Cecil Day-Lewis (or Day Lewis ), born the April 27th 1904, dead the May 22nd 1972, is a British poet , Poète prize winner of 1967 with 1972, commander of the Ordre of the British Empire and, under the pseudonym of Nicholas Blake , a writer with mysteries.

Life

He is the son of the reverend Frank Cecil Day Lewis and Kathleen Squires. After the death of his mother in 1906, it is high with London by his father, with the assistance of an aunt. He studies with Sherborne School and Wadham College (Oxford), which he leaves graduate in 1927. With Oxford, it joined the circle formed around W.H. Auden and the assistance to publish Oxford Poetry 1927 . Its first collection of poems, Beechen Vigil , appears in 1925.

In her youth, Day-Lewis adopted communist ideas , becoming member of the Communist party of 1935 to 1938, and its first poems are marked by the didactism and a concern for the social topics. It engages like partisan in the republican army during the Spanish Civil war, but, after the end of the year thirty, it loses little by little its illusions.

In 1928, he Marie with Mary King, the girl of a professor, and works as Master three schools. It Marie in second weddings with the actress Jill Balcony.

In 1935, to supplement the incomes drawn from her poems, Day-Lewis decides to write a novel of detective, off has Question Proof , for which it creates the character of Nigel Strangeways, a detective amateur, nephew of an officer of Scotland Yard. Nineteen other detective novels follow. In the first novel, the character of Nigel Strangeways is modél on W.H. Auden, but Strangeways becomes a less extravagant and more serious figure in the following novels. Starting from the middle of the years 1930 Day-Lewis comes from to live of her feather.

During the Second world war, he works as writer of publications to the Ministry for Information, an institution made fun by George Orwell in his Uchronie 1984 (also based on the experiment of Orwell to BBC). In its work, it moves away from the inluence of Auden and develops a more traditional lyric style. Several critics affirm that it reached its full stature of poet with Word Over All (1943), when it completes to take his distances with Auden.

After the war, it joined the editor Chatto & Windus as editor association. In 1946, he is reader with the Université of Cambridge, publishing his readings in The Poetic Image (1947). In 1951, it Marie with the actress Jill Balcony, girl of Michael Balcony. Later, he teaches poetry with the Université of Oxford, where he is professor of poetry of 1951 to 1956.

Of these two marriages, Day-Lewis had five children, in particular the actor Daniel Day-Lewis and the journalist Tamasin Day-Lewis, as well as the writer and critical tele Sean Day-Lewis, which wrote a biography on his/her father, C. Day Lewis: An English literary Life (1980).

It is named Poète prize winner in 1968, succeeding John Masefield. Day-Lewis is also president of the Council of Arts, in the category literature, vice-president of the royal Company of literature, honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and the Letters, member of the Irish Academy of the Letters and professor of Rhétorique to Gresham College, in London.

Day-Lewis dies on May 22nd, 1972, in the Hertfordshire, the house of Kingsley Amis and Elisabeth Jane Howard, where it remained with his wife. It was a large admiror of Thomas Hardy, and it was arranged to be also buried close possible of its tomb, in Stinsford churchyard.

Poetry

" Song"

Drawn from The Passionate Shepherd to His Christopher Marlowe Coils:
Like, live with me and Be my coils,
And we will all the pleasures prove
Of peace and plenty, bed and board,
That chance employment may afford.

I' L handle dainties one the docks

And thou shalt read off summer frocks:
At evening by the sour canals
We' L hope to hear nap madrigals.

Care one thy maiden brow shall could

has wreath off wrinkles, and thy foot
Be shod with bread: not silken dress
Goal toil shall car thy loveliness.

Hunger shall make thy modest zone

And cheat bottom death off all goal bone-
If thesis delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and Be my coils.

Principal works

Collections of poetry

  • Transitional Poem (1929)
  • From Feathers To Iron (1932)
  • Collected Poems 1929-1933 (1935)
  • has 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 Whispering Roots and Other Poems (1970)
  • Complete Poems (1992)

Tests

  • has Hope for Poetry (1934)

Translations

Novels written under the name of Nicholas Blake