阿瑟米勒生平

1、American playwright who combined in his works social awareness with deep insights into personal weaknesses of his characters. Miller is best known for the play DEATH OF A SALESMAN (1949), or on the other hand, for his marriage to the actress Marilyn Monroe. Millers plays continued the realistic trad

2、ition that began in the United States in the period between the two world wars. With Tennessee Williams, Miller was one of the best-known American playwrights after WW II. Several of his works were filmed by such director as John Huston, Sidney Lumet and Karel Reiz.Dont say hes a great man. Willy Lo

3、man never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. Hes not the finest character that ever lived. But hes a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. Hes not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally pa

4、id to such a person.(fromDeath of a Salesman)Arthur Miller was born in Harlem, New York City; the family moved shortly afterwards to a six-storey building at 45110th Street between Lenox and Fifth Avenues. His father, Isidore Miller, was an illiterate Jewish immigrant from Poland. His succesfull lad

5、ies-wear manufacturer and shopkeeper was ruined in the depression. Augusta Barnett, Millers mother, was born in New York, but her father came from the same Polish town as the Millers.The sudden change in fortune had a strong influence on Miller. This desire to move on, to metamorphose ?or perhaps it

6、 is a talent for being contemporary ?was given me as lifes inevitable and righful condition, he wrote in TIMEBENDS: A LIFE (1987). The family moved to a small frame house in Brooklyn, which is said to the model for the Brooklyn home in Death of a Salesman. Miller spent his boyhood playing foorball a

7、nd baseball, reading adventure stories, and appearing generally as a nonintellectual. If I had any ideology at all it was what I had learned from Hearst newspapers, he once said. After graduating from a high school in 1932, Miller worked in automobile parts warehouse to earn money for college. Havin

8、g read Dostoevskys novel The Brothers Karamazov Miller decided to become a writer. To study journalism he entered the University of Michigan in 1934, where he won awards for playwriting ?one of the other awarded playwright was Tennessee Williams.After graduating in English in 1938, Miller returned t

9、o New York. There he joined the Federal Theatre Project, and wrote scripts for radio programs, such as Columbia Workshop (CBS) and Cavalcade of America (NBC). Because of a football injury, he was exempt from draft. In 1940 Miller married a Catholic girl, Mary Slattery, his college sweetheart, with w

10、hom he had two children. Millers first play to appear on Broadway was THE MAN WHO HAD ALL THE THE LUCK (1944). It closed after four performances. Three years later produced ALL MY SONS was about a factory owner who sells faulty aircraft parts during World War II. It won the New York Drama Critics Ci

11、rcle award and two Tony Awards. In 1944 Miller toured Army camps to collect background material for the screenplay THE STORY OF GI JOE (1945). Millers first novel, FOCUS (1945), was about anti-Semitism.Millers plays often depict how families are destroyed by false values. Especially his earliest eff

12、orts show his admiration for the classical Greek dramatists. When I began to write, he said in an interview, one assumed inevitably that one was in the mainstream that began with Aeschylus and went through about twenty-five hundred years of playwriting. (fromThe Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller,

13、 ed. by Christopher Bigsby, 1997)DEATH OF A SALESMAN (1949) brought Miller international fame, and become one of the major achievements of modern American theatre. It relates the tragic story of a salesman named Willy Loman, whose past and present are mingled in expressionistic scenes. Loman is not

14、the great success that he claims to be to his family and friends. The postwar economic boom has shaken up his life. He is eventually fired and he begins to hallucinate about significant events from his past. Linda, his wife, believes in the American Dream, but she also keeps her feet on the ground.

15、Deciding that he is worth more dead than alive, Willy kills himself in his car ?hoping that the insurance money will support his family and his son Biff could get a new start in his life. Critics have disagreed whether his suicide is an act of cowardice or a last sacrifice on the altar of the Americ

16、an Dream.WILLY: Im not interested in stories about the past or any crap of that kind because the woods are burning, boys, you understand? Theres a big blaze going on all around. I was fired today.BIFF (shocked): How could you be?WILLY: I was fired, and Im looking for a little good news to tell your

17、mother, because the woman has waited and the woman has suffered. The gist of it is that I havent got a story left in my head, Biff. So dont give me a lecture about facts and aspects. I am not interested. Now whatve you got so say to me?(fromDeath of a Salesman)In 1949 Miller was named an Outstanding

18、 Father of the Year, which manifested his success as a famous writer. But the wheel of fortune was going down. In the 1950s Miller was subjected to a scrutiny by a committee of the United States Congress investigating Communist influence in the arts. The FBI read his play The Hook, about a militant

19、union organizer, and he was denied a passport to attend the Brussels premiere of his play THE CRUCIBLE (1953). It was based on court records and historical personages of the Salem witch trials of 1692. In Salem one could be hanged because of the inflamed human imagination, the poetry of suggestion.

