF BIRTH July 24, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Montgomery , Alabama
DATE OF DEATH March 10, 1948
Place of death Asheville , North Carolina