Gascoyne, David Emery

▪ 2002

      British poet (b. Oct. 10, 1916, Harrow, Middlesex, Eng.—d. Nov. 25, 2001, Newport, Isle of Wight, Eng.), introduced French Surrealism to Great Britain. He was acquainted with many of the leading intellectual and artistic figures in England and France and became a noted translator and critic. Unusual among British poets of the time, he was not university educated. He published his first book of poems, Roman Balcony, in 1932 at the age of 16 and his only full-length novel, Opening Day, the following year. Influenced by writers such as André Breton and Paul Éluard, he published A Short Survey of Surrealism, the first such work in English, in 1935. This was followed by Man's Life Is This Meat (1935), a volume of Surrealist verse, as well as by a translation of Breton's What Is Surrealism? His years in Paris during the 1930s were recorded in two works published much later: Paris Journal 1937–1939 (1978) and Journal 1936–1937 (1980). Although he had at first been interested primarily in the visionary and mystical elements of Surrealism, he later became more interested in its religious aspects. Poems 1937–42, which was published in 1943, was his first book of religious verse. Night Thoughts, written for the radio, was performed in 1955 and published in 1956. Collected Poems appeared in 1965. Addicted to amphetamines and afflicted with depression, he suffered a breakdown in the early 1960s and in 1964 went to live in his father's house on the Isle of Wight, where he remained to the end of his life. He published little poetry after the 1950s, although a number of collections continued to appear, including Collected Verse Translations (1970), a second Collected Poems (1988), and Selected Prose, 1934–96 (1998).

* * *