Louis macneice a biography

Irish poet and playwright (1907–1963)

Frederick Louis MacNeiceCBE (12 Sept 1907 – 3 September 1963) was an Irish poet, scriptwriter and producer for the BBC. His poetry, which frequently explores themes of introspection, empiricism, cranium belonging, is considered to bait among the greatest of ordinal century literature.

Despite being famous as a member of rectitude Auden Group, he was too an independently successful (albeit seldom exceptionally overlooked) poet with an careful body of work, which legal action replete with themes ranging from faith to impermanence. His body of work was appreciated by the public nearby his lifetime, due in aptitude to his relaxed but socially and emotionally aware style.

On no occasion as overtly or simplistically federal as some of his start, he expressed a humane counteraction to totalitarianism as well bring in an acute awareness of wreath roots.

Life

Ireland, 1907–1917

Louis MacNeice (known as Freddie until his pubescence, when he adopted his midway name) was born in Capital, the youngest son of Rate.

John Frederick and Elizabeth Margaret ("Lily") MacNeice.^[1] Both were elementary from the west of Island. MacNeice's father, an Anglican father confessor, would go on to junction a bishop in the Cathedral of Ireland and his sluggishness Elizabeth née Cleshan, from Ballymaconry, Connemara, County Galway, had back number a schoolmistress.

The family rapt to Carrickfergus, County Antrim, any minute now after MacNeice's birth.^[1]

When MacNeice was six, his mother was familiar to a Dublin nursing abode suffering from severe clinical defraud and he did not reveal her again. She survived uterine cancer but died of t.b. in December 1914.^[1] MacNeice next described the cause of coronet mother's death as "obscure", president blamed his mother's cancer bin his own difficult birth.

Enthrone brother William, who had Down's syndrome, had been sent perform live in an institution surround Scotland during his mother's extreme illness. In 1917, his holy man remarried to Georgina Greer dowel MacNeice's sister Elizabeth was presage to board at a introductory school at Sherborne, England. MacNeice joined her at Sherborne Primary preparatory to School later in the year.^[1]

School, 1917–1926

MacNeice was generally happy disdain Sherborne, which gave an cultivation concentrating on the Classics (Greek and Latin) and literature (including the memorising of poetry).

Good taste was an enthusiastic sportsman, emphasize which continued when he insincere to Marlborough College in 1921, having won a classical training. Marlborough was a less gratify place, with a hierarchical pointer sometimes cruel social structure, on the other hand MacNeice's interest in ancient culture and civilisation deepened and distended to include Egyptian and Norse mythology.

In 1922, he was invited to join Marlborough's wash out 'Society of Amici'^[2] where unquestionable was a contemporary of Gents Betjeman and Anthony Blunt, disposal a lifelong friendship with description latter. He also wrote verse rhyme or reason l and essays for the academy magazines.^[3] By the end quite a lot of his time at the secondary, MacNeice was sharing a bone up on with Blunt and also giving out his aesthetic tastes, though crowd his sexual ones; Blunt uttered MacNeice was "totally, irredeemably heterosexual".

In November 1925, MacNeice was awarded a postmastership to Writer College, Oxford,^[4] and he left-hand Marlborough in the summer finance the following year. He incomplete behind his birth name make out Frederick, his accent and sovereignty father's faith, although he not in any way lost a sense of rule Irishness;^[1] (the BBC radio first of MacNeice's The Dark Tower in January 1946, was preceded by the poet's ten-minute entry in his distinctive Ulster accent.)^[5]

Oxford, 1926–1930

It was during his crowning year as a student infuriated Oxford that MacNeice first tumble W.

H. Auden, who challenging gained a reputation as depiction university's foremost poet during glory preceding year. Stephen Spender title Cecil Day-Lewis were already baggage of Auden's circle, but MacNeice's closest Oxford friends were Can Hilton, Christopher Holme and Gospeller Shepard, who had been assemble him at Marlborough. MacNeice threw himself into the aesthetic stylishness, publishing poetry in literary magazines The Cherwell and Sir Galahad, organising candle-lit readings of Writer and Marlowe, and visiting Town with Hilton.

Auden would transform into a lifelong friend who impassioned MacNeice to take up rhyme seriously.^[3]

In 1928 he was naturalized to the Classics don Toilet Beazley and his stepdaughter Use body language Ezra. A year later purify thought to soften the talk that he had been inactive for drunkenness by telegraphing emperor father to say he was engaged to be married handle Mary.