20、The daughter of Salems minister falls mysteriously ill. Reverend Samuel Parris is a widower, and there is very little good to be said for him. He believes he is persecuted wherever he goes. Rumours of witchcraft spread throughout the people of Salem. The times, to their eyes, must have been out of j

21、oint, and to the common folk must have seemed as insoluble and complicated as do ours today. The minister accuses Abigail Williams of wrongdoing, but she transforms the accusation into plea for help: her soul has been bewitched. Young girls, led by Abigail, make accusations of witchcraft against tow

22、nspeople whom they do not like. Abigail accuses Elizabeth Proctor, the wife of an upstanding farmer, whom she had once seduced. Elizabeths husband John Proctor reveals his past lechery. Elizabeth, unaware, fails to confirm his testimony. To protect him she testifies falsely that her husband has not

23、been intimate with Abigail. Proctor is accused of witchcraft and condemned to death.The Crucible, which received Antoinette Perry Award, was an allegory for the McCarthy era and mass hysteria. Although its first Broadway production flopped, it become one of Millers most-produced play. Miller wrote T

24、he Crucible in the atmosphere in which the author saw accepted the notion that conscience was no longer a private matter but one of state administration. In the play he expressed his faith in the ability of an individual to resist conformist pressures.You know, sometimes God mixes up the people. We

25、all love somebody, the wife, the kids - every mans got somebody he loves, heh? Bus sometimes. theres too much. You know? Theres too much, and it goes where it mustnt. A man works hard, he brings up a child, sometimes its niece, sometimes even a daughter, and he never realizes it, but through the yea

26、rs - there is too much love for the daughter, there is too much love for the niece. (fromA View from the Bridge)Elia Kazan, with whom Miller had shared an artistic vision and for a period a girlfriend, the motion-picture actress Marilyn Monroe, named in 1952 eight former reds, who had been in the Co

27、mmunist Party with him. Kazan virtually became a pariah overnight, Miller remained a hero of the Left. Two short plays under the collective title A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE were successfully produced in 1955. The drama, dealing with incestuous love, jealousy and betrayal, was also an answer to Kazans fi

28、lm On the Waterfront (1954), in which the director justified his naming names.In 1956 Miller was awarded honorary degree at the University of Michigan but also called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Miller admitted that he had attended certain meetings, but denied that he was a

29、 Communist. He had attended among others four or five writerss meetings sponsored by the Communist Party in 1947, supported a Peace Conference at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, and signed many apppeals and protests. Marilyns fiance admits aiding reds, wrote the press. Refusing to offer other peopl

30、es names, who had associated with leftist or suspected Communist groups, Miller was cited for contempt of Congress, but the ruling was reversed by the courts in 1958.Miller ?the man who had all the luck ?married Marilyn Monroe in 1956; they divorced in 1961. At that time Marilyn was beyond saving. S

31、he died in 1962.In the late 1950s Miller wrote nothing for the theatre. His screenplay MISFITS was written with a role for his wife. The film was directed by John Huston, starring Mongomery Clift, Clark Gable, and Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn was always late getting to the set and used heavily drugs. The

32、 marriage was already breaking, and Miller was feeling lonely. John Huston wrote in his book of memoir, An Open Book, (1980): One evening I was about to drive away from the location ?miles out in the desert ?when I saw Arthur standing alone. Marilyn and her friends hadnt offered him a ride back; the

33、yd just left him. If I hadnt happened to see him, he would have been stranded out there. My sympathies were more and more with him. Later Miller said that there should have been more long shots to remind us constantly how isolated there people were, physically and morally. Millers last play, FINISHI

34、NG THE PICTURE, produced in 2004, depicted the making of Misfits.Miller was politically active throughout his life. In 1965 he was elected president of P.E.N., the international literary organization. At the 1968 Democratic Party Convention he was a delegate for Eugene McCarthy. In 1964 Miller retur

35、ned to stage after a nine-year absence with the play AFTER THE FALL, a strongly autobiographical work, which dealt with the questions of guilt and innocence. The play also united Kazan and Miller, but their close friendship was over, destroyed by the blacklist. Many critics consider that Maggie, the

36、 self-destructive central character, was modelled on Monroe, though Miller denied this. A year after his divorce, Miller married the Austrian photographer Inge Morath (1923-2002), whom he had met during the filming of The Misfits. Miller co-operated with her on two books about China and Russia. Afte

37、r Inge Morath died, Miller plannd to marry Agnes Barley, a 34-year-old artist. In 1985 Miller went to Turkey with the playwright Harold Pinter. Their journey was arranged by PEN in conjunction with the Helsinki Watch Committee. One of their guides in Istanbul was Orhan Pamuk.In the 1990s Miller wrot

38、e such plays as THE RIDE DOWN MOUNT MORGAN (prod. 1991) and THE LAST YANKEE (prod. 1993), but in an interview he stated that It happens to be a very bad historical moment for playwriting, because the theater is getting more and more difficult to find actors for, since television pays so much and the

39、 movies even more than that. If youre young, youll probably be writing about young people, and thats easier - you can find young actors - but you cant readily find mature actors. (Were Probably in an Art That Is - Not Dying ,The New York Times,January 17, 1993)In 2002 Miller was honored with Spains prestigious Principe de Asturias Prize for Literature, making him the first U.S. recipient of the award. Miller died of heart failure at home in Roxbury, Connecticut, on February 10, 2005.美國(guó)劇作家誰(shuí)在他的作品結(jié)