Day Lewis, Cecil

Early life

Cecil Day-Lewis was born in 1904 in Ballintubert, Queens County (now known as Laua County), Ireland ^[6] . He was the son of Frank Day-Lewis (1872-1937) ^{[7] [8]} , rector of the Ballintubert parish, and Kathleen Blake (née Squires; died in 1906) ^[9] . Some of his relatives were from England (counties of Hertfordshire and Canterbury). His father took the surname "Day-Lewis" as a combination of the names of his own father ("Day") and his adoptive father ("Lewis") ^[10] . In the autobiography of The Buried Day (1960), Day-Lewis wrote:

After the death of his mother in 1906, when he was two years old, Cecil Day-Lewis was raised in London by his father with the help of an aunt, spending summer vacations with relatives in Wexford county. He was educated at Sherborne School and Wadham College , Oxford . At Oxford, Day-Lewis became part of a circle that gathered around W.H. Auden and helped him edit Oxford Poetry 1927 . His first poetry collection, Beechen Vigil , was published in 1925. ^[12]

In 1928, when Day-Lewis worked as a teacher in three schools, including the Larchfield School, Helensburgh, Scotland (now the Lomond School) ^{[12] [13]} , he married Constance Mary King. During the 1940s, he had a long and hectic affair with the novelist Rosamund Lehmann . The writer’s first marriage was dissolved in 1951, and he married actress Jill Balcon , daughter of Michael Balcon , who did not accept this marriage and subsequently moved away from his daughter ^[14] due to the fact that Day Lewis was 21 years older than Jill.

Late Life

During World War II, he worked as a publication editor at the UK Department of Information, an institution ridiculed by George Orwell in his dystopian " 1984 ". During World War II, the work of Auden, a close friend of Day-Lewis, lost influence over Cecil, and he developed a more traditional style of lyrics. Some critics believe that he achieved his full growth as a poet in " Word Over All" (1943), when he finally ceased to be dependent on Auden ^[15] . After the war, joined Chatto & Windus as a director and senior editor.

In 1946, Day-Lewis was a lecturer at Cambridge University , publishing his lectures in " The Poetic Image " (1947). Day-Lewis was promoted to commander of the most excellent Order of the British Empire by George VI on the anniversary of the monarch in 1950 ^[16] . He later taught poetry at Oxford from 1951 to 1956. ^[8] In 1962-1963, he again worked at Harvard University. Day-Lewis was appointed poet laureate in 1968, after the death of a year earlier John Maysfield ^[17] .

Day-Lewis was chairman of the literary group, vice president of the Royal Literary Society , honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Literature , member of the Irish Academy of Literature , professor of rhetoric at Graham College , London .

Death

Cecil Day-Lewis died of pancreatic cancer on May 22, 1972 at the age of 68 in Lemmons, Hertfordsh, in the home of Kingsley Amis and Elizabeth Jane Howard , where he and his family were staying. A big fan of Thomas Hardy , he was buried next to his grave at St. Michael's Church in Stinsford, Dorset. ^[12] Epitaph on the grave of Cecil Day-Lewis - quote from his poem "Is it Far to Go?".

Day Lewis was the father of four children ^[18] . Children from their first marriage were Sean Day-Lewis, a television critic and writer, and Nicholas Day-Lewis, who became an engineer. Married to Jill Balcon, Tamasin Day-Lewis and Daniel Day-Lewis were born ^[19] . Sean Day-Lewis published a biography of his father, " C. Day Lewis: an English Literary Life ", in 1980.

In October 2012, Daniel Day-Lewis donated his father’s archives to the Bodleian Library ^{[20] [21] [22]} .

In 1935, Day-Lewis wrote the detective novel "Requires evidence" under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake (there is a version that the need for money and a leaking roof pushed him to write this kind of novel). In the debut detective novel of Day-Lewis, the character of the future series of novels by Nicholas Blake, Nigel Strangejweis, an amateur detective and a gentleman-detective who, being the nephew of Assistant Commissioner Scotland Yard, has the same access and good relations with official crime investigation agencies as and those used by other fictional detectives, such as Ellery Queen , Philo Vance, and Lord Peter Wimsey . Nigel Strangeways was originally modeled after W.H. Auden, but with the advancement of the series, Day-Lewis developed the character as a much less extravagant and more serious figure for later novels ^{[23] [12]} .