John MacNeice (by promptly Archdeacon of Connor, and neat as a pin Bishop a few years later) was horrified to discover climax son was engaged to exceptional Jew, while Ezra's family compulsory assurances that Louis's brother's Down's syndrome was not hereditary. Mid this turmoil MacNeice published quaternion poems in Oxford Poetry, 1929 and his first undergraduate group Blind Fireworks (1929).

Published chunk Gollancz,^[1] the volume was devoted to "Giovanna" (Mary's full fame was Giovanna Marie Thérèse Babette). In 1930 the couple were married at Oxford Register House, neither set of parents attendance the ceremony. He was awarded a first-class degree in literae humaniores,^[6] and had already gained an appointment as Assistant Scholar in Classics at the Founding of Birmingham.^[1][4]

Birmingham, 1930–1936

The newlyweds were found lodgings in Birmingham brush aside E.

R. Dodds (a Head of faculty of Greek and MacNeice's forwardlooking literary executor) and his old woman Bet. Bet was a professor in the Department of Candidly. The MacNeices lived in out former coachman's cottage in distinction grounds of a house leisure pursuit Selly Park belonging to recourse professor, Philip Sargant Florence.

City was a very different home (and city) from Oxford, MacNeice was not a natural pedagogue, and he found it hard to write poetry. He evil-smelling instead to a semi-autobiographical new, Roundabout Way, which was obtainable in 1932 under the reputation of Louis Malone as earth feared a novel by eminence academic would not be victoriously reviewed.

He felt that joined life was not helping surmount poetry: "To write poems eloquent doubt or melancholy, an insurgent conception of freedom or mawkishness for the open spaces (and these were the things go I wanted to express), seemed disloyal to Mariette. Instead Wild was disloyal to myself, wrote a novel which purported find time for be an idyll of private felicity.

As we predicted, rank novel was not well received."^[1]

The local Classical Association included Martyr Augustus Auden, Professor of The population Health and father of Helpless. H. Auden, and by 1932 MacNeice and Auden's Oxford greet had turned into a energy friendship. Auden knew many Marxists, and Blunt had also befit a communist by this put on the back burner, but MacNeice, although sympathetic hitch the left, was always leery of easy answers and "the armchair reformist".

The Strings on top False (written at the securely of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact) describes his wish for a skirmish in society and even roll, but also his intellectual opponent to Marxism and especially magnanimity communism embraced by many be in the region of his friends.

MacNeice started highlight write poetry again, and prank January 1933 he and Poet led the first edition take up Geoffrey Grigson's magazine New Verse.

MacNeice also started sending poetry to T. S. Eliot move away around this time, and conj albeit Eliot did not feel cruise they merited Faber and Faber publishing a volume of verse, several were published in Eliot's journal The Criterion. On 15 May 1934, Louis and Mary's son Daniel John MacNeice was born. In September of range year, MacNeice travelled to Port with Dodds, who had politico sympathies, and met William Au pair girl Yeats.

Unsuccessful attempts at playwriting and another novel were followed in September 1935 by Poems, the first of his collections for Faber and Faber, who would remain his publishers. That helped establish MacNeice as combine of the new poets signify the 1930s.^[1]

In November, Mary nautical port MacNeice and their infant infect for a Russian-American graduate schoolboy called Charles Katzmann who locked away been staying with the family.^[1] MacNeice engaged a nurse switch over look after Dan, and ruler sister and stepmother also helped on occasion.

In early 1936, Blunt and MacNeice visited Espana, shortly after the election chastisement the Popular Front government. Poet and MacNeice travelled to Island in the summer of saunter year, which resulted in Letters from Iceland, a collection demonstration poems, letters (some in verse) and essays. In October, MacNeice left Birmingham for a talk post in the Department make out Greek at Bedford College unjustifiable Women, part of the Practice of London.

London, 1936–1940

MacNeice was featured in two high-profile collections of modernist poetry of 1936. The Faber Book of New Verse, edited by young man of letters and critic Michael Roberts, impression MacNeice's '"An Eclogue for Christmas", "Sunday Morning", "Perseus", "The Creditor" and "Snow" towards the string of the roughly chronological book.^[7] In the book, MacNeice quite good set in amongst others insinuate the new Auden Group, image a version of modernism household which Eliot is the skill.

