Boucquey Thierry (General Editor). Encyclopedia Of World Writers. 3 volumes
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
Austrian Empire. The son of a German Jewish
glassmaker and his Italian wife, Svevo was sent to
Germany at age 12 to attend boarding school. He
later returned to Trieste to continue his education,
which was abruptly terminated when he was in his
late teens as a result of his father’s failure in busi-
ness. Svevo took a position as a clerk but continued
to spend much of his free time reading and, ulti-
mately, writing as well.
Svevo published his first novel, Una Vita (A Life,
1892), when he was 31 years old, using his pseudo-
nym for the first time. The work gained attention
immediately for its revolutionary introspective,
analytic style. Svevo continued to publish works in
this style, which were later classified as psychologi-
cal novels; at the time, however, the newness of his
tone made his works difficult to comprehend, re-
sulting in their being ignored by critics once their
curiosity wore off. Svevo’s second novel, As a Man
Grows Older (1898), received a similar lack of
attention, at which point he officially gave up
writing to pursue a career in his father-in-law’s
business. (He continued to write short stories
throughout this period.)
Svevo’s business career required him to travel,
and many of his trips were to England. To improve
his command of English, he employed as a tutor
the young writer James Joyce, who was living in Tri-
este and teaching at the Berlitz school. In spite of
their age difference, they rapidly forged an endur-
ing friendship. Joyce allowed Svevo to read portions
of his work in progress, Dubliners, and, in his turn,
Svevo gave Joyce both of his novels to read. Joyce
found the works to be enthralling and encouraged
Svevo to resume his writing endeavors. As a result,
his best-known work, La Coscienza di Zeno (Con-
fessions of Zeno, 1923), was published. Written in
the first person, it represents an attempt by the nar-
rator to discover through analysis the source of his
nicotine addiction. Again, the work was ignored,
but two years after publication, Joyce arranged for
publication of a French translation. Svevo became
famous in France, and his popularity slowly grew in
Italy, helped by the support of Eugenio
MONTALE,
as the psychological novel gained acceptance.
Svevo was in the process of working on a sequel
to Zeno when he was killed in an automobile acci-
dent on September 13. His contribution to Italian
literature, however, included a stream-of-con-
sciousness style, which was present in both Zeno
and several posthumously published short stories,
as well as his advancement of the genre of the psy-
chological novel in Italy.
Another Work by Italo Svevo
Emilio’s Carnival (Senilità). Translated by Beth
Archer Brombert. New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 2001.
Works about Italo Svevo
Gatt-Rutter, John. Italo Svevo: A Double Life. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1988.
Svevo, Livia Veneziani. Memoir of Italo Svevo.
Translated by Isabel Quigly. London: Libris, 1989.
Weiss, Beno. Italo Svevo. Boston: Twayne, 1988.
symbolism
Predominant in France at the end of the 19th cen-
tury, and evident in Belgium as well, the symbolist
movement, strongly influenced by Charles BAUDE-
LAIRE’s essays on poetry and art, originated with
the work of a group of French poets, including
Paul
VERLAINE, Stéphane MALLARMÉ, and Arthur
RIMBAUD. It reached its peak around 1890, and the
principles on which it was founded continued to
influence MODERNIST movements of the early 20th
century.
Symbolism began as a reaction against the pre-
vailing literary trends of REALISM and NATURALISM.
Because of the tendency of symbolist poets to
focus on the artificial and grotesque as opposed to
the natural, as well as their common thematic use
of ruin and decay, the writers of this movement
were also commonly associated with the subse-
quently emerging DECADENT movement.
Beginning in the 1830s, realism became the
dominant form of literary expression in France. It
was later followed by the similar but revised natu-
ralist movement. Both schools of thought based
418 symbolism
their works entirely on factual observations of
contemporary society and sought to portray life
without glamorization or pretense. Toward the end
of the century, particularly in Paris, symbolists
began to challenge this style, believing that words
and language as they currently existed were super-
ficial. Therefore, they declared that to represent
and transform the reality of modern life, the poet
must recreate language. Through the use of sym-
bols, poets could create patterns of meanings
based on symbolic representation and allusion
rather than direct statement. The symbolists af-
firmed the transcendent possibilities of the imagi-
nation.
There are a number of specific themes common
to symbolist poetry, but the main focus is on the
difficult role of the poet in modern urban life. The
symbolist poets shared with the decadents a com-
mon FIN DE SIÈCLE sense of brooding melancholy
and darkness.
