Edith Sitwell

Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell DBE (* September 7, 1887 in Scarborough, † December 9, 1964 in London) was an English poet.

Life

Edith Sitwell was from an aristocratic but eccentric parents from Yorkshire: their parents were Sir George Sitwell, 4th Baronet of Renishaw Hall and Lady Ida Emily Augusta Denison, a daughter of the Earl of Londesborough and granddaughter of Henry Somerset, 7th Duke of Beaufort.

Later she was to be descended from the Plantagenets. She had two younger brothers, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell, the smashing himself a successful literary career and worked together for a long time with Edith. Edith's relationship with his parents was very excited, especially for the father, who let her stretch (a kind of "Iron Virgin " ) in a metal frame in order to " cure " a spinal curvature to; Edith called the device a " steely Bastille ". In her autobiography she later explained that her parents for they always have remained strangers. At the age of 25 years moved Sitwell, together with her governess Helen Rootham, from Yorkshire to London.

Her first poem, The Downed Suns, she published in 1913 in the Daily Mirror, was published in 1915 the band The Mother and Other Poems and 1916-1921 she wrote on Wheels, an anthology that it works on together with their brothers; the siblings formed a kind of poet club named " The Sitwell ". In 1929 appeared The Gold Coast Customs, a poem Edith's, in which she describes the artificiality of human behavior and the inhumanity that lies hidden beneath the civilized surface. The poem is marked by the musical rhythm of the tom-toms and jazz and displays a remarkable craftsmanship of the young poet. Sitwell experimented in the 20's with the musical qualities of the language ( they even called her poems patterns in sound). The rhythmic dimensions of the language, the possibilities of rhyme, alliteration and assonance of - referred to her as " color" - were used extensively by Sitwell in their experimentation.

She joined the British poetry of the modern age, and soon became one of its most important representatives, where they let the conservatism of the classical poets of her time, who were backward-looking only in her eyes behind her. She stepped confidently emphasizes on and reminded her angular face of Queen Elizabeth I, besides, she was very tall, but especially excited her with her ​​clothes stir, as they often brocade or silk robes, golden turbans and with lots of rings occurred - her jewelry is now on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Her home was a meeting place for young writers whose friendship she sought and supported them: they included, among others, Dylan Thomas, Aldous Huxley and Denton Welch; it also ensures that after the death of Wilfred Owen whose work was published cared.

Well-known and controversial

Their unusual appearance provoked critics almost more than her poetry, so she was always exposed to the attacks of people such as Geoffrey Grigson, FR Leavis and others, she countered with passion. Even when she was already the end of 1964 was dying, her accused the critic Julian Symons, they yield the feelings of others for their own poetic advantage of. Your opponents Sitwell met mostly with contempt; after Noël Coward, 1922, the literary Sitwell's portrayed in little advantageously, they stubbornly refused until her 70th birthday, so for 35 years, to talk to him a word, before they became reconciled to her birthday party.

Sitwell examined the relationship between poetry and music, which she described in 1923 in Façade, a series of abstract poems, which were then set to music by William Walton. The piece was so listed that the speaker stood behind a curtain on which a face was shown, his mouth formed a hole in the curtain, reciting the text through which, with the aid of a megaphone, the spokesman said. The public regarded such appearances either with amusement or with violent riots, but from the criticism she received positive reactions.

Later work

After she had some time in Paris in the thirties, they retired to the beginning of World War II with her brother Osbert by Renshaw back. There, she sewed clothes for her friends who served in the army, including Alec Guinness, who received a pair of socks from her. She also wrote at this time further poems that she, after she had been somewhat forgotten, again made ​​known. A good recording found Street Songs (1942 ), The Song of the Cold ( 1945) and The Shadow of Cain ( 1947). Well her most famous poem is Still Falls the Rain, which describes the air attacks of the Germans and was set to music by Benjamin Britten. 1948 Sitwell traveled with her brothers in the United States, where she read her poems and prefers the sleepwalker scene of Lady Macbeth vorführte ( an anecdote according to 1950 had to be after such an appearance several men carried out of the hall).

In 1954 she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire and thus elevated to the peerage. In 1955 she was converted to the Catholic faith. She wrote two books about Queen Elizabeth I: Fanfare for Elizabeth (1946 ) and The Queens and the Hive (1962). Even if they flirted with the fact that they write only way of making money, these works were a great literary success, as English Eccentrics (1933 ) and Victoria of England ( 1963). Her only novel, I Live under a Black Sun, which has the life story of Jonathan Swift to content, was published in 1937. At the age she used a wheelchair, her final reading took place in 1962. She died in 1964 shortly after the completion of her autobiography Taken Care Of 77 years in London's Hampstead in heart failure.

Works

Volumes of poetry

• Clowns ' Houses ( 1918)
• Rustic Elegies (1927 )
• Gold Coast Customs (1929 )
• The Song of the Cold ( 1948)
• Façade, and Other Poems 1920-1935 (1950 )
• Gardeners and Astronomers (1953 )
• Collected Poems (1957 )
• The Outcasts (1962 )

Other works

• Alexander Pope ( 1930)
• The English Eccentrics (1933 ) ( English eccentrics. A gallery of most remarkable and remarkable ladies and gentlemen )
• I Live under a Black Sun ( 1937) ( I live under a black sun)
• Fanfare for Elizabeth ( 1946) ( biography of Elizabeth I)
• The Queens and the Hive ( 1962) ( biography of Elizabeth I)
• Victoria of England
• Taken Care Of ( 1964) ( My eccentric life, autobiography )