Лайтон Страчи: Өмір және шығармалары

English writer (1880–1932)

Giles Lytton Strachey ('/dʒ//aɪ//l//z// /'/l//ɪ//t//ən// /'/s//t//r//eɪ//tʃ//i/; 1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was an English writer and critic. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of Eminent Victorians, he established a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit. His biography Queen Victoria (1921) was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

Strachey was born on 1 March 1880 at Stowey House, Clapham Common, London, the fifth son and 11th child of Lieutenant General Sir Richard Strachey, an officer in the British colonial armed forces, and his second wife, the former Jane Grant, who became a leading supporter of the women's suffrage movement. He was named Giles Lytton after an early 16th century Gyles Strachey and the first Earl of Lytton, who had been a friend of Richard Strachey's when he was Viceroy of India in the late 1870s. The Earl of Lytton was also Lytton Strachey's godfather. The Stracheys had 13 children in total, 10 of whom survived to adulthood, including Lytton's sister Dorothy Strachey and youngest brother, the psychoanalyst, James Strachey. When Lytton was four years old the family moved from Stowey House to 69 Lancaster Gate, north of Kensington Gardens. This was their home until Sir Richard retired 20 years later. Lady Strachey was an enthusiast for languages and literature, making her children perform their own plays and write verse from early ages. She thought that Lytton had the potential to become a great artist so she decided that he would receive the best education possible in order to be "enlightened." By 1887 he had begun the study of French, and he was to admire French culture throughout his life. Lady Strachey decided in 1893 that her son should start his more serious education and sent him to Abbotsholme School in Rocester, Derbyshire, where pupils were required to do manual work every day. Strachey, who always had a fragile physique, objected to this requirement and after few months he was transferred to Leamington College, where he became a victim of savage bullying. Sir Richard, however, told his son to "grin and bear the petty bullying." Strachey did eventually adapt to the school and became one of its best pupils. In the 1960s one of the four 'houses' at the school was named after him. His health also seems to have improved during the three years he spent at Leamington, although various illnesses continued to plague him. When Strachey turned 17 in 1897, Lady Strachey decided that he was ready to leave school and go to university, but because she thought he was too young for Oxford she decided that he should first attend a smaller institution, the University of Liverpool. There Strachey befriended the professor of modern literature, Walter Raleigh, who, besides being his favourite teacher, also became the most influential figure in his life before he went up to Cambridge. In 1899 Strachey took the Christ Church scholarship examination, wanting to get into Balliol College, Oxford, but the examiners determined that Strachey's academic achievements were not remarkable and were struck by his "shyness and nervousness." They recommended Lincoln College as a more suitable institution, advice that Lady Strachey took as an insult, deciding then that he would attend Trinity College, Cambridge, instead.