Early symbolists experimented with form,
resulting in the development of poetic free verse,
poetry that, whether rhymed or unrhymed, disre-
gards conventional rules regarding poetic meter. It
often borrows patterns from natural speech in
place of the more affected diction common to tra-
ditional poetry. This form is still the prevailing
standard in modern poetry.
Another technique, which has existed since
Homer but was exploited especially by French
symbolists, is synesthesia, describing one sensation
in terms of another (for example, describing sound
with colors). Symbolist poets used synesthesia as a
means of uncovering the correspondences be-
tween different sensory impressions, as in Baude-
laire’s famous “Correspondances” from Les Fleurs
du mal (The Flowers of Evil, 1857).
While the symbolist movement had its origins
in poetry, its influence eventually began to extend
to fiction, drama, music, and the visual arts. The
prominent members of the school, such as Rim-
baud, Verlaine, and Mallarmé, can all trace their
influence to the works of Charles Baudelaire, who
was conversely influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, as
their precursor; in turn, they influenced the writ-
ings of Paul CLAUDEL, Paul VALÉRY, Maurice
MAETERLINCK, and others. Similar movements
arose outside of France, and symbolism’s effects
reached as far as the United States in the works
of writers such as Dylan Thomas and e.e. Cum-
mings.
Russian Symbolism
Symbolism began in Russia a little later than in
France and flourished until the Russian Revolution
(1917). Deeply rooted themselves in mysticism, the
Russian symbolists viewed themselves as a nexus
between the Russian people and some higher spir-
itual realm. Like its French counterpart, Russian
symbolism manifested itself in drama, poetry,
prose, and graphic art; however, it achieved its full
force almost exclusively in poetry. Like their
French models, the Russian symbolists experi-
mented with verse forms and especially with free
verse.
The symbolists rejected realist notions about
the social purposes of art. For the symbolists, the
artist was a semidivine figure whose work would
guide the Russian people to an ideal future. Sym-
bolists often viewed the imagination as a different
level of reality, and they used obscure images and
strange metaphors to convey their feelings of de-
tachment from the reality of everyday life.
Aleksandr Blok, Vladimir
SOLOVYOV, and An-
drey BELY were the leading figures of symbolism in
Russia, but it is Solovyov who is considered the
most important originator of the movement in
Russia. Solovyov created a new form of mysticism
based on the worship of the Eternal Feminine, du-
ally identified as nature and as the muse that en-
dowed poets with inspiration. Solovyov’s work was
the single most important foundation for the
Russian symbolist movement.
The symbolist movement served an extremely
important function in Russian literary history by
bridging the gap between realism and ACMEISM.Al-
though poets such as Anna AKHMATOVA later re-
jected symbolism, the movement was an extremely
important early influence on her generation of
poets and on later generations as well.
symbolism 419
Works about Symbolism
Fowlie, Wallace. Poem and Symbol: A Brief History of
French Symbolism. University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1990.
Frantisek, Deak. Symbolist Theater: The Formation of
an Avant-garde. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity Press, 1993.
McGuinness, Patrick, ed. Symbolism, Decadence and
the Fin de Siècle: French and European Perspectives.
Exeter, U.K.: University of Exeter Press, 2000.
Pyman, Avril. A History of Russian Symbolism. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Szymborska, Wislawa (1923– ) poet
Wislawa Szymborska was born in Bnin, now a part
of Kornik, in western Poland. In 1931, she moved
with her family to Krakow where, during the Ger-
man occupation of Poland in World War II, she
attended classes illegally. After the war, she studied
Polish literature and sociology at the Jagiellonian
University. She worked as a poetry editor and
columnist for the Krakow literary magazine Zycie
Literacia until 1981.
Szymborska’s first published poem was
“Szukam slowa” (“I Am Looking for a Word,”
1945). She finished her first collection of poetry
three years later, but the Communist Party’s strict
cultural policy deemed the work to be too com-
plex, and it was not published. As a result, Szym-
borska concentrated on making her work more
political, and her first collection, Dlagtego Zyjemy,
appeared in 1952.
Szymborska’s early works conformed to the
style of SOCIALIST REALISM. Later, she became disil-
lusioned with Communism and expressed her pes-
simism about humanity’s future in her poems. Her
1996 poem “Tortures,” with the line “Nothing has
changed”that opens each stanza, connects the cru-
elties of the 20th century with the entire human
experience over the ages: “Tortures are as they
were, it’s just the earth that’s grown smaller.”
