European witness

by Stephen Spender

Book by Spender

246 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Sir Stephen Harold Spender (February 28, 1909–July 16,1995) was an English poet, translator, literary critic and editor.

Spender was born in London and educated at the University of Oxford, where he first became associated with such other outspoken British literary figures as W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, C. Day Lewis and Louis MacNeice. His book The Thirties and After (1979) recalls these figures and others prominent in the arts and politics and his Journals 1939–1983, published in 1986 and edited by John Goldsmith, are a detailed account of his times and contemporaries.

His passionate and lyrical verse, filled with images of the modern industrial world yet intensely personal, is collected in such volumes as Twenty Poems (1930), The Still Centre (1939), Poems of Dedication (1946), Collected Poems, 1928–1985 (1986).

World Within World, Stephen Spender's autobiography, contains vivid portraits of Virginia Woolf, W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Lady Ottoline Morrell, W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood and many other prominent literary figures. First published in 1951 and still in print, World Within World is recognised as one of the most illuminating literary autobiographies to come out of the 1930s and 1940s. There can be few better portrayals of the political and social atmosphere of the 1930s.

The Destructive Element (1935), The Creative Element (1953), The Making of a Poem (1962) and Love-Hate Relations: English and American Sensibilities (1974), about literary exchanges between Britain and the United States, contain literary and social criticism. Stephen Spender's other works include short stories, novels such as The Backward Son and the heavily autobiographical The Temple (set in Germany on the 1930s) and translations of the poetry of Lorca, Altolaguerra, Rilke, Hölderlin, Stefan George and Schiller. From 1939 to 1941 he co-edited Horizon magazine with Cyril Connolly and was editor of Encounter magazine from 1953 to 1967.

Stephen Spender owed his own early recognition and publication as a poet to T. S. Eliot. In turn Spender was always a generous champion of young talent, from his raising a fund for the struggling 19-year-old Dylan Thomas, to a lifelong commitment to helping promote the publication of newcomers. In 1972, with his passionate concern for the rights of banned and silenced writers to free expression, he was the chief founder of Index on Censorship, in response to an appeal on behalf of victimised authors worldwide by the Russian dissident Litvinov.

Reviews

[John Stotesbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stephen Spender's travels in the British Occupation Zone of Germany (with a minor detour to France) in late 1945 are reflected in this memoir of 1946 in subtly different ways. He describes the desolation of the German cities with splendid effectiveness, and his encounters with Displaced Europeans, with the British military, with ordinary Germans, and with a variety of significant intellectuals of the time are set against an awareness of the need for Europe to move on from its tradition of the competitive nation-state and towards greater unity. His reflections on the nature of totalitarianism could have been written about the present state of the world and its political chaos. Well worth (re-)reading more than 70 years after its first publication.

[Mark Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating snapshot of a brief historical period immediately after WWII in Germany (Bonn, Hamburg, Berlin, etc.) with numerous brief interviews of British and American military occupation officials, German intellectuals, German students, officials and others reflecting on the aftermath of war. Stunning to hear that many Germans expected the British and Americans to team up with Germany in a war against Russia in the near future. Reflections on the tasks of reforming Nazi indoctrination, integrating Germany into European culture, persistence of racial dogma. Finally, a question about the notion of the inevitability of progress and whether it had been destroyed by the ascendance of Nazism in Germany and the ensuing World War.