Strachey was admitted as a Pensioner at Trinity College, Cambridge, on 30 September 1899. He became an Exhibitioner in 1900 and a Scholar in 1902. He won the Chancellor's Medal for English Verse in 1902 and was given a BA degree after he had won a second class in the History Tripos in June 1903. He did not however take leave of Trinity, but remained until October 1905 to work on a thesis that he hoped would gain him a fellowship. Strachey's years at Cambridge were happy and productive. Among the freshers at Trinity there were three with whom Strachey soon became closely associated: Clive Bell, Leonard Woolf and Saxon Sydney Turner. With another undergraduate, A. J. Robertson, these students formed a group called the Midnight Society, which, in the opinion of Bell, was the source of the Bloomsbury Group. Other close friends at Cambridge were Thoby Stephen and his sisters Vanessa and Virginia Stephen (later Bell and Woolf respectively). Strachey also belonged to the Conversazione Society, the Cambridge Apostles to which Tennyson, Hallam, Maurice, and Sterling had once belonged. The Apostles formulated an elitist doctrine of "Higher Sodomy" which differentiated the homosexual acts of the intelligent from those of "ordinary" men. In these years Strachey was highly prolific in writing verse, much of which has been preserved and some of which was published at the time. Strachey also became acquainted with other men who greatly influenced him, including G. Lowes Dickinson, John Maynard Keynes, Walter Lamb (brother of the painter Henry Lamb), George Mallory, Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore. Moore's philosophy, with its assumption that the summum bonum lies in achieving a high quality of humanity, in experiencing delectable states of mind and in intensifying experience by contemplating great works of art, was a particularly important influence. In 1911 H. A. L. Fisher, a former President of the British Academy and of the Board of Education, was in search of someone to write a short one volume survey of French literature. Fisher had read one of Strachey's reviews ("Two Frenchmen," Independent Review (1903)) and asked him to write an outline in 50,000 words, giving him J. W. Mackail's Latin Literature (1909) as a model. supported him financially. Each provided him with £100, which, together with his earnings from the Edinburgh Review and other periodicals, made it possible for him to rent a small thatched cottage, The Lacket, outside the village of Lockeridge, near Marlborough, Wiltshire. He lived there until 1916 and it was there that he wrote the first three parts of Eminent Victorians. From then on, Strachey needed no further financial aid. He continued to live at Tidmarsh until 1924, when he moved to Ham Spray House near Marlborough, Wiltshire. This was his home for the rest of his life.

Though Strachey spoke openly about his homosexuality with his Bloomsbury friends, and had relationships with a variety of men including Ralph Partridge, details of Strachey's sexuality were not widely known until the publication of a biography by Michael Holroyd in the late 1960s. The painter Dora Carrington and Strachey had a lifelong, open, loving but platonic relationship. They eventually established a permanent home together at Ham Spray House, where Carrington would paint and Strachey would educate her in literature. In 1921, Carrington agreed to marry Partridge, not for love but to secure a three way relationship. Partridge eventually formed a relationship with Frances Marshall, another Bloomsbury member. Shortly after Strachey died, Carrington took her own life. Partridge married Marshall in 1933. Strachey was mainly interested sexually in Partridge, as well as in various other young men, including a secret sadomasochistic relationship with Roger Senhouse, later the head of the publishing house Secker & Warburg. Strachey's letters, edited by Paul Levy, were published in 2005.

Virginia Woolf's husband Leonard Woolf said that in her experimental novel The Waves, "there is something of Lytton in Neville." Lytton is also said to have been the inspiration behind the character of St John Hirst in her novel The Voyage Out. Michael Holroyd describes Strachey as the inspiration behind Cedric Furber in Wyndham Lewis's The Self Condemned. In Lewis's novel The Apes of God he is seen in the character of Matthew Plunkett, whom Holroyd describes as "a maliciously distorted and hilarious caricature of Lytton." In the Terminus Note in E. M. Forster's Maurice, Forster remarks that the Cambridge undergraduate Risley in the novel is based on Strachey. Strachey was portrayed by Jonathan Pryce in the film Carrington (1995), which won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival that year, while Pryce won Best Actor for his performance. In the film Al sur de Granada (2003), Strachey was portrayed by James Fleet. Strachey was portrayed by Ed Birch in the 2015 mini series Life in Squares. Strachey was portrayed by Simon Russell Beale in the 2020 BBC Radio 3 play Elizabeth and Essex by Robin Brooks.

Characters and Commentaries, ed. James Strachey (1933)
Spectatorial Essays, ed. James Strachey (1964)
Ermyntrude and Esmeralda. An Entertainment, illus. Erté (1969)
Lytton Strachey by Himself: A Self Portrait, ed. Michael Holroyd (1971)
The Really Interesting Question, and Other Papers, ed. Paul Levy (1972)
The Shorter Strachey, ed. Michael Holroyd and Paul Levy (1980)
The Letters of Lytton Strachey, ed. Paul Levy (2005)
Unpublished Works of Lytton Strachey: Early Papers, ed. Todd Avery (2011)