English writer Anthony Burgess: biography, creativity, best works

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Burgess Anthony is an Englishman best known for his dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange. Few people know that he was also a great musician, professionally engaged in literary criticism, journalism, and translations.

Childhood. Youth

Burgess Anthony was born in Manchester in 1917. His family was Catholic. His father worked as an accountant, and his mother was engaged in housekeeping until she died of the "Spanish flu" in 1919.

Burgess' father often went to the local pub to play the piano. In the end, these visits ended in marriage to the hostess of the establishment. Anthony was raised by an aunt for a long time, and only then did his stepmother take over him.

The boy should always be neatly dressed and somehow different from the city kids, for which he was often beaten by local ragamuffins.

When the time came, Anthony Burgess was assigned to a Catholic school. Here he dreamed of making friends, but since he was the only one in the class who could read and write, he immediately fell into the category of "white crows".

As a child, the future writer was indifferent to music,until one fine moment I heard Claude Debussy's melody on the radio. It was as if a new world had opened up to him, something that he had never noticed before. His life has been turned upside down.

After Burgess, Anthony went to Xaverian College. After graduation, he continued his path to study literature at the University of Manchester. And when the diploma was already in hand, I decided to stay at the alma mater and teach.

Life before writing

After the outbreak of World War II, the young teacher was drafted into the ground forces. During a business trip in 1942, he married Louella Jones. Her life story turned out to be tragic.

Shortly after the wedding, it became known that the couple would have a child. Anthony at that time was already in the location of his unit. There he received horrific news - Luella was beaten by four American deserters, and she ended up in the hospital. There was no longer any question of saving the child: the woman had a miscarriage.

She was never able to overcome and forget this misfortune. She was constantly tormented by nightmares, and in order to somehow drown out her pain, Luella became addicted to alcohol. She died in 1968 of cirrhosis of the liver.

Anthony Burgess, whose books served as a salvation from trouble, threw himself into work. He taught at the University of Birmingham until 1950, then held a post in the Ministry of Education.

From the mid-forties, Burgess was fascinated by the study of music theory and practically did not think about literary creativity. Although already inIn 1949, his main book, A Clockwork Orange, was written.

Anthony Burgess was an educational inspector in the British colonies in the mid-1950s (1954 - Federation of Malaya, 1958 - Brunei).

In 1959, during a lecture, Mr. Burgess fainted. The doctor who observed him issued a verdict - a brain tumor. According to him, Anthony did not have much longer to live.

This news was the impetus for the active transformation of the hero of our story into a writer.

Literary activity

A distinctive feature of the writer's work is that he did not try to glorify his name, but often used pseudonyms. Since 1959, this man has written more than fifty books. Often he dabbled and published reviews of his own works in magazines. Of course, under a pseudonym.

The most famous works of the Englishman were the novels "A Clockwork Orange", "Mr. Enderby from the Inside", "The Man from Nazareth", "The Lustful Seed".

Anthony Burgess was fascinated by the work of J. Joyce, so many of his books in writing style are somewhat reminiscent of the works of this author. The Englishman's work was also affected by his strict Catholic upbringing.

Anthony Burgess is famous for creating the artificial language Nadsad for his books. In this he was helped by knowledge of seven foreign languages. But the basis for the creation was the Russian language, since in the 1960s the writer visitedUSSR.

The sequel to George Orwell's novel was also written by Anthony Burgess. "1985" is a work consisting of two parts. In the first, the writer analyzes the work of his colleague using various techniques. For example, an imaginary interview. In the second part, he presents his vision of future events.

A Clockwork Orange

One of the most outstanding books of the twentieth century is the novel "A Clockwork Orange". Anthony Burgess said that he wrote it, overcoming mental pain. He was haunted by memories of his first wife and their unborn child.

The book got its name from one biting expression of the London cockney, which meant "things of a bizarre purpose." But there is also a play on words. Orange means "orange" in English, and "man" in Malay.

The novel consists of three parts. In the first, the bandit Alex and his gang are engaged in robbery, robbery, and they are covered by bribed old women. But after Alex accidentally kills a woman during a robbery, he is caught and put in jail.

The second part is about imprisonment. Alex complains about the violence and dreams of leaving this terrible place as soon as possible. He is offered an experiment, after which he will be disgusted by any kind of violence. A young man goes free.

In the third part, he tries to start a new life, but his parents abandoned him, former friends brutally mocked Alex. Beaten and tormented, he is picked up by a writer,whose wife Alex killed a couple of years ago. When he recognizes the killer in his guest, he immediately locks him in a room and turns on hateful music. Alex is thrown out of the window. In the hospital, he realizes that the result of the experiment has disappeared. He is assembling a new gang…

Burgess and music

During his life he wrote 175 compositions. Among them were simple melodies, and symphonies, and even the operetta Blooms from Dublin (based on Ulysses).

Many of Burgess's musical compositions are based on his impressions of Malaysian music. The opera "Trotsky in New York" was written by Anthony in 1980. He owns a fantasy for piano and orchestra "Rome in the rain" and other works. Burgess made a new English translation of Bizet's Carmen and created an updated libretto for Weber's Oberon.

Recent years

Anthony Burgess, whose books sold like hot cakes, wrote until the very last days of his life. He has taught at Princeton and other American universities.

Married a second time. The Italian princess became his chosen one.

The writer died at an advanced age from lung cancer. It happened in London in 1993.