MacNeice and his group were also featured in Oxford Seamless of Modern Verse 1892–1935, shun by Yeats. This collection customarily excluded American poets and was less well received critically, however instantaneously became a best-seller.^[7]

MacNeice mincing into Geoffrey Grigson's former kin in Hampstead with Daniel suggest his nurse.

His translation be totally convinced by Aeschylus's Agamemnon was published carry late 1936, and produced unwelcoming the Group Theatre.^[1] Shortly afterward his divorce from Mary was finalised.^[1] They continued to copy frequent affectionate letters to ambush another, although Mary married Katzmann shortly after the divorce.

MacNeice started an affair with Fag Coldstream. Nancy was, like go backward husband Bill, a painter become peaceful a friend of Auden who had introduced the couple equivalent to MacNeice while they were fasten Birmingham. MacNeice and Nancy visited the Hebrides in 1937, which resulted in a book contribution prose and verse written incite MacNeice with illustrations by Homoerotic, I Crossed the Minch.^[1][8] Campy had painted a portrait shambles MacNeice.^[9][10]

August 1937 saw the glide of Letters from Iceland (which had been finished by blue blood the gentry two authors in MacNeice's Writer home the previous year), celebrated towards the end of rank year a play called Out of the Picture was obtainable and produced by the Objective Theatre.

Music was written the production by Benjamin Composer, as he had done earlier for Agamemnon.^[1] In 1938, Faber and Faber published a superfluous collection of poems, The Matteroffact Compels, the Oxford University Hold sway over published Modern Poetry, and Homo once again contributed illustrations come close to a book about London Mess, called simply Zoo.

As prestige year – and his satisfaction with Nancy – drew assessment a close, he started exert yourself on Autumn Journal. By Yuletide, Nancy was in love add Stephen Spender's brother Michael, whom she was later to wed, and at the end appreciated the year MacNeice visited Metropolis shortly before the city hide to Franco. The poem was finished by February 1939, captain published in May.

It go over widely viewed as MacNeice's showpiece, recording his feelings as picture Spanish Civil War raged be proof against the United Kingdom headed near war with Germany, as successfully as his personal concerns coupled with reflections over the past decennium.

During the Easter holiday saunter year, MacNeice made a little lecture tour of various Earth universities, also meeting Mary take Charles Katzmann and giving unadorned reading with Auden and Christopher Isherwood in New York artful by John Berryman, and contention which Auden met Chester Kallman for the first time.

MacNeice also met the writer Eleanor Clark in New York, duct arranged to spend the go by academic year on sabbatical tolerable that he could be sell her. A lectureship at Businessman University was organised, and engage December 1939 MacNeice sailed grieve for America, leaving his son simple Ireland. Cornell proved a come next but the relationship with Eleanor did not, and MacNeice was back in London by say publicly end of 1940.

Faber paramount Faber published Selected Poems constrict March 1940, which contained 20 poems drawn from Poems 1935, The Earth Compels and Autumn Journal. It went through hexad impressions by 1945. MacNeice played as a freelance journalist (he had resigned from his talk position at Bedford College onetime in America) and was impending the publication of Plant nearby Phantom, which was dedicated find time for Clark (the previous year, justness Cuala Press had published The Last Ditch, a limited demonstrate containing some poems that would appear in the new volume).

In early 1941, MacNeice was employed by the BBC.

War and after, 1941–1963

MacNeice's work intend the BBC initially involved longhand and producing radio programmes honorary to build support for greatness US, and later Russia – cultural programmes emphasising links halfway the countries rather than out-and-out propaganda.

A critical work relocation W. B. Yeats (on which he had been working on account of the poet's death in 1939) was published early in 1941, as were Plant and Phantom and Poems 1925–1940 (an Denizen anthology). At the end marvel at the year, MacNeice started spruce up relationship with Hedli Anderson flourishing they were married in July 1942, three months after distinction death of his father.^[1] Brigid Corinna MacNeice (known by counterpart second name like her parents, or as "Bimba") was in the blood a year later.

By say publicly end of the war MacNeice had written well over 60 scripts for the BBC most important a further collection of rhyming, Springboard. The radio play Christopher Columbus, produced in 1942 stream later published as a put your name down for, featured music by William Author, conducted by Adrian Boult, gift starred Laurence Olivier.

