Ambrose Bierce

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Ambrose Bierce - painting by JHE Partington († 1899)

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (born June 24, 1842 in Meigs County , Ohio , † 1914 in Chihuahua , Mexico ) was an American writer and journalist . The American Civil War was the most formative event of his life and remained the central theme of his literary and journalistic work until it mysteriously disappeared in the chaos of the Mexican Revolution .

Although only a small part of his oeuvre was received thoroughly, with the sarcastic , black-humored , often cynical narrative tone of his brief prose, he is considered the master of the eerie short story alongside Edgar Allan Poe , which influenced authors like Ernest Hemingway .

Life

Ambrose Bierce was born the tenth of a total of thirteen children of the farmer Marcus Aurelius Bierce and his wife Laura Sherwood Bierce, a descendant of the pilgrim father William Bradford , in the settlement of Horse Cave Creek in Meigs County. At the age of 15 he left his parents and moved to Warsaw , where he worked as an apprentice typesetter for the abolitionist newspaper Northern Indiana .

Influenced by the abolitionist attitude of his uncle Lucius Verus Bierce, with whom he had lived since the beginning of 1859, he followed Abraham Lincoln's call to arms in Elkhart County and volunteered for the Union Army in April 1861 , where he worked as a scout. He was honored for his bravery and eventually promoted to titular major; he was captured and wounded twice. In the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain during the Atlanta Campaign on June 23, 1864, as the leader of a group of skirmishers , he was hit by a sniper's bullet in the left temple, injuring the temporal bone and getting stuck behind the left ear. Miraculously, he survived the injury that General William Babcock Hazen described as "dangerous and complicated" and from which he was unable to recover for a long time.

Like no other American writer, he experienced the Civil War with all its bloody facets and profound upheavals for society.

In 1866 he took part in an expedition through Indian territory as a surveyor . He then became a journalist for the San Francisco Examiner and soon rose to the position of nationally influential capital correspondent in the Hearst press group, first in London (GB), then in Washington, DC . At the age of seventy, Bierce traveled to the country troubled by the Mexican Revolution , where his trace was lost in the wake of the revolutionary Pancho Villa at the turn of 1913/14. The last letter he received suggests that Bierce was expecting to be shot at this point.

As a person, Bierce was controversial. Some contemporaries turn it a misanthrope ( " the wickedest man of San Francisco "), others praised his kindness and helpfulness. His private life at a ripe old age was overshadowed by severe asthma , the death of both sons, a failed marriage and alcohol problems .

Work and reception

The war experiences as a directly involved soldier were not only at the center of his journalistic activity, but were also the most important source of his poetry.

Although Bierce now considered next to Edgar Allen Poe as a pioneer of macabre short story and there are some stories in anthologies, a large part of his oeuvre is extremely selective rezipiert Service. In addition to his very popular, sarcastic, black-humored collection of aphorisms, Des Teufelsverzeichnis , the recognition is based primarily on two anthologies: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians at 26, and Can Such Things Be? initially with 25 short stories.

Rein A. Zondergeld counts some of his stories among the most outstanding in English-language literature. In 1969, a collection of eerie short stories entitled "The Haunted House" appeared in the Usher library . On all protective covers of the bibliophile book series, under the picture of the breaking house of Usher, the question “Can such things be?” Is found. The doubt implied by this question characterizes the essence of his stories, which, with their concentrated language, seem quite modern. In them Bierce conjures up less the supernatural than a border area that is open to different explanations. While Edgar Allan Poe's eerie stories , with whom he was often compared to his chagrin, offer symbolic interpretations, his texts mostly defy such an approach.

As a connoisseur of day-to-day politics, Bierce had a very bad opinion of the profession of politician and became a pointed and witty cynic and observer. During his lifetime, however, he was largely ignored as a writer. That changed only after the Second World War . Today some of his exemplary short stories serve as textbook reading.

Like Edgar Allan Poe and later HP Lovecraft , Bierce shaped modern horror literature with his often drastic and macabre stories .

Subject in film, theater or music

The Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes wrote a book about him, "Gringo Viejo" (The Old Stranger), a novel-like account of his disappearance without a trace. This was later filmed with Gregory Peck in the title role ( Old Gringo , 1989). The role of the writer in the third part of From Dusk Till Dawn is also based on Bierce.

The short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge seems like movies Carnival of Souls ( Carnival of Souls (1962),) Jacob's Ladder (1990), The Sixth Sense (1999) and Yella to have inspired (2007). The short story is an example of the gap between narrated time and narrative time , as it covers the few moments that lie between the fall of a hanged man and a broken neck.

In Ray Bradbury's short story The Exiles , Bierce and Edgar Allan Poe make an appearance as an exile on Mars .

