Walter Starkie

Walter Fitzwilliam Starkie (August 9, 1894 - November 2, 1976) was an Irish scholar, author and musician. Born in Killiney, County Dublin, he was the eldest son of the noted Greek scholar and translator of Aristophanes, William Joseph Myles (W.J.M.) Starkie and May Walsh. Starkie grew up surrounded by writers, artists and academians. His father was the last Resident Commissioner of National Education for Ireland under British rule (1899-1920); his aunt, Edyth Starkie was an established painter married to Arthur Rackham; and his godfather was John Pentland Mahaffy, the tutor of Oscar Wilde. He is now best known as a translator of Spanish literature, and as one of the leading authorities on the Roma people (Gypsies). He spoke fluent Romany, the language of the Gypsies.

Life

He was educated at Shrewsbury School and Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated in 1920. He was the first Professor of Spanish at Trinity College, from 1926; his position covered both Spanish and Italian. Starkie was a director of the Abbey Theatre, from 1927 to 1942, and an associate of W. B. Yeats. One of his pupils at Trinity was Samuel Beckett, who, however, reacted negatively, taking as mentor Thomas Rudmose-Brown, Professor of Modern Languages, described as "equally colourful" and probably incompatible.

He was one of the founders of the Centre International des Études Fascistes (CINEF). Its only yearbook, A Survey of Fascism (1928), had an article by him, Whither is Ireland Heading - Is It Fascism? Thoughts on the Irish Free State? During the 1930s he was an apologist for Mussolini, whom he had met in 1927. In general terms he was influenced by the Hungarian Odon Por, Macchiavelli, and by the Irish poet and mystic George William Russell (AE) in his writing on co-operatives. He travelled to Abyssinia in 1935, supported by the Italian government, and later wrote in favour of the Italian campaign there, opposing Eamonn de Valera's call for sanctions, fearing they would further isolate Italy and drive Mussolini into an alliance with Hitler.

He was also the founder and first director of the British Institute in Madrid (1940-1954), and opened branches in Barcelona, Bilbao, Seville and Valencia. The Institute was backed by the British Council and through lectures and exhibitions worked to influence Spanish opinion during World War II and help maintain Spanish neutrality. Upon accepting this position from Lord Lloyd he agreed not to write any new books and to put the Raggle-Taggle Gypsies to sleep for the duration of the war. During the war he also helped organize and operate an escape route for British airmen shot down over France. He was professor of comparative literature at the University of Madrid, from 1947 to 1956. After he retired from the British Institute he accepted a university position in the United States. It was his third American tour taking him to the University of Texas, Austin (1957-58), New York University (1959), Kansas University (1960), Colorado University (1961), and finally to the University of California at Los Angeles (1961-70) where as Professor-in-Residence he was assigned to lecture in six departments (English, Folklore-Mythology, Italian, Music, Spanish-Portuguese, and Theatre). After his retirement from U.C.L.A. he returned with his wife, Italia, to live in Madrid and died on November 2, 1976.

The academic Enid Starkie was his sister.

Writings

He won fame for his travels and was profiled by Time Magazine as a modern-day gypsy. He published accounts of his experiences as a university vacation vagabond in "Raggle Taggle," subtitled "Adventures with a fiddle in Hungary and Roumania" and sequels, "Spanish Raggle Taggle" and "Don Gypsy." They are picaresque accounts in the tradition of George Borrow, with frontispieces by his uncle, Arthur Rackham. Probably only the author ever knew the balance between fact and fiction in their contents. Modern scholarly comment considers much of what he wrote to be derived from Borrow and other reading. He was the President of the Gypsy Lore Society from 1962 to 1973.

In addition to publishing a 1964 translation of plays from the Spanish Golden Age in the Modern Library volume Eight Spanish Plays of the Golden Age, he published his own abridged translation of Cervantes's Don Quixote in 1954 in hardcover for Macmillan Publishers, and ten years later, published an unabridged version in paperback for New American Library. Written in contemporary English, both have been in print since their publications, and are considered highly accurate, but Starkie does occasionally put Irish slang and phrase construction (e.g. the phrase "I'm thinking", instead of "I think", and the oath "Bad 'cess to you!") into the mouths of its peasant characters. This is a trait he repeats in a translation of a brief one-acter by Lope de Rueda published in Eight Spanish Plays of the Golden Age. His autobiography "Scholars and Gypsies" was published in 1963.

Works

• Jacinto Benavente (1924)
• Luigi Pirandello (1926)
• Raggle-Taggle: Adventures with a Fiddle in Hungary and Romania (1933)
• Spanish Raggle-Taggle (1934)
• Don Gypsy: Adventures with a Fiddle in Barbary, Andulusia and La Mancha (1936)
• The Waveless Plain: An Italian Autobiography (1938)
• Grand Inquisitor (1940)
• In Sara's Tents (1953)
• The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James (1957)
• Spain: A Musician's Journey Through Time and Space (1958)
• Scholars and Gypsies: An Autobiography (1963)

Works Translated

• Tiger Juan - Ramon Perez de Ayala (1933)
• The Spaniards in their History - Ramon Menendez Pidal (1950)
• Tower of Ivory - Rodolfo Fonseca (1953)
• Don Quixote - Cervantes (1954 abridged)
• The Deceitful Marriage and other Exemplary Novels - Cervantes (1963)
• Eight Spanish Plays of the Golden Age (1964)
• Don Quixote - Cervantes (1964 unabridged)

References

• Eirdata page
• University of California obituary