Roy Campbell (1901-1957)

Roy Campbell (2 October 1901 – 22 April 1957) was a South African poet and satirist. He was considered by T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas and Edith Sitwell to have been one of the best poets of the period between the two World Wars, but his connections to right-wing ideology have impaired his reputation and any unbiased assessments of his writing. A willingness to make bitter enemies of influential literati also helped consign him to the outskirts of literature. As of 2006, his life and works--both singularly colorful--are little-known and overdue for re-examination. Image File history File links Roy_campbell. ... Image File history File links Roy_campbell. ... October 2 is the 275th day (276th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 90 days remaining. ... 1901 (MCMI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... April 22 is the 112th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (113th in leap years). ... 1957 (MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Poetry (ancient Greek: ποιεω (poieo) = I create) is traditionally a written art form (although there is also an ancient and modern poetry which relies mainly upon oral or pictorial representations) in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. ... Satire is a literary technique of writing or art which exposes the follies of its subject (for example, individuals, organizations, or states) to ridicule, often as an intended means of provoking or preventing change. ... Thomas Stearns Eliot (September 26, 1888 - January 4, 1965), was a major Modernist Anglo-American poet, dramatist, and literary critic. ... Dylan Marlais Thomas, (October 27, 1914 – November 9, 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer. ... Edith Sitwell (September 7, 1887 – December 9, 1964) was a British poet and critic. ... There have been two World Wars, now more commonly known as World War I or First World War (from 1914 to 1918), and World War II or Second World War (from 1939 to 1945). ... In politics, right-wing, the political right, or simply the right, are terms which refer, with no particular precision, to the segment of the political spectrum in opposition to left-wing politics. ... An intellectual is a person who uses his or her intellect to study, reflect, and speculate on a variety of different ideas. ...

Early life

Ignatius Royston Dunnfries Campbell, was born in Durban, South Africa, the son of Dr. Samuel George Campbell. Educated at Durban High School, he counted literature and the outdoor life among his first loves. Campbell was an accomplished horseman and fisherman and he also became fluent in Zulu. He left South Africa in 1918 intending to matriculate at Oxford University but he never did, yet his intellectual life bloomed in the university city. Campbell wrote verse imitations of T.S. Eliot and Paul Verlaine, and later met Eliot, Dylan Thomas, the Sitwells, and Wyndham Lewis. He published his first collection of poems The Flaming Terrapin in 1924 when he was just twenty-two. Central area of Durban Durban is a city in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa (29°53′S 31°03′E). ... The Zulu are an African ethnic group of about 11 million people who live mainly in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. ... The matriculation ceremony at Oxford Matriculation refers to the formal process of entering a university, or of becoming eligible to enter by acquiring the required prior qualifications. ... The University of Oxford, located in the city of Oxford in England, is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. ... Paul Verlaine illustrated in the frontispiece of , 1902 Paul Marie Verlaine (March 30, 1844 – January 8, 1896) is considered one of the greatest and most popular of French poets. ... Wyndam Lewis in 1916 Wyndham Lewis (November 18, 1882 - March 7, 1957) was a British painter and author. ...

Poet and satirist

The Flaming Terrapin established his reputation as a rising star and was favorably compared to the recently released poem of Eliot's The Waste Land. His verse was critically well-received by Eliot himself, Dylan Thomas, Edith Sitwell, and others. T. S. Eliot (by E. O. Hoppe, 1919) The Waste Land is a highly influential 433-line modernist poem by T. S. Eliot. ...

Now moving in the literary set, he criticized the Bloomsbury Group whom he thought sexually promiscuous, snobbish, and anti-Christian. Calling them "intellectuals without intellect," he penned a satire entitled The Georgiad (published in 1931) that was a scathing attack on them. His wife’s alleged affair with Vita Sackville-West (who was the lover of Virginia Woolf) was a contributing cause to this. The Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set or just Bloomsbury, as its adherents (members is probably too formal a designation) would generally refer to it, was an English group of artists and scholars that existed from around 1905 until around World War II. // History The group began as an informal social... Front dustjacket of The Land, designed by George Plank. ... Virginia Woolf (January 25, 1882 – March 28, 1941) was a British author who is considered to be one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. ...

Returning to South Africa, he started Voorslag a literary magazine along with William Plomer and Laurens van der Post. However, he found the local cultural scene to be too introspective. After publishing the satirical poem The Wayzgoose 1928 he moved to southern France. William Charles Franklyn Plomer (he pronounced the surname as ploomer) (1903 - 1973) was a South African author, known as a novelist, poet and literary editor. ... Sir Laurens Jan van der Post by Frances Baruch Sir Laurens Jan van der Post (aka Laurens van der Post) December 13, 1906 - December 16, 1996. ...

The French period saw the publication of Adamastor (1930), Poems (1930), The Georgiad (1931), and the first volume of his autobiography Broken Record (1934) among others. During this time he and his wife Mary were slowly being drawn to the Catholic faith, which can be traced in a sonnet sequence entitled Mithraic Emblems (1936). Mithra and the Bull: This fresco from the Mithraeum at Marino, Italy (3rd century) shows the tauroctony and the celestial lining of Mithras cape Mithraism (in Persian: مهرپرستی) was an ancient mystery religion prominent from the 1st century BC to the 5th century AD. It was based on worship of the...

