2010年5月8日 星期六

James Barrie,

Spotlight:

'RMS Lusitania'
'RMS Lusitania'
Which ship had more fatalities, the 'Titanic' or the 'Lusitania'? The Titanic suffered 1,513 fatalities when it sank in 1912. Nearly 1,200 lives were lost when the RMS Lusitania went down ninety years ago today. The British ocean liner was sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland. When the Lusitania first sailed in 1907, she was the largest ocean liner on the sea. Before the ship set sail in May 1915, warnings were issued by the German Embassy in Washington, reminding passengers of the state of war between Germany and Great Britain and advising them not to sail with the Lusitania. The torpedoed ship went down in just 20 minutes.

Quote:

"To die will be an awfully big adventure."James Barrie, said to be quoted by Barrie's friend Charles Frohman as Frohman plunged to his death on the Lusitania


rl 留言(re: 李叔湘先生的『未晚齋』(文集)--為了這篇作業不想作晚飯的rl ):「
吕叔湘:《未晚斋杂览》为32开本,全书不到百页,收录七篇文章:

霭理士论塔布及其它
赫胥黎和救世军
葛德文其人
李尔和他的谐趣诗
《第二梦》
《书太多了》
买书‧卖书‧搬书

其中的李尔和他的谐趣诗就是日前我每日一诗的诗人Edward Lear;校长所提的J.M. Barrie作品指的是Dear Brutus,则是在《第二梦》这篇文章里,我个人因为并未阅读过这部作品,所以对此无动于衷。文中大致介绍这是三幕剧剧本,剧名取自第三幕,剧中人引用莎翁的两行诗:
Casius The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
(以上英文无误地抄自该书,显然版面需要加以订正)
书中提到朱生豪的译文,并对朱译underlings作「受制于人」有意见。
文章取名《第二梦》是作者曾在协和医学院看过燕大毕业演出的一个话剧,剧名就叫《第二梦》,作者觉得情节与Dear Brutus十分相似,认为是译本或改编本。文章其余部分开始介绍第二梦的故事和一些对白。
文末始介绍J.M. Barrie一生写了38个剧本,其中以《可敬的克莱登》和《彼得潘》最有名。」
*****
由於讓RL晚餐誤點,準備介紹 Sir J.M. Barrie。發現電影之原作:
參考:
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/?041122crat_atlarge

LOST BOYS
by ANTHONY LANE
Why J. M. Barrie created Peter Pan.
----
J.M. Barrie 的介紹和電子檔,英國和日文都很豐富。

我們可以從更寬的視野看Sir J.M. Barrie在英國/蘇格蘭/世界文化的主要業績,參考下書所特別介紹的這些作家(這本書hc還沒讀過):
Jackie Wullschlager, Inventing Wonderland: The Lives and Fantasies of Lewis Carroll,
Edward Lear, JM Barrie, Kenneth Grahame, and A A Milne, 1996. 日本翻譯:『不思議の国をつくる:キャロル、リア、バリー、グレアム、ミルンの作品と生涯』
「…..文末始介绍J.M. Barrie一生写了38个剧本,其中以《可敬的克莱登》和《彼得潘》最有名。」


這兩本/齣劇本的書名都成為英國(文)的常用名詞。
《可敬的克莱登》就是The Admirable Crichton, J. M. Barrie在 1902的作品。(日本翻譯: 「天晴れクライトン」 (1902年初演)【天晴れ(あっぱれ) 意思: Bravo!/ Well done!・~な splendid; admirable; glorious.】 http://www.answers.com/topic/the-admirable-crichton-1?hl=crichton)
要了解The Admirable Crichton作為類型人物,先要了解劇情/歷史。
The Admirable Crichton指「無所不能、面面俱到/俱佳的人」。

Peter Pan 為長不大的小孩。這成為商標。1960年代,美國流行一種通俗心理學TA,說法是人人的人格中都還有一CHILD要照顧……


Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM (9 May 1860 – 19 June 1937) was a Scottish author and dramatist. He is best remembered for creating Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up, whom he based on his friends, the Llewelyn Davies boys. He is also credited with popularising the name Wendy, which was very uncommon before he gave it to the heroine of Peter Pan.[1]