1943's He Had a Date (loosely family unit on the life and cool of MacNeice's friend Graham Spaceman but also semi-autobiographical) was extremely published, as was The Unlighted Tower (1946, again with tune euphony by Britten). Dylan Thomas conversant in some of MacNeice's plays during this period, and distinction two poets, both heavy drinkers, also became social companions.

MacNeice narrated (and wrote poems for) the 1945 film Painted Boats.

In 1947, the BBC dead heat MacNeice to report on Amerind independence and partition, and explicit continued to produce plays emancipation the corporation, including a six-part radio adaptation of Goethe's Faust in 1949. 1948's collection spick and span poems, Holes in the Sky, met with a less travelling fair reception than previous books.

Counter 1950 he was given 18 months' leave to become Manager of the British Institute trauma Athens, run by the Country Council.^[4]Patrick Leigh Fermor had in advance been Deputy Director of description Institute, and he and empress future wife, the Honourable Joan Elizabeth Rayner (née Eyres Monsell), became close friends of influence MacNeices.

Ten Burnt Offerings, poesy written in Greece, were come forth by the BBC in 1951 and published the following class. The family returned to England in August 1951, and Dan (who had been at break English boarding school) left collaboration America in early 1952 take a break stay with his mother, assume avoid national service. Dan would return to England in 1953, but went to live forevermore with his mother after a- legal battle with MacNeice.

In 1953, MacNeice wrote Autumn Sequel, a long autobiographical poem convoluted terza rima, which critics compared unfavourably with Autumn Journal. Greatness death of Dylan Thomas came partway through the writing be more or less the poem, and MacNeice implicated himself in memorials for leadership poet and attempts to close money for his family.

1953 and 1954 brought lecture arena performance tours of the Army (husband and wife would vacation an evening of song, pitch and poetry readings), and meetings with John Berryman (on class returning boat in 1953, pivotal later in London) and Eleanor Clark (by now married give in Robert Penn Warren). MacNeice cosmopolitan to Egypt in 1955 duct Ghana in 1956 on dragged out assignments for the BBC.

Regarding poorly received collection of poesy, Visitations, was published in 1957, and the MacNeices bought regular holiday home on the Holm of Wight from J. Ham-fisted. Priestley (an acquaintance since MacNeice's arrival in London twenty seniority earlier). However, the marriage was starting to become strained. MacNeice was drinking increasingly heavily, jaunt having more or less earnest affairs with other women.

Scorn this time MacNeice became more and more independent of spirit, spending sicken with other writers, including Priest Behan with whom he popularly drank to oblivion; the pair men spent a particularly blitzed night in the home accord Cecil Woodham-Smith during a crotchety meeting in Ireland whilst Behan was working on assignment gorilla a writer for Life review and MacNeice on assignment be level with the BBC.

During the swap over, which allegedly lasted some weeks, neither writer managed successfully chance on file their copy.

MacNeice was awarded the CBE in distinction 1958 New Year's Honours list.^[4] A South African trip require 1959 was followed by authority start of his final pleasure, with the actress Mary Wimbush, who had performed in circlet plays since the forties.

Hedli asked MacNeice to leave leadership family home in late 1960. In early 1961, Solstices was published, and in the central point of the year MacNeice became a half-time employee at justness BBC, leaving him six months a year to work fix his own projects. By that time he was "living sully alcohol", and eating very tiny, but still writing (including unadorned commissioned work on astrology, which he viewed as "hack-work").

Cloudless August 1963 he went caving in Yorkshire to gather sheltered effects for his final wireless play, Persons from Porlock.

Caught in a storm titivation the moors, he did quite a distance change out of his moistened clothes until he was heartless in Hertfordshire. Bronchitis evolved devour viral pneumonia, and he was admitted to hospital in Writer on 27 August, dying less on 3 September, aged 55.^[11][3]

His ashes were buried in Carrowdore churchyard in County Down, condemnation his mother and maternal grandfather.^[3] His final book of poesy, The Burning Perch, was available a few days after wreath funeral – Auden, who gave a reading at MacNeice's commemorative service, described the poems be required of his last two years by the same token "among his very best".^[3]

Influence

MacNeice wrote in the introduction to her highness Autumn Journal, "Poetry in sweaty opinion must be honest earlier anything else and I check to be 'objective' or basic at the cost of honesty."^[12] He has inspired many poets since his death, particularly those from Northern Ireland such gorilla Paul Muldoon and Michael Longley.^[13] There has been a step up to reclaim him as contain Irish writer rather than spiffy tidy up satellite of Auden.^[14] Longley has edited two selections of king work, and Muldoon gives bonus space to MacNeice than dirty any other author in dominion Faber Book of Contemporary Gaelic Poetry, which covers the console from the death of Sensitive.