Franco, the Second World War, Campbell's changed reputation

Moving on to Spain, he and his family converted to Catholicism in the small Spanish village of Altea in 1935. His reputation as a poet suffered considerably when he sided with General Francisco Franco and fought alongside the Nationalist Army during the Spanish Civil War, at a time when most Western artists and intellectuals sided with the Republicans. Streets of Altea. ... Francisco Franco Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco y Bahamonde (pron. ... The Spanish Civil War (July 1936–April 1939) was a conflict in which the incumbent Second Spanish Republic and political left-wing groups fought against a right-wing nationalist insurrection led by General Francisco Franco, who eventually succeeded in ousting the Republican government and establishing a personal dictatorship. ...

For an author to support Franco in this era was unusual, as was Campbell's glorification of military strength and masculine virtues. He had also been a strong opponent of communism for some time and fighting it may have been a strong motivation. The authors who supported the Republicans also tended to be like the ones he mocked in his previous life as a poet, but whether this is relational is uncertain. His role in the war harmed the later reviews and analysis of his work. Although he enlisted in the British Army,(rising to the rank of sergeant) and fought against the fascists during the Second World War, his reputation remains clouded. This article is about communism as a form of society and as a political movement. ... The British Army is the land armed forces branch of the British Armed Forces. ... This article is about the rank of sergeant. ... Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler Fascism (in Italian, fascismo), capitalized, refers to the right-wing authoritarian political movement which ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943 under the leadership of Benito Mussolini. ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ...

Post-war life and works

Campbell was invalided out of the army in 1944. He subsequently moved to Portugal in 1952. Although Estado Novo was not precisely fascist, emigrating to it after the war may have enhanced or exaggerated the image he had developed. Or it could be said to have clarified it, as the dictator Salazar's regime was more like traditionalist Catholic authoritarianism-- which is perhaps more in line with what he envisioned than Franco's rule. In any event, in Portugal he wrote the second volume of his autobiography Light on a Dark Horse. History of Portugal series Prehistoric Portugal Pre-Roman Portugal Roman Lusitania and Gallaecia Visigoths and Suevi Moorish rule and Reconquista First County of Portugal Kingdom of Galicia and Portugal Second County of Portugal Establishment of the Monarchy Consolidation of the Monarchy 1383–1385 Crisis Discoveries Portuguese Empire 1580 Crisis Iberian... This article applies to political ideologies. ...

Campbell's conversion to Catholicism inspired him to write what some consider to be the finest spiritual verse of his generation. He translated the mystical poems of St. John of the Cross and documented his conversion in verse in Mithraic Emblems. He also wrote travel guides and children's literature. He also began translating poets from languages such as Spanish and French. Some of his translations of Baudelaire have been published in anthologies. Campbell, by now a self-styled "dark horse," produced what are arguably the best translations into English of the Spanish martyr-poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who was killed by Nationalist-associated partisans at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. The happy union of the gay and left-leaning Lorca and his rightist, ultra-macho translator (though they never met) is an intricate challenge for any student of modernist poems. Saint John of the Cross (Juan de la Cruz) was a Spanish Carmelite friar, born on June 24, 1542 at Fontiveros, a small village near Avila. ... Charles Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire (April 9, 1821–August 31, 1867) was one of the most influential French poets. ... A dark horse candidate is one who is nominated unexpectedly, without previously having been discussed or considered as a likely choice. ... Federico García Lorca Federico García Lorca (June 5, 1898 - August 19, 1936) was a Spanish poet and dramatist, also remembered as a painter, pianist, and composer. ...

Roy Campbell died in a car accident near Setúbal, Portugal on Easter Monday, 1957. Coat of Arms Setúbal is a municipality in Portugal with a total area of 172. ... Easter Monday is a Christian holiday celebrated the next day after Easter Sunday. ...

Selected Works by Campbell

• The Flaming Terrapin. (1924).
• Voorslag. (1926-1927). A monthly magazine edited by Roy Campbell, et al.
• The Wayzgoose: A South African Satire. (1928).
• Adamastor. (1930).
• Poems. (1930).
• The Gum Trees. (1931).
• The Georgiad - A Satirical Fantasy in Verse. (1931).
• Taurine Provence. (1932).
• Pomegranates. (1932).
• Burns. (1932).
• Flowering Reeds. (1933).
• Broken Record. (1934).
• Mithraic Emblems. (1936).
• Flowering Rifle: A Poem from the Battlefield of Spain. (1936).
• Songs of the mistral. (1938).
• Talking Bronco. (1939).
• Poems of Baudelaire: A Translation of Les Fleurs du Mal. (1946).
• Light on a Dark Horse: An Autobiography. (1952).
• Lorca. (1952).
• The Mamba's Precipice. (1953).
• Nativity. (1954).
• Portugal. (1957).
• Wyndham Lewis. (1985).

Books about Roy Campbell

• Wright, David (1961). Roy Campbell.
• Smith, Rowland (1973). Lyric and Polemic: The Literary Personality of Roy Campbell.
• Povey, John (1977). Roy Campbell.
• Parsons, David; Stewart Japp (1982). Roy Campbell: A Descriptive and Annotated Bibliography, With Notes on Unpublished Sources.
• Campbell, Anna (1986). Poetic Justice : A Memoir of My Father, Roy Campbell.
• Alexander, Peter (1989). Roy Campbell: A Critical Biography.
• Pearce, Joseph (2001). Bloomsbury and Beyond: The Friends and Enemies of Roy Campbell.
• Pearce, Joseph (2004). Unafraid of Viginia Woolf: The Friends and Enemies of Roy Campbell.

See also

• List of poets

This is a list of poets. ...

External links

• Zulu Kingdom: Roy Campbell
• "Roy Campbell: Bombast and Fire" - Catholic Author’s article
• Roy Campbell Page
• Who was Roy Campbell? National Review
• Short bio at Washington University, St. Louis