Works

Individual works during his lifetime
  • as Dod Grile: The Fiend's Delight. Stories, satires, journalism, poetry. John Camden Hotten, London 1873.
  • as Dod Grile: Nuggets and Dust Panned Out in California. Collected and loosely arranged by J. Milton Sloluck. Stories, satires, epigrams, journalism. Chatto & Windus, London 1873.
  • as Dod Grile: Cobwebs from an Empty Skull. Fables, stories, journalism. George Routledge & Sons, London and New York 1874.
  • as William Herman, with Thomas A. Harcourt: The Dance of Death. Satires. H. Keller & Co., San Francisco 1877.
  • Map of the Black Hills Region, Showing the Gold Mining District and the Seat of the Indian War. Map. Bancroft, San Francisco 1877.
  • Tales of Soldiers and Civilians. Stories. ELG Steele, San Francisco 1891. Further editions under the title In the Midst of Life .
  • with GA Danziger : The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter. Translation by Richard Voss : The Monks of Berchtesgaden (1891). FJ Schulte, Chicago 1892.
  • Black Beetles in Amber. Poems. Western Authors Publishing, San Francisco and New York 1892.
  • Can Such Things Be? Stories. Cassell, New York 1893. Contains, among others:
  • How blind is he. Poems. F. Soulé Campbell, San Francisco ca.1896.
  • Fantastic fables. Fables. GP Putnam's Sons, New York and London 1899.
  • The Cynic's Word Book. Satires. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York 1906. Also under The Devil's Dictionary (1911).
  • A Son of the Gods and A Horseman in the Sky. Stories. Paul Elder, San Francisco 1907.
  • Write It Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Neale Publishing, New York and Washington, DC 1909.
  • Shapes of Clay. Poems. WE Wood, San Francisco 1903.
  • The Shadow on the Dial and Other Essays. Published by SO Howes. AM Robertson, San Francisco 1909.
Work editions
  • The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce. 12 vols. Neale Publishing, New York and Washington, DC 1909–1912. Reprinted by Gordian Press, New York 1966. Title of the volumes:
    • Vol. I: Ashes of the Beacon . 1909.
    • Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians . 1909.
    • Vol. III: Can Such Things Be? . 1910.
    • Vol. IV: Shapes of Clay . 1910.
    • Vol. V: Black Beetles in Amber . 1911.
    • Vol. VI: The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter; Fantastic fables . 1911.
    • Vol. VII: The Devil's Dictionary . 1911.
    • Vol. VIII: Negligible Tales; On with the dance; Epigrams . 1911.
    • Vol. IX: Tangential Views . 1911.
    • Vol. X: The Opinionator . 1911.
    • Vol. XI: Antepenultimata . 1912.
    • Vol. XII: In Motley . 1912.
  • The Collected Writings of Ambrose Bierce. Selection in one band. Citadel Press, New York 1947.
  • The Short Fiction of Ambrose Bierce. A Comprehensive Edition. Ed. By ST Joshi . 3 vols. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville 2006, ISBN 1-572-33475-4 .

German editions of works:

  • Selected Works. Edited by Utz Riese. Translated by Werner Beyer. Dieterich, Leipzig 1993, ISBN 3-7350-0159-9 . Reprinted under the title Collected Works : Anaconda, Cologne 2014, ISBN 978-3-7306-0099-3 .
  • Works in four volumes. Edited by Gisbert Haefs . Haffmans, Zurich 1986–1989, ISBN 3-251-20077-1 . Output of the following titles in one cassette:
    • The devil's dictionary. Translated by Gisbert Haefs.
    • Civil war stories. Translated by Jan-Wellem van Diekmes.
    • Horror stories. Translated by Gisbert Haefs.
    • Lies and fantastic fables. Translated by Viola Eigenberz and Trautchen Neetix.
  • The Collected Stories and the Devil's Dictionary. Edited by Gisbert Haefs. Haffmans, Zurich 2000, ISBN 3-251-20308-8 .
Letters
  • The letters of Ambrose Bierce. Edited by Bertha Clark Pope. With a biography of George Sterling. Book Club of California, San Francisco 1922. Reprinted by Gordian Press, New York 1967.
  • A much misunderstood man. Selected letters of Ambrose Bierce. Ed. By ST Joshi. Ohio State University Press, Columbus 2003, ISBN 0-8142-0919-X .
Collections of translations

literature

  • Lawrence I. Berkove: A prescription for adversity. The moral art of Ambrose Bierce. Ohio State Univ. Press, Columbus 2002, ISBN 0-8142-0894-0 .
  • John Clute , Peter Nicholls : Bierce, Ambrose. In: (dies.): The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction . 3rd edition (online edition), version dated April 4, 2017.
  • John Clute, John Grant (eds.): The Encyclopedia of Fantasy . Orbit, London 1997, ISBN 1-85723-368-9 , sv Bierce, Ambrose .
  • Cathy Notari Davidson: The experimental fictions of Ambrose Bierce. Structuring the ineffable. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln 1984, ISBN 0-8032-1666-1 .
  • Paul Fatout: Ambrose Bierce, the Devil's Lexicographer. University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma 1951.
  • Robert L. Gale: To Ambrose Bierce companion. Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn. 2001, ISBN 0-313-31130-7 .
  • Mary Elizabeth Grenander: Ambrose Bierce. Twayne, New York 1971. (= Twayne's United States authors series 180).
  • ST Joshi , David E. Schultz: Ambrose Bierce: An Annotated Bibliography of Primary Sources. Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut 1999, ISBN 0-313-03241-6 .
  • Roy Morris: Ambrose Bierce: alone in bad company. Crown, New York 1995, ISBN 0-517-59646-6 . German: Ambrose Bierce. Alone in bad company. Biography. Translated by Georg Deggerich. Haffmans Verlag, Zurich 1999, ISBN 3-251-20286-3 .
  • Richard O'Connor: Ambrose Bierce. A biography. Gollancz, London 1968.
  • Michael Schulte: Alone in bad company. The life of Ambrose Bierce. Schöffling, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-89561-603-6 .
  • Vincent Starrett: Ambrose Bierce. Reprint of the 1st edition Chicago 1920. Kennikat Press, Port Washington et al. 1969.

Web links

Wikisource: Ambrose Bierce  - Sources and full texts (English)
Wikiquote: Ambrose Bierce  - Quotes
Commons : Ambrose Bierce  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Roy Morris: Ambrose Bierce. Alone in bad company. Haffmans Verlag, Zurich 1999, p. 30
  2. ^ Roy Morris: Ambrose Bierce. Alone in bad