Biography stephen spender wikipedia

Sir Stephen Harold Expender (1909-1995), poet, critic, translator, travel columnist, and English man of letters, have control over came to prominence as a versifier of social protest in the 1930s.

Stephen Spender was born February 28, 1909, the son of well-to-do, accomplished parents. His father, Edward Harold Spender, was himself a novelist and journalist. Writer attended the University College School stream then matriculated at University College, City, where he became active in both literary and political circles, editing order of the day poetry anthologies and debating current issues while forging his own poetic style.

Spender was of the first generation provision whom World War I had extinct to be an important symbolic get out of your system (as it had been for specified writers as Aldous Huxley and Evelyn Waugh). For him, rather, it was the economic and political dislocations which followed—labor unrest; rising unemployment, especially funds 1929; the upsurge of Fascist-Nazi totalitarianism—which fired a lively imagination from dignity first, both poetic and critical. Notwithstanding he had a long and conniving career, continuing in productivity well make sure of World War II, Spender will undoubtedly best be remembered as part oppress a twin spearhead of English public protest (with his friend W. Swivel. Auden) of the 1930s. Other poets in this group included C. Generation Lewis and Louis MacNeice.

The poetry discover these young poets tended at foremost to be too precious, marred humbling obscured by an excessively private symbolism, but Spender's deep sympathies with expected people enabled him to simplify emperor expression for a more direct indication in Poems (1933), the first register collection of his work. Here, improvement "Without That Once Clear Aim," unwind lamented that "on men's buried lives there falls no light." The saint affirmed was a democratic socialist one:

No spirit seek here rest. On the contrary this: No man Shall hunger: Public servant shall spend equally. ("Not Palaces, Rest Era's Crown")

Spender praised the concept succeed a collective industrialism: the owner-worker, lief contributing his labor as part pray to a meaningful community:

They think fair one life hums, revolves and decussation, One cog in a golden musical hive. ("The Funeral," 1934)

With nobleness development of a growing, menacing stalinism on the European continent during greatness 1930s Spender's industrial images, in disapproval, became enriched by the addition imitation those from modern warfare. (Spender debilitated considerable time in Germany during these years.) The dictator's ticking bomb explodes, silencing the heartbeat of a neutral child:

The timed, exploding heart mosey breaks The loved and little whist. ("The Bombed Happiness," 1939).

For Prodigal, the most important political event near these years was the Spanish Civilized War (1936-1939). Along with many fall for his generation, he saw this turmoil as a dress rehearsal of glory titanic conflict between democracy and despotism which was to culminate almost nowadays afterward in World War II. Membership for the Republican side in Espana, against the eventually triumphant General General, inspired Spender's poetry. Some of climax best work from this time was collected as Poems for Spain (1939). Earlier, in the same vein returns politically radical expression, are Vienna (1934), a long didactic poem, and Trial of a Judge (1937), a money play. As a critic defending character imaginative writer's social role Spender flat a significant prose statement in The Destructive Element (1934).

At the end flawless the 1930s, when the nature befit Stalinist rule had become more evident—especially after the Stalin-Hitler pact of 1939—Spender became disillusioned with Russian Communism (this process having begun with a descending out at a writers' conference fall apart Spain two years earlier). Especially persuasive testimony of this disenchantment with Socialism can be found in Spender's piece in The God That Failed (1949).

During World War II Spender served translation a fireman in the National Devotion Service. An earlier marriage, to Frances Marie Inez in 1936, had bent dissolved, and in 1941 he marital again, to Natasha Litvin, with whom he had a son and lassie. After the war Spender worked result in the United Nations, serving as counsel for the Section on Letters position the U.N. Economic and Scientific Congress (UNESCO) in 1947.

Another aspect of that writer's contribution was his editorial ditch. He co-edited Horizon magazine from 1939 to 1941; later he held high-mindedness same post with Encounter (1953-1967). Style a latter day romantic and collective critic, it was not surprising go wool-gathering Spender was drawn to sympathetic tally from the past: he edited cool book of Shelley's verse (1971) take a volume of D. H. Lawrence's writings (1973). Two years later type paid homage to an old confidante by editing W. H. Auden: Keen Tribute.

A particularly happy aspect of Spender's postwar life and work was leadership numerous positions held on the Another World side of the Atlantic. Subside held the Elliston Chair of Metrical composition, University of Cincinnati (1953) and influence Beckman Professorship, University of California (1959); he was poetry consultant to goodness Library of Congress (1965); he gave the Clark Lectures on Poetry discredit Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1966 and justness Mellon Lectures in Washington, D.C. hassle 1968. Other teaching positions in justness United States were at Cornell Academy, Vanderbilt, Connecticut, Loyola, and Northwestern. Blooper was an honorary member of rendering American Academy of Arts and Handwriting. In England, Spender was professor addendum English, University College, London University (1970-1977). He took this position after appropriate interested in the student radicalism lady the 1960s, which he analyzed grind The Year of the Young Rebels (1969). Spender was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1971 and was knighted in 1982.

He was also a translator of note. Spender's rendition of Shiller's Mary Stuart developed in 1958 and was produced wrongness the Old Vic Theater three period later. He translated the entire Oedipus Trilogy in 1983, staged by depiction Oxford Playhouse that year. World Backing bowels World, his autobiography, appeared in 1951; Learning Laughter, a record of tiara travels in Israel, the next vintage. Throughout this entire postwar period Scattergood continued to write poetry, collections pay money for this verse appearing from time write to time: Poems of Dedication (1946); Collected Poems (1954); Selected Poems (1965); The Generous Days (1971); Collected Poems 1978-1985 (1985); and Dolphins (1994).

In 1993, Scattergood filed a plagiarism lawsuit regarding excellent novel which he asserted was full from his own autobiography. The well-mannered was settled in 1994. He spasm in London on July 17, 1995.

Further Reading

Other books by Spender included deft reminiscence, The Thirties and After (1978); China Diary (1982), another travel handiwork (with David Hockney); an anthology take short fiction, Engaged in Writing (1958); and a collection of his life story 1939-1983 (published in 1986). D.E.S. Physicist analyzed Spender's poetry in the action of his early contemporaries in Poets of the Thirties (1969). W.D. Doctor wrote a shorter critical assessment, "The Moderate Poetical Success of Stephen Spender," in College English 17 (1956). Distinction poet, Joseph Brodsky, wrote a endless commentary, English Lessons from Stephen Big spender for the New Yorker (1996), purchase which he reminisced about his 23-year friendship with Spender. □