Contents [hide]

Childhood and adolescence

Barrie was born in Kirriemuir, Angus, to a conservative Calvinist family. His father David Barrie was a modestly successful weaver. His mother Margaret Ogilvy Barrie had assumed her deceased mother's household responsibilities at the age of 8. Barrie was the ninth child of ten (two of whom died before he was born), all of whom were schooled in at least the three Rs, in preparation for possible professional careers. He was a small child (he only grew to 5 ft 3½ in. according to his 1934 passport), and drew attention to himself with storytelling.

When he was 6 years old, Barrie's next-older brother David (his mother's favourite) died two days before his 14th birthday in an ice-skating accident. This left his mother devastated, and Barrie tried to fill David's place in his mother's attentions, even wearing David's clothes and whistling in the manner that he did. One time Barrie entered her room, and heard her say 'Is that you?' 'I thought it was the dead boy she was speaking to,' wrote Barrie in his biographical account of his mother, Margaret Ogilvy (1896), 'and I said in a little lonely voice, "No, it's no' him, it's just me."' Barrie's mother found comfort in the fact that her dead son would remain a boy forever, never to grow up and leave her.[2] Despite evidence to the contrary, it has been speculated that this trauma induced psychogenic dwarfism, and was responsible for his short stature and apparently asexual adulthood.[3] Eventually Barrie and his mother entertained each other with stories of her brief childhood and books such as Robinson Crusoe and The Pilgrim's Progress.[4]

At the age of 8, Barrie was sent to The Glasgow Academy, in the care of his eldest siblings Alexander and Mary Ann, who taught at the school. When he was 10 he returned home and continued his education at the Forfar Academy. At 13, he left home for Dumfries Academy, again under the watch of Alexander and Mary Ann. He became a voracious reader, and was fond of penny dreadfuls, and the works of Robert Michael Ballantyne and James Fenimore Cooper. At Dumfries he and his friends spent time in the garden of Moat Brae house, playing pirates 'in a sort of Odyssey that was long afterwards to become the play of Peter Pan'.[5][6] They formed a drama club, producing his first play Bandelero the Bandit, which provoked a minor controversy following a scathing moral denunciation from a clergyman on the school's governing board.[4]

Literary career

Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens, London

Barrie wished to pursue a career as an author, but was persuaded by his family — who wished him to have a profession such as the ministry — to enroll at the University of Edinburgh, where he wrote drama reviews for a local newspaper. He worked for a year and a half as a staff journalist in Nottingham following a job advertisement found by his sister in a newspaper, then returned to Kirriemuir, using his mother's stories about the town (which he called 'Thrums') for a piece submitted to a paper in London. The editor 'liked that Scotch thing',[4] so Barrie wrote a series of them, which served as the basis for his first novels: Auld Licht Idylls (1888), A Window in Thrums (1890),[7] and The Little Minister (1891). Literary criticism of these early works has been unfavourable, tending to disparage them as sentimental and nostalgic depictions of a parochial Scotland far from the realities of the industrialised nineteenth century, but they were popular enough to establish Barrie as a very successful writer. His two 'Tommy' novels, Sentimental Tommy (1896) and Tommy and Grizel (1900), were about a boy and young man who clings to childish fantasy, with an unhappy ending.