Day-Lewis published another nineteen detective novels under a pseudonym. Since the mid-1930s, Day-Lewis could earn his living solely as a writer ^[12] .

In his youth, after the end of the Great Depression , Day-Lewis adopted communist views , and remained a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain from 1935 to 1938. His early poetry was marked by didacticism and enthusiasm for social topics ^[24] . In 1937, he edited the book The Mind in Chains: Socialism and the Cultural Revolution , in the introduction of which he supported the Popular Front against "capitalism that no longer needs culture." He explains that the name refers to Prometheus chained, and cites Shelley's preface to " Prometheus Unbound ".

After the late 1930s, which were marked by mass purges, repressions and executions in the USSR under Joseph Stalin , Day-Lewis gradually became disillusioned with communism ^[12] . In the autobiography of " The Buried Day " (1960), he renounces his former communist views. His detective novel “There Is No Choice” (1964) contains a caustic portrayal of Communist doctrines, repressions of the Soviet Union against the Hungarian uprising of 1956 and tactics of Soviet intelligence.

Poetic collections

• Transitional Poem (1929)
• From Feathers to Iron (1931)
• Collected Poems 1929–1933 (1935)
• A Time to Dance and Other Poems (1935)
• Overtures to Death (1938)
• Short Is the Time (1945)
• Collected Poems (1954)
• Pegasus and Other Poems (1957)
• The Gate, and Other Poems (1962)
• The Whispering Roots and Other Poems (1970) ^[24]
• The Complete Poems of C. Day-Lewis (1992) ^[15]
• A New Anthology of Modern Verse 1920-1940 (1941); edited by L. A. J. Strong .
• The Chatto Book of Modern Poetry 1915–1955 (1956); edited by John Lehman .

Essay Collections

• A Hope for Poetry (1934) ^[24]
• Poetry for You (1944)
• The Poetic Image (1947)

Translations

• Georgics (author Virgil ) (1940) ^[26]
• Le Cimetière Marin (author Paul Valerie ) (1946)
• Eclogues (author of Virgil) (1963) ^{[15] [24]}

Self-published novels

Autobiography

• The Buried Day (1960)

Novels

• The Friendly Tree (1936)
• Starting Point (1937)
• Child of Misfortune (1939)

Children's Literature

• Dick Willoughby (1933)
• The Otterbury Incident (1948)

Nicholas Blake

Nigel Strangeways

• Evidence Required ( Question of Proof) (1935)
• Thren Shell of Death (1936; also published as “ Shell of Death” and translated “Flesh as Grass” ) (1936)
• Murder at the Brewery (Eng. There's Trouble Brewing) (1937)
• The Beast Must Die (1938)
• The Smiler with the Knife (1939).
• Malice in Wonderland (1940; also published as The Summer Camp Mystery )
• The Case of the Vile Snowman (1941; The Case of the Abominable Snowman , also published as The Corpse in the Snowman )
• Minute for Murder (1947)
• Head of a Traveler (1949; also translated as Secret of the Secret Meadow and Head of the Salesman )
• The Dreadful Hollow (1953)
• The Whisper in the Gloom (1954; also published as Catch and Kill )
• The end of the chapter (Eng. End of Chapter) (1957; also translated as " At the end of the chapter " and " Decisive evidence ")
• The Widow's Cruise (1959)
• The Worm of Death (1961)
• There Is No Choice In Hell (1964)
• The Morning after Death (1966)

Out of series

• A Tangled Web (1956; also published as Death and Daisy Bland )
• A Penknife in My Heart (1958)
• The Deadly Joker (1963)
• Personal Wound (1968)

• Sean Day-Lewis, Cecil Day-Lewis: An English Literary Life (1980)