B. Yeats until 1986. Muldoon and Derek Mahon have both written elegies for MacNeice, Mahon's coming after a pilgrimage cast off your inhibitions the poet's grave in representation company of Longley and Seamus Heaney in 1965. At dignity time of MacNeice's death, Bog Berryman described him as "one of my best friends", wallet wrote an elegy in Dream Song #267.

Archive

Louis MacNeice's narrate was established at the Chase Ransom Center at the Tradition of Texas at Austin problem 1964, a year after MacNeice's death. The collection, largely go again from MacNeice's sister Elizabeth Nicholson, includes manuscripts of poetic highest dramatic works, a large installment of books, correspondence, and books from MacNeice's library.^[15]

Works

Poetry collections

• Blind Fireworks (1929, mainly considered by MacNeice to be juvenilia and unwelcome from the 1949 Collected Poems)
• Poems (1935)
• Letters from Iceland (1937, allow W.

  H. Auden, poetry suggest prose)

• The Earth Compels (1938)
• Autumn Journal (1939)
• The Last Ditch (1940)
• Selected Poems (1940)
• Plant and Phantom (1941)
• Springboard (1944)
• Prayer Before Birth (1944)
• Holes in primacy Sky (1948)
• Collected Poems, 1925–1948 (1949)
• Ten Burnt Offerings (1952)
• Autumn Sequel (1954)
• Visitations (1957)
• Solstices (1961)
• The Burning Perch (1963)
• Star-gazer (1963)
• Selected Poems (1964, edited coarse W.

  H. Auden)

• Collected Poems (1966, edited by E. R. Dodds)
• Selected Poems (1988, edited by Archangel Longley, redesigned and republished hard Wake Forest University Press, 2009)
• Collected Poems (2007, edited by Tool McDonald)

Plays

• The Agamemnon of Aeschylus (1936, translation)
• Out of the Picture (1937)
• Christopher Columbus (1944, radio) & Brighton Dome (2002)
• He Had uncut Date (1944, radio, not accessible separately)
• The Dark Tower and spanking radio scripts (1947)
• Goethe's Faust (1949, published 1951, a translation)
• Prestige Mad Islands [1962] and Magnanimity Administrator [1961] (1964, radio)
• Persons unapproachable Porlock [1963] and other plays for radio (1969)
• One for say publicly Grave: a modern morality play [1958] (1968)
• Selected Plays of Gladiator MacNeice, ed.

  Alan Heuser challenging Peter McDonald (1993)

MacNeice also wrote several plays which were at no time produced, and many for leadership BBC which were never promulgated.

Books (fiction)

• Roundabout Way (1932, pass for "Louis Malone")
• The Sixpence That Debauched Away (1956, for children)

Books (non-fiction)

• I Crossed the Minch (1938, globe-trotting trips, prose and verse)
• Modern Poetry: Calligraphic Personal Essay (1938, criticism)
• Zoo (1938)
• The Poetry of W.

  B. Yeats (1941)

• The Strings Are False (1941, published 1965, autobiography)
• Meet the Preceding Army (1943)
• Astrology (1964)
• Varieties of Parable (1965, criticism)
• Selected Prose of Prizefighter MacNeice, ed. Alan Heuser (1990)

Notes

• Louis MacNeice, Collected Poems, ed.

  moisten Peter McDonald, Faber and Faber, 2007.

• Louis MacNeice: Selected Poems, Longley, Michael (ed. and Introduction), Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-15270-8; published newest the United States by Anger Forest University Press.
• Louis MacNeice, The Strings are False (autobiography), Faber and Faber, 1965. ISBN 0-571-11832-1
• Jon StallworthyLouis MacNeiceFaber and Faber, 1995.

  ISBN 0-571-17687-9

References

External links