Meanwhile, Barrie's attention turned increasingly to works for the theatre, beginning with a biography about Richard Savage (performed only once, and critically panned). He immediately followed this with Ibsen's Ghost (1891), a parody of Henrik Ibsen's dramas Hedda Gabler and Ghosts (unlicensed in the UK until 1914,[8] it had created a sensation at the time from a single 'club' performance). The production of Barrie's play at Toole's Theatre in London was seen by William Archer, the translator of Ibsen's works into English, who enjoyed the humour of the play and recommended it to others. Barrie also authored Jane Annie, a failed comic opera for Richard D'Oyly Carte (1893), which he begged his friend Arthur Conan Doyle to revise and finish for him. In 1901 and 1902 he had back-to-back successes: Quality Street, about a responsible 'old maid' who poses as her own flirtatious niece to win the attention of a former suitor returned from the war; and The Admirable Crichton, a critically-acclaimed social commentary with elaborate staging, about an aristocratic household shipwrecked on a desert island, in which the butler naturally rises to leadership over his lord and ladies for the duration of their time away from civilization.

The first appearance of Peter Pan came in The Little White Bird, which was serialised in the United States, then published in a single volume in the UK in 1901. Barrie's most famous and enduring work, Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, had its first stage performance on 27 December 1904. This play introduced audiences to the name Wendy, which was inspired by a young girl, Margaret Henley, who called Barrie 'Friendy', but could not pronounce her Rs very well and so it came out as 'Fwendy'. It has been performed innumerable times since then, was developed by Barrie into the 1911 novel Peter and Wendy, and has been adapted by others into feature films, musicals, and more. The Bloomsbury scenes show the societal constraints of late Victorian middle-class domestic reality, contrasted with Neverland, a world where morality is ambivalent. George Bernard Shaw's description of the play as 'ostensibly a holiday entertainment for children but really a play for grown-up people', suggests deeper social allegories at work in Peter Pan. In 1929 Barrie specified that the copyright of the Peter Pan works should go to the nation's leading children's hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. The current status of the copyright is somewhat complex.

Barrie had a long string of successes on the stage after Peter Pan, many of which discuss social concerns. The Twelve Pound Look shows a wife divorcing a peer and gaining an independent income. Other plays, such as Mary Rose and a subplot in Dear Brutus revisit the image of the ageless child. Later plays included What Every Woman Knows (1908). His final play was The Boy David (1936), which dramatised the Biblical story of King Saul and the young David. Like the role of Peter Pan, that of David was played by a woman, Elisabeth Bergner, for whom Barrie wrote the play.

Barrie used his considerable income to help finance the production of commercially unsuccessful stage productions. Along with a number of other playwrights, he was involved in the 1909 and 1911 attempts to challenge the censorship of the theatre by the Lord Chamberlain.

Acquaintances

Barrie travelled in high literary circles, and in addition to his professional collaborators, he had many famous friends. Novelist George Meredith was an early social patron. He had a long correspondence with fellow Scot Robert Louis Stevenson, who lived in Samoa at the time, but the two never met in person. George Bernard Shaw was for several years his neighbour, and once participated in a Western that Barrie scripted and filmed. H. G. Wells was a friend of many years, and tried to intervene when Barrie's marriage fell apart. Barrie met Thomas Hardy through Hugh Clifford while he was staying in London.

After the First World War Barrie sometimes stayed at Stanway House. He paid for the pavilion at Stanway cricket ground. Barrie founded an amateur cricket team for his friends. Conan Doyle, Wells, and other luminaries such as Jerome K. Jerome, G. K. Chesterton, A. A. Milne, Walter Raleigh, A. E. W. Mason, E. V. Lucas, Maurice Hewlett, E. W. Hornung, P. G. Wodehouse, Owen Seaman, Bernard Partridge, Augustine Birrell, Paul du Chaillu, and the son of Alfred Tennyson played in the team at various times. The team was called the Allahakbarries, under the mistaken belief that 'Allah akbar' meant 'Heaven help us' in Arabic (rather than 'God is great').[4]

Barrie befriended Africa explorer Joseph Thomson and Antarctica explorer Robert Falcon Scott. He was godfather to Scott's son Peter,[4] and was one of the seven people to whom Scott wrote letters in the final hours of his life following his successful – but doomed – expedition to the South Pole.