In 1996, Szymborska won the Nobel Prize in lit-
erature “for poetry that with ironic precision al-
lows the historical and biological context to come
to light in fragments of human reality” (Nobel Lec-
tures). She is one of the few female poets ever to
have received this prize. Szymborska has published
16 collections of poetry. Her poems have been
translated into numerous languages and have also
been published in multiple anthologies of Polish
poetry.
A private person by nature, Szymborska
avoided public appearances but served as an in-
spiration for other female writers. In her accept-
ance speech for the Nobel Prize, she described her
role not only as an artist but as a member of a
larger humanity: “...inspiration is not the exclu-
sive privilege of poets or artists generally. There is,
has been, and will always be a certain group of
people whom inspiration visits. It’s made up of all
those who’ve consciously chosen their calling and
do their job with love and imagination....What-
ever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous ‘I
don’t know.’” (Nobel Lecture, 1996)
Other Works by Wislawa Szymborska
Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wislawa Szymborska.
Translated by Joanna Trzeciak. New York: Norton,
2001.
Poems New and Collected. Translated by Stanislaw
Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh. Orlando, Fla.:
Harcourt Brace, 1998.
420 Szymborska, Wislawa
421
T
Tagore, Rabindranath (Rabindranath
Thakur)
(1861–1941) poet, novelist,
dramatist, essayist
Rabindranath Tagore was born in Calcutta, India,
into an affluent family that was also very invested
in Indian politics. His great-grandfather Dwar-
kanath Tagore was a businessman; Tagore’s father,
Debendranath Tagore, however, was more involved
in religion than in politics and revived an old reli-
gious movement called the Brahmo Samaj. Ra-
bindranath Tagore combined his grandfather’s
visions for the country with his father’s religious
asceticism, and his works, therefore, represent a
unique synthesis of powerful national politics and
spiritual poeticism. Tagore is the author and com-
poser of India’s national anthem, as well as the lyri-
cal composer of a song by Bankim
CHATTOPADHYAY
called “Vande Materam” (Hail Motherland), which
was adopted as India’s unofficial national anthem
during its problems before independence from
British rule.
In his memoir My Reminiscences (1911), Tagore
calls his memory a “picture-chamber ...a series of
pictures [which] correspond, but are not identi-
cal.”A pioneer in integrating East–West poetic, po-
litical, and even scientific structures, Tagore is one
of the key figures in the intellectual movement
called the Bengal renaissance. The Bengal renais-
sance consisted of a group of writers who took ad-
vantage of colonial education and Western culture
while at the same time contributing to Indian lit-
erature for an Indian audience.
This attitude reflected Tagore’s own belief that
education is interdisciplinary, bringing together
science with humanism and politics with spiritual-
ity, and it was realized in the foundation of Shan-
tiniketan (Abode of Peace), a school on the
outskirts of Calcutta. This place, under the guid-
ance of Tagore, who also taught there, grew into a
meeting place for national and international schol-
ars of music, painting, singing, and languages.
Today, it thrives as one of West Bengal’s promi-
nent educational institutions.
In 1921, Tagore also founded Shriniketan
(Abode of Plenty), a school that sought to bring
Western scientific progress to India. At the same
time, the preservation of nature was very impor-
tant to Tagore, and this was enhanced by the foun-
dation of Shriniketan, whose objective was to
bring agricultural progress to the countryside.
Tagore’s works reflect his deep concern and respect
for nature, and the need to bridge the gap between
human and natural existence. In one of his letters
he says that “I feel ...I was one with the rest of the
earth, that grass grew green upon me, that the au-
tumn sun fell on me and its rays ...wafted from
every pore of my far-flung evergreen body.” This is
one of the most important themes in his poetry.
Tagore translated many of his own works into
English. With the aid of W. B. Yeats and Thomas
Sturge Moore, he brought out a translation of his
religious and spiritual poetry called Gitan¯jalI¯ (Of-
fering of Songs, 1910). They were a huge success,
and their publication caught the attention of
renowned figures such as Albert Einstein, Ezra
Pound, and André GIDE, with whom Tagore kept
up regular correspondences. Their admiration of
his work secured Tagore’s position as an interna-
tional poet. Gitan¯jalI¯ borrows from India’s ancient
and traditional religious poetry. Written from a
modern perspective, these poems take a new look
at the conventional understanding of the relation-
ships between nature, God, and spirituality. In
these poems, the search for human spirituality
goes beyond traditional religion.
