Scarica Stevie Smith: The Life and Works of a Controversial English Poet and Novelist e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! Stevie Smith Florence Margaret Smith, known as Stevie Smith, was an English poet and novelist. She was born in Kingston upon Hull in Yorkshire on 20 september 1902 and died in London on 7 march 1971 cause a brain tumor> so she lived during the world wars When she was very young her father left his family to join the north sea patrol and she with her mother and her sister moved to the London suburb sbarb Palmers Green where she lived until her death. Her mother died when she was only 16 and so she and her sister were obliged to live with their aunt who was an important figure of her life, known as The Lion Aunt. She was a feminist and they grow up into a family of women which she calls in her poems “the house of female habitation”, becoming attached to their own independence, in contrast to what smith described as the typical Victorian family atmosphere of “father knows best” She attended the high school and then the North London Collegiate School for girls, where after her graduation, began to work as a secretary with the magazine publisher George Newnes niuns. In this period in her twenties she began to write and publish her works. The rise of fascism in Europe in the 19305, and the coming of World War Il in 1939, had a profound effect on her. She considered "war and aggression as immature male games," but instead of staying into a safe protective place during the war period, Stevie became an air-raid warden and fire watcher in London. She never belonged to a particular school and during her life she wrote poems, novels, letters and nearly a dozen volumes of verse. Novels In 1936 she published her first book Novel on Yellow Paper (called so cause the colour of sheets of paper) in which she examines religion (anti Semitism was one of the key themes) and politics in the lead-up to the Second World War. She has been accused of being anti-Semitic because of remarks that appeared in this novel. She thought Jews "weren't really English" and were "pushy," a view not uncommon in England at the time. In the 1938 she published her second novel Over the Frontier frontir which is concernd with militarism. In particular she asks how the necessity of fighting Fascism can be achieved without descending d-sending into the nationalism and dehumanisation diumanaizescion that fascism represents. The heroine, Pompey, suffers a breakdown and is sent to Germany to recuperate. At this point the novel changes style radically, as Pompey becomes part of an adventure/spy yarn. As the novel becomes increasingly dreamlike, Pompey crosses over the frontier to become a spy and soldier. If her initial motives are idealistic, she becomes seduced by the intrigue and, ultimately, violence In the 1949 she published her last novel The Holiday and it is concerned with personal and political malaise in the immediate post war period. Most of the characters are employed in the army or the civil service in post-war reconstruction, The Holiday describes a series of hopeless relationships especially regarding the main character Celia. the uncertainty over Britain's post-war role are constant themes. In 1959 she wrote as an occasional work, a coffee-table book Cats in Colour (1959), for which she wrote a humorous series of captions to photographs imagining the inner lives of cats. Poetry Regarding poetry,it is unconventional and individualistic and has been called “darkly comic” In the 1937 she published her first volume of poetry A Good Time Was Had By All that established her as a poet. Smith said she got the phrase from parish magazines, where descriptions of church picnics often included this phrase. It containes sketches and drawings which became characteristics of her work. They suggest a child’s innocence and they have both a feeling of caprice and doom. She was a sophisticated poet whose work was concerned with suffering and mortality indeed her macabre sense of humor can shock especially in her most famous poem Not Waving but Drowning written a few months before she tried to commit suicide, where the man's gesture of waving signals his death After the publication of A Good Time Was Had By All soon her poems were found in periodicals f.e. Tender only to one; Alone in the woods; Two in One; The Frog Prince; Come on come back, and other. In the 1960s Smith's poetry readings became popular, and she made radio broadcasts and recordings r-còdings. Her performances of her poems contributed to her popularity especially her childlike mode of dressing in contrast the way she read or sang her poems. Smith was awarded the Cholmondeley ciomondlei Award for Poets in 1966 and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1969.