Barrie's close friend Charles Frohman, who was responsible for producing the debut of Peter Pan in both England and the U.S. and other productions of Barrie's plays, famously declined a lifeboat seat when the RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat in the North Atlantic, reportedly paraphrasing Peter Pan's famous line from the stage play, 'To die will be an awfully big adventure': "Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life." [2]

He met and told stories to the young daughters of the Duke of York, who would become Queen Elizabeth II, and Princess Margaret.

Marriage

Barrie became acquainted with actress Mary Ansell in 1891 when he asked his friend Jerome K. Jerome for a pretty actress to play a role in his play Walker, London. The two became friends, and she joined his family in caring for him when he fell very ill in 1893 and 1894.[4] They married in Kirriemuir on 9 July 1894,[9] shortly after Barrie recovered, and Mary retired from the stage; but the relationship was reportedly unconsummated [10] and the couple had no children. The marriage was a small ceremony in his parents' home in the Scottish tradition. In 1900 Mary found Black Lake Cottage, at Farnham, Surrey which became the couple's 'bolt hole' where Barrie could entertain his cricketing friends and the Llewelyn Davieses.[11] Beginning in mid 1908, Mary had an affair with Gilbert Cannan (an associate of Barrie's in his anti-censorship activities), including a visit together to Black Lake Cottage, known only to the house staff. When Barrie learned of the affair in July 1909, he demanded that she end it, but she refused. To avoid the scandal of divorce, he offered a legal separation if she would agree not to see Cannan any more, but she still refused. Barrie sued for divorce on the grounds of infidelity, which was granted in October 1909.[2][12]

Llewelyn Davies family

The Arthur Llewelyn Davies family played an important part in Barrie's literary and personal life. It consisted of the parents Arthur (1863–1907) and Sylvia (1866–1910) (daughter of George du Maurier),[13] ; and their five sons: George (1893–1915), John (Jack) (1894-1959), Peter (1897–1960), Michael (1900–1921), and Nicholas (Nico) (1903–1980).

Barrie became acquainted with the family in 1897, meeting George and Jack (and baby Peter) with their nurse (nanny) Mary Hodgson in London's Kensington Gardens. He lived nearby and often walked his Saint Bernard dog Porthos in the park, and entertained the boys regularly with his ability to wiggle his ears and eyebrows, and with his stories. He did not meet Sylvia until a chance encounter at a dinner party in December. He became a regular visitor at the Davies household and a common companion to the woman and her boys, despite the fact that he and she were each married.[2] In 1901, he invited the Davies family to Black Lake Cottage, where he produced an album of captioned photographs of the boys acting out a pirate adventure, entitled The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island. Barrie had two copies made, one of which he gave to Arthur, who misplaced it on a train.[14] The only surviving copy is held at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.[15]

Arthur Llewelyn Davies died in 1907, and 'Uncle Jim' became even more involved with the Davieses, providing financial support to them. (His income from Peter Pan and other works was easily adequate to provide for their living expenses and education.) Following Sylvia's death in 1910, Barrie claimed that they had been engaged to be married.[2] Her will indicated nothing to that effect, but specified her wish for 'J.M.B.' to be trustee and guardian to the boys, along with her mother Emma, her brother Guy Du Maurier, and Arthur's brother Compton. It expressed her confidence in Barrie as the boys' caretaker and her wish for 'the boys to treat him (& their uncles) with absolute confidence & straightforwardness & to talk to him about everything.' When copying the will informally for Sylvia's family a few months later, Barrie inserted himself elsewhere: Sylvia had written that she would like Mary Hodgson, the boys' nurse, to continue taking care of them, and for 'Jenny' (referring to Hodgson's sister) to come and help her; Barrie instead wrote 'Jimmy' (Sylvia's nickname for him). Barrie and Hodgson did not get along well, but they served as surrogate parents until the boys went to university and Jack was married.[2]

Barrie also had friendships with other children, both before he met the Davies boys and after they had grown up, and there has since been speculation that Barrie was a paedophile or that he engaged in child sexual abuse.[16][17] However, there is no direct evidence of any such conduct, nor that he was suspected of it at the time. Nico, the youngest of the brothers, flatly denied that Barrie ever behaved inappropriately.[2] 'I don't believe that Uncle Jim ever experienced what one might call "a stirring in the undergrowth" for anyone — man, woman, or child,' he stated. 'He was an innocent — which is why he could write Peter Pan.' [18] His relationships with the surviving Davies boys continued well beyond their childhood and adolescence.