Tagore’s most famous novel, The Home and
the World (1915–16), is about rural politics,
though its tone is extremely nonpolitical. As the
title suggests, the novel delves into how the do-
mestic and political realms of power overlap. In
this story, the woman protagonist defies social
norm by coming out of the inner rooms of the
house to join the men in their discussion of pol-
itics in the living room. She also allows herself to
act on the gallant advances made to her by her
husband’s friend. The change in friendship be-
tween the two men is complicated through the
female protagonist’s fluctuating romantic attach-
ment to both men. As the two male friends be-
come increasingly estranged due to politics, it is
the woman of the home who reveals the true
meaning of faithfulness, loyalty, and commit-
ment. Her honesty and open curiosity humanizes
the novel’s ruthless description of rural politics,
and her story stresses the importance of domes-
tic issues in the political struggles of the outside
world.
By the time of his death, Tagore was idolized as
one of India’s leading political figures, a national
poet, a painter, and an educational visionary. He
experimented with almost all literary genres and
left behind a prodigious assortment of novels,
short stories, songs, poetry, plays, essays, as well as
correspondence with friends, family, and interna-
tional contemporaries such as W. B.Yeats and Ezra
Pound. In 1913, Tagore was awarded the Nobel
Prize for literature for his translation of Gitan¯jalI¯.
In 1919, he refused England’s offer of knighthood
in protest against human-rights violations under
British rule.
Other Works by Rabindranath Tagore
Nationalism. London: Macmillan Publishers, 1917.
Selected Poems. Translated by William Radice. Lon-
don: Penguin, 1985.
The Broken Nest. Columbia: University of Missouri
Press, 1971.
The Hungry Stones and Other Stories. New York:
Macmillan, 1916.
A Work about Rabindranath Tagore
Kipalani, Krishan. Rabindranath Tagore: A Biography.
London: Oxford University Press, 1962.
Takamura Kotar¯o (1883–1956) poet
Takamura Kotar¯o was born in Tokyo to sculptor
Takamura K¯oun and his wife, Waka. His father,
hoping that his son would follow in his footsteps,
sent Takamura to Tokyo Fine Arts School in
1897. Even so, Takamura was already demon-
strating an interest in literature and had begun to
write and publish haiku and tanka. In 1906, he
left to study in the United States, England, and
France. When he returned to Japan, he fell in
with dissolute artists and writers. In 1914, he
married Naganuma Chieko. During the war, he
acted as the head of the Japanese Literature Pa-
triotic Association. Takamura took defeat hard
and retreated to a country cabin in Iwate Prefec-
ture for seven years, some believe to come to
terms with the guilt he expressed over having en-
couraged young soldiers to battle and thus their
deaths.
Takamura’s first poems were written in tradi-
tional poetic forms. He began to write free verse,
422 Takamura Kotar¯o
however, when he returned to Japan. His first
poem of note, “The Lost Mona Lisa,” published in
1911, was about the disappearance of a prostitute.
His first collection of poetry, The Road Ahead,
published in 1914, challenged conceptions of po-
etry by using subjects and diction that were not
traditionally considered appropriate. Chieko’s Sky,
his second collection, was published in 1941 and
consisted of love poems to his wife.
Takamura always considered himself first and
foremost a sculptor, but he is more highly regarded
as a poet who helped redefine the landscape of
modern poetry. His most significant poetry is in
free verse. In particular, his love poems to his wife
garner the greatest praise for their moving emo-
tional content and for their clear expression.
Other Works by Takamura Kotar¯o
A Brief History of Imbecility: Poetry and Prose of Taka-
mura Kotar¯o. Translated by Hiroaki Sato. Hon-
olulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1992.
Chieko and Other Poems of Takamura Kotar¯o. Trans-
lated by Hiroaki Sato. Honolulu: University Press
of Hawaii, 1980.
Works about Takamura Kotar¯o
Keene, Donald. Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature
in the Modern Era: Poetry, Drama, Criticism. New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984.
Rabson, Steve. Righteous Cause or Tragic Folly: Chang-
ing Views of War in Modern Japanese Poetry. Ann
Arbor, Mich.: Center for Japanese Studies, Univer-
sity of Michigan, 1998.
Tanikawa Shuntaro (1931– ) poet
Tanikawa Shuntaro was born in Tokyo, Japan, to
Tanikawa Tetsuzo, a philosopher, and Tanikawa
Taki (Osada), a pianist. Tanikawa began writing
poetry in his teens after a high-school friend asked
him to contribute to a poetry magazine. When his
father asked him what he intended to do instead
of entering college, Tanikawa handed him note-
books that he had filled with poems. Recognizing
talent, his father gave the poems to Miyoshi
Tatsuji, Japan’s leading poet at the time, who
helped get them published in the Bungakkai (Liter-
ary World) magazine when Tanikawa was still in
his teens. Tanikawa’s first book collection, Tw e nt y
Billion Light Years of Loneliness (1952), was pub-
lished when he was 21.
Tanikawa says his early work was influenced by
volumes of poetry from his father’s library, but
his work breaks with the major traditions of
Japanese verse. He does not write haiku, although
his strong, startling imagery is similar to the
form’s vivid word pictures. In a poem entitled
“Colours,” he ends with this surprising image:
“Despair is a simple colour / Pure white.” Many of
his poems allude to icons of American popular
culture, such as jazz musician Miles Davis and
actor James Dean. His central theme is the isola-
tion of the individual who stands alone facing an
incomprehensible universe. In “The Isolation of
Two Million Light Years,” he comments, “The
human race, on its little ball, / Sleeps, wakes, and
works, / Wishing at times for companionship
with Mars.”
Tanikawa is Japan’s most popular poet. He has
published more than 60 volumes of poetry; has
written scripts for television and film, children’s
books, song lyrics, and plays; and has translated
Charles Schultz’s comic strip “Peanuts” into Japan-
ese. He has won many Japanese literary awards as
well as an American Book Award for the English
translation of Floating the River in Melancholy
(1988). According to Geoffrey O’Brien of the Vil-
lage Voice, Tanikawa “receives praise and the kind
of lavish editions reserved in America for the long
deceased.”
Another Work by Tanikawa Shuntaro
Shuntaro Tanikawa: Selected Poems. Translated by
William I. Elliott and Kazuo Kawamura. New
York: Persea Books, 2001.
A Work about Tanikawa Shuntaro
Morton, Leith. “An Interview with Shuntaro
Tanikawa,” Southerly 58, no. 1 (Autumn 1998):
6–31.
Tanikawa Shuntaro 423
Tanizaki Jun’ichir¯o (1886–1965) novelist,
short-story writer, playwright, essayist
Tanizaki Jun’ichir ¯o was born in Tokyo to Tanizaki
Kuragor ¯o and Seki. While he was a boy, his father
lost the family fortune, so when Tanizaki, a gifted
student, gained entrance to the prestigious Metro-
politan Middle School and the First Higher School,
his family could not afford tuition. To continue
his education, Tanizaki worked as a houseboy for
a wealthy family until he had an affair with a maid
and was dismissed. In 1908, he entered the Japan-
ese literature department of Tokyo Imperial Uni-
versity but was expelled for failing to pay his fees.
In 1915, he married Ishikawa Chiyo, whom he di-
vorced 15 years later. He quickly married reporter
Furukawa Tomiko. However, this marriage lasted
less than a year because he had begun to court an-
other woman, Nezu Matsuko, whom he eventually
married.
While attending university, Tanizaki published
his first short story, “The Tatooer” (1910), which
won the acclaim of critics. It was not until 1924
that Tanizaki produced his first novel, Naomi,
which depicts a man who makes an ill-fated at-
tempt to turn his lover into a Western woman. Five
years later, Tanizaki’s focus shifted to traditional
Japan in his novel Some Prefer Nettles (1929). In
1933 he crafted a chilling masterpiece, “The Story
of Shunkin,” a short story about a servant who
blinds himself to preserve in his mind the image
of his mistress, who has become disfigured in an
attack.
During the war years, Tanizaki worked on his
most lyrical novel, The Makioka Sisters (1948). In
the last year of his life, he published Diary of a Mad
Old Man, the story of a scheming, aging man who
suffers a stroke during a liaison with a woman.
Tanizaki insisted that fiction should be artifice.
His stories, while reflecting the issues and trends of
the time, were entirely created worlds rather than
fictionalized accounts of personal experiences or
historical events. His stories typically revolve
around male protagonists and their relationships
with women. In 1949, Tanizaki received the Impe-
rial Order of Culture.
Other Works by Tanizaki Jun’ichir¯o
The Key. Translated by Howard Hibbett. New York:
Knopf, 1961.
Seven Japanese Tales. Translated by Howard G. Hib-
bett. New York: Knopf, 1963.
Works about Tanizaki Jun’ichir¯o
Gessel, Van C. Three Modern Novelists: S¯oseki,
Tanizaki, Kawabata. Tokyo: Kodansha Interna-
tional, 1993.
Ito, Ken K. Vision of Desire: Tanizaki’s Fictional
Worlds. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,
1991.
Tao-Lao, Alfonsina
See STORNI, ALFONSINA.
Thakur, Rabindranath
See TAGORE, RABINDRANATH.
Thammachoat, Atsiri
See DHAMMACHOTI, USSIRI.
Theatre of the Absurd
Taking its name from the idea of the absurd as
something not grounded in logic or reason, the
Theatre of the Absurd is related to aspects of EXIS-
TENTIALISM. The movement itself actually refers to
a style of drama that began in Paris and flourished
in the late 1940s and 1950s.
The roots of Theatre of the Absurd can be
traced back as far as the morality plays of the
Middle Ages, the Spanish religious allegories, the
nonsensical writings of Lewis Caroll, and the
macabre and grotesque drama of Alfred JARRY.It
was anticipated by DADAISM and the surrealist
movement of the 1920s and 1930s and gathers
much of its theoretical accountability from An-
tonin ARTAUD’s text The Theatre and its Double
(1938; translated 1958). The term itself comes
from the use of the word absurd by existentialist
424 Tanizaki Jun’ichir¯o
philosophers such as Albert CAMUS and Jean-Paul
SARTRE in reference to the lack of a rational expla-
nation for the human condition.
Although Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi (1888) antici-
pates much of the foundation on which absurdist
drama rests, the three playwrights most closely as-
sociated with the movement’s popularity are Jean
GENET, Eugène IONESCO, and Samuel BECKETT.Their
works take on a nightmarish quality as they exam-
ine contemporary alienation and human anxiety
over the absence of social coherence or transcen-
dental meaning. Many playwrights, such as Beck-
ett, wrote in French though it was not their native
language, and communicated a sense of linguistic
estrangement.
According to some sources, Beckett was
the most influential writer of the period. His
Happy Days expresses humanity’s fear of death
through the character of a woman who, in the
first act, is buried up to her waist in a mound of
dirt. By the second act, the mound has grown so
that only her head remains visible, a metaphoric
vision of the ultimate journey from life to death
and burial.
Other playwrights of this school wrote of sim-
ilar anxieties. Ionesco emphasizes the fear of
mediocrity and the inability to communicate in
The Bald Soprano (1950). Genet’s works, on the
other hand, fuse illusion with reality in an often
violently erotic manner to exemplify the absurd
roles that people play in daily existence.
The influence of Theatre of the Absurd, created
by a group of international writers living in Paris,
extends beyond France to the works of Czechoslo-
vakian playwright Václav
HAVEL, British writers
Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard, and U.S. drama-
tists Edward Albee and Sam Shepard.
A Work about Theater of the Absurd
Esslin, Matin. Theatre of the Absurd. New York: Over-
look Press, 1969.
Theodorescu, Ion N.
See ARGHEZI, TUDOR.
Tian Jian (Tien Chien; Tong Tianjian)
(1916–1985) poet
Tong Tianjian was born on May 14 in Anhui
province’s rural Wuwei County, in China. He
moved to Shanghai in 1933 and studied foreign
languages at Guanghua University, where he edited
the journals New Poetry and Literary Mosaic. He
published poems written during his college years
in Before Dawn in 1935.
Tian Jian’s poetry was known as declamatory
poetry because of its political nature and revolu-
tionary ideas. Much of his work was influenced
by the Japanese occupation of Nanking and the
Sino-Japanese War and had a very nationalistic
slant.
Before the Sino-Japanese War, Tian Jian focused
on the lives of Chinese peasants, for whom he
wrote two volumes of poetry, Pastoral Songs (1936)
and Stories of the Chinese Countryside (1936). The
latter is a long poem comprised of three parts:
“Hunger,”“On the Yangtze River,” and “Go Ahead.”
Tian Jian used the river as a metaphor for China
and depicted the hardships of peasant life and re-
sistance against the old regime.
In the spring of 1937, Tian Jian traveled to
Japan and returned to China after the Sino-Japan-
ese War began later that year. He served as a war
correspondent with the Service Corps on the
Northwestern Battlefield. He wrote poems influen-
tial for their military fervor and rhythms during
the war in two volumes, Odes to Soldiers on Patrol
in a Sandstorm (1938) and Poems Dedicated to
Fighters (1943).
Tian Jian joined the Chinese Communist Party
in 1943. He held high-level information posts and
participated in land reform. He also continued his
literary pursuits. He began a drive for “street
verse,” edited a new party literary magazine called
New Masses, and joined the Chinese Writers Asso-
ciation after its 1949 formation. He then taught at
the Central Institute of Literature in Beijing.
During the Korean War, Tian Jian served again
as a war correspondent and visited Eastern Europe
and Africa in 1954. He produced many volumes of
poetry and essays, including A Hero’s Battle Song
Tian Jian 425
(1959), Travels in Africa (1964), and A Sketch on
a Trip to Europe (1956), before the onset of the
Cultural Revolution, when he was suppressed.
After the revolution ended, Tian Jian began to
write poetry again in 1976. His work celebrated
the new life of “liberated” peasants, such as China
in her Prime (1986). Tian Jian died August 30 in
Beijing.
Toer, Pramoedya Ananta (1925– )
novelist
Pramoedya Ananta Toer was born in Blora, a small
town on the north coast of Java, Indonesia. His fa-
ther was a former teacher and an activist of the
Blora branch of the PNI (Indonesian National
Party). His mother was the daughter of a mosque
official and a former student of his father. Toer was
the eldest of nine children. He graduated from the
Radiovakschool in Surabaya in 1941. To avoid con-
scription into the Dutch army, Toer fled back to
Blora. During the first four months of the Japanese
occupation, he looked after his ill mother and his
younger siblings. When his mother died, the fam-
ily moved to Jakarta.
Toer wandered over much of Java after he had
been passed over for promotion. He returned to
Jakarta after he learned about the declaration of
independence by Sukarno, Indonesia’s former
president, in August. Following the reorganization
of the Indonesian army in late 1946, he became the
editor of the journal Sadar, the Indonesian edition
of The Voice of Free Indonesia.
Toer was imprisoned for two years for possess-
ing anti-Dutch political documents and was one of
the last men to be released in 1949. He was imme-
diately given a position by the government literary
bureau, Balai Pustaka, an appointment he tem-
porarily postponed because of his father’s death.
Between 1950 and 1951, Toer was an editor for the
modern-literature department of Balai Pustaka
and for the magazines, Indonesia and Kunang-Ku-
nang (Firefly). He became a member of the Lekra
(Institute for People’s Culture), an affiliated organ-
ization of the Indonesian Communist Party, and
lectured in the Res Publica University in Jakarta.
He also edited “Lentera,” the literary column in the
daily paper Bintang Timur.
His sympathy for the despised Chinese in In-
donesia landed him in trouble with Sukarno’s
“Guided Democracy” government. He was ar-
rested in 1969 and sent to Buru Island, where he
spent 10 years in exile. He was released in 1979 but
was placed under house arrest by the new-order
government a few years later. Toer’s works had
been banned in Indonesia since 1965, but they
were extremely popular outside Indonesia, were
printed in at least 28 languages, and won him in-
ternational fame as a defender of truth and human
rights. Finally in 1997, with the toppling of the
Suharto regime, Toer was released from house ar-
rest, and the ban on his works was lifted. Toer now
travels around the world and gives talks at various
universities.
Critical Analysis
Toer’s works are extremely valuable to the study of
Indonesian history. In The Girl from the Coast,
Toer tells the story of his grandmother, derived
from his interactions with her, others’ perceptions
of her, and his own imagination. Interwoven into
the tale is a complex exploration of class conflict
and gender relations at the village level. As in many
of Toer’s works, he intersperses his story with ref-
erences to historical events, such as Kartini’s death,
enabling the reader to place episodes within a tem-
poral context. Kartini was a princess of the Ja-
vanese royal family who was extremely influential
in providing education for all. This story, which
was first published in Indonesian in 1987, is the
first in an untitled semiautobiography. Unfortu-
nately, the second and third parts have been lost.
Toer’s voice clearly emerges in his works. He
writes with an intensity that emanates emotions
ranging from anguish and melancholy to soft com-
passion and harsh indignation. His writings appeal
through their sheer reflection of lived experiences
that are both real and sadly universal. Toer is able
to draw his readers into his world by enabling
them to live vicariously through his own experi-
426 Toer, Pramoedya Ananta
ence and tragedy. In The Fugitive (1962), a novel
of betrayal and bravery during the Japanese occu-
pation of Indonesia during World War II, the
plight of Raden Hardo, the hero of the tale, bears
similarity to Toer’s own experience during the war.
His attachment to Javanese attitudes and cultural
beliefs is also revealed. The characters in the story,
such as Hardo and Dipo, clearly resemble heroic
characters that can be found in the Javanese tradi-
tional art form, the wayang, a shadow-puppet the-
atrical medium of performance.
Toer’s storytelling skill is best exemplified in his
1999 work, Tales from Djakarta: Caricatures of Cir-
cumstances and Their Human Beings. In this collec-
tion of short essays, he is able to paint with great
accuracy and biting wit the scenes of daily life in
1950s Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. Through
his writing, the bustling city with its ironic con-
trast of the luxurious quarters of the rich and the
simmering squatters of the poor comes to life. He
narrates with sarcastic wit the plight of the com-
mon people, some of whom rise above their sta-
tion and others who miserably fail. Toer’s stories
do not always end in tragedy; for instance, in
“Maman and His World” (1999), Maman, a poor
kampung boy is able to build and own his own fac-
tory through hard work and perseverance.
Maman’s kindness and generosity also enable him
to enlarge his wealth. Toer’s heroes are taken from
a variety of backgrounds, but his most poignant
ones are those who remain untouched by avarice
and other vices.
Toer was first propelled to fame when he com-
pleted the novel Kranji-Bekasi Jatuh in 1947. Dur-
ing his imprisonment in the Bukit Duri jail from
1948 to 1949, he wrote the short-story collections
Percikan Revolusi and Perburuan. The latter won
him first prize from Balai Pustaka. His greatest
works are Bumi Manusia, Anak Semua Bangsa, and
Jejak Langkah.
Toer’s popularity in the literary world bespeaks
his power to write convincingly and realistically
about the plight of the common person not only in
Indonesia but all over the world. His characters are
universal, and his use of historical contexts and pe-
riods enables readers to better understand Indone-
sia’s past.
Other Works by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Child of All Nations (Buru Quartet, Volume 2). Trans-
lated by Max Lane. New York: Penguin USA,
1996.
Footsteps (Buru Quartet, Volume 3). Translated by
Max Lane. New York: Penguin USA, 1996.
House of Glass (Buru Quartet, Volume 4). Translated
by Max Lane. New York: Penguin USA, 1997.
The Mute’s Soliloquy: A Memoir. Translated by Willem
Samuels. New York: Hyperion, 1999.
This Earth of Mankind (Buru Quartet, Volume 1).
Translated by Max Lane. New York: Penguin USA,
1996.
Works about Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Hering,Bob,ed.Pramoedya Ananta Toer 70 Tahun:
Essays to Honour Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s 70th
Year. Indonesia: Yayasan Kabar Seberang, 1995.
Koh, Young Hoon. Pemikiran Pramoedya Ananta Toer
dalam Novel-novel Mutakhirnya. Kuala Lumpur:
Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1996.
Tolstoy, Leo (Count Lev Nikolayevich
Tolstoy)
(1828–1910) novelist, short story
writer, dramatist
Leo Tolstoy was born in the town of Yasnaya
Polyana, Russia, in a landowning family. His
mother, Princess Volkonskaya, died when he was
two years old, and his father when he was nine. He
and his siblings were raised by relatives and edu-
cated by private tutors. At 16, Tolstoy entered the
University of Kazan, but after dabbling in oriental
languages and law, he returned to the family estate
in 1847. A restless and high-spirited youth, he soon
tired of the country and spent the next several
years in St. Petersburg and Moscow, living a prof-
ligate life and keeping a diary in which he recorded
even the most outrageous of his adventures. In
1852, seeking adventure, he joined his brother in
the army. He was cited for bravery in the defense of
Sebastopol. He left the army in 1856 and returned
Tolstoy, Leo 427