The statue of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, erected in secret overnight for May Morning in 1912, was supposed to be modelled upon old photographs of Michael dressed as the character. However, the sculptor Sir George Frampton decided to use a different child as a model, leaving Barrie disappointed with the result. 'It doesn't show the devil in Peter,' he said.[2]

Barrie suffered bereavements with the boys, losing the two to whom he was closest in their early twenties. George was killed in action (1915) in World War I. Michael, with whom Barrie corresponded daily while at boarding school and university, drowned (1921) with his friend and possible lover[19] Rupert Buxton, at a known danger spot at Sandford Lock near Oxford, one month short of his 21st birthday. Some years after Barrie's death, Peter compiled his Morgue from family letters and papers, interpolated with his own informed comments in his family and their relationship with Barrie.

Death

Barrie died of pneumonia on 19 June, 1937 and is buried at Kirriemuir next to his parents and two of his siblings. He left the bulk of his estate (excluding the Peter Pan works, which he had previously given to Great Ormond Street Hospital) to his secretary Cynthia Asquith. His birthplace at 4 Brechin Road is maintained as a museum by the National Trust for Scotland.

Biographies

  • Barrie: the Story of a Genius by Sir J. A. Hammerton, 1929.
  • J. M. Barrie by W. A. Darlington, 1938.
  • The Story of J.M.B. by Denis Mackail, commissioned by Cynthia Asquith and Peter Llewelyn Davies as Barrie's authorised biography, and published in 1941.
  • The Story of J.M.B. by Sewell Stokes, Theatre Arts, Vol.XXV No.11, New York: Theatre Arts Inc, Nov 1941, pp 845–848.
  • J. M. Barrie: the Man Behind the Image by Janet Dunbar, 1970.
  • J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys by Andrew Birkin, 1979 (revised and republished by Yale University Press, 2003).
  • Hide-and-Seek with Angels: A Life of J. M. Barrie by Lisa Chaney, 2005.
  • Captivated: J. M. Barrie, Daphne du Maurier & the Dark Side of Neverland by Piers Dudgeon, 2008. Published in the US under the title: Neverland: J.M. Barrie, the du Mauriers, and the Dark Side of Peter Pan.

In 1978 the BBC made a miniseries written by Andrew Birkin, The Lost Boys, starring Ian Holm as Barrie and Ann Bell as Sylvia. It dramatized the known chronology of events from his meeting of George and Jack in 1897, through Michael's death in 1921. Birkin's book expands on the film.

Finding Neverland, a semi-fictional movie about his relationship with the family, was released in November 2004, starring Johnny Depp as Barrie and Kate Winslet as Sylvia Llewelyn Davies. It takes liberties with the facts, alters the sequence of some events (e.g. Sylvia is already a widow when she meets Barrie), and omits Nico altogether.

Honours

Barrie was made a baronet in 1913; his baronetcy was not inherited. He was made a member of the Order of Merit in 1922. In 1919 he was elected Rector of the University of St Andrews for the next three years, and served as Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh from 1930 to 1937.

He has a school named after him in Wandsworth, South West London. The Barrie School in Silver Spring, Maryland, is also named in his honour.[20]

Works

  • Auld Licht Idylls (1888)
  • Better Dead (1888)
  • A Window in Thrums (1889)
  • My Lady Nicotine (1890), republished in 1926 with subtitle A Study in Smoke
  • The Little Minister (1891)
  • Sentimental Tommy, The Story of His Boyhood (1896)
  • Margaret Ogilvy (1896)
  • Tommy and Grizel (1900)
  • Quality Street (1901)
  • The Admirable Crichton (1902)
  • The Little White Bird; or, Adventures in Kensington Gardens (1902)
  • Peter Pan (1904)
  • Pantaloon (1905)
  • Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906)
  • What Every Woman Knows (1906)
  • When Wendy Grew Up - An Afterthought (1908)
  • Peter and Wendy (novel) (1911)
  • Dear Brutus (1917)
  • Echoes of the War (1918)
  • The Old Lady Shows Her Medals (1918), basis for the movie Seven Days Leave (1930), starring Gary Cooper
  • A New World (1918)
  • Barbara's Wedding (1918)
  • A Well-Remembered Voice (1918)
  • Alice Sit-By-The-Fire (1919)
  • Mary Rose (1920)
  • Farewell Miss Julie Logan (1932)
  • The Boy David (1936)
  • story treatment for film As You Like It (1936)
  • Stories by English Authors: London (selected by Scribners, as contributor)
  • Stories by English Authors: Scotland (selected by Scribners, as contributor)
  • The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan by Daisy Ashford (preface)

References

  1. ^ "History of the name Wendy". Wendy.com. http://www.wendy.com/wendyweb/history.html. Retrieved 2009-07-22.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Birkin, Andrew: J. M. Barrie & the Lost Boys (Constable, 1979; revised edition, Yale University Press, 2003)
  3. ^ Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers by Robert M. Sapolsky (1994) ISBN 9780805073690
  4. ^ a b c d e f Chaney, Lisa. Hide-and-Seek with Angels — A Life of J. M. Barrie, London: Arrow Books, 2005
  5. ^ McConnachie and J.M.B.: Speeches of J. M. Barrie, Peter Davies, 1938
  6. ^ "Peter Pan project off the ground". BBC News Scotland. 2009-08-06. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/south_of_scotland/8188245.stm. Retrieved 2009-08-08.
  7. ^ J. M. Barrie. "A Window in Thrums". Project Gutenberg. http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=20914.
  8. ^ Dominic Shellard, et al. The Lord Chamberlain Regrets, 2004, British Library, p77-79.
  9. ^ "General Register Office for Scotland". Gro-scotland.gov.uk. http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/famrec/from-our-records/hallfame/art-and-literature.html. Retrieved 2009-07-22.
  10. ^ Birkin, Andrew: J. M. Barrie & the Lost Boys (Constable, 1979; revised edition, Yale University Press, 2003)
  11. ^ "Surrey Monocle". Surrey Monocle. 2007-01-10. http://www.surreymonocle.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=33. Retrieved 2009-07-22.
  12. ^ "J. M. Barrie Seeks Divorce from Wife". New York Times. October 7, 1909. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A0DE1D8123EE733A25754C0A9669D946897D6CF. Retrieved 2010-04-17. "The name of James M. Barrie, the playwright, figures as a petitioner in the list of divorce cases set down for trial at the next session of the law courts here."
  13. ^ married the 3Q of 1892 in Hampstead, London: GROMI: vol. 1a, p. 1331
  14. ^ Andrew Birkin on J. M. Barrie
  15. ^ J.M. Barrie's Boy Castaways at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University
  16. ^ Justine Picardie Published: 12:01AM BST 13 Jul 2008 (2008-07-13). "How bad was J.M. Barrie?". London: Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/donotmigrate/3556421/How-bad-was-J.M.-Barrie.html. Retrieved 2009-07-22.
  17. ^ Parker, James (2004-02-22). "The real Peter Pan - The Boston Globe". Boston.com. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/02/22/the_real_peter_pan/. Retrieved 2009-07-22.
  18. ^ "J.M Barrie and Peter Pan — Winter 2005 Issue — Endicott Studio: Peter Pan 2". Endicott-studio.com. http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/rrPeterPan2.html. Retrieved 2009-07-22.
  19. ^ [http://www.jmbarrie.co.uk/audio/?mode=3
  20. ^ Carnival PR and Design. "The Barrie School". Barrie.org. http://www.barrie.org/. Retrieved 2009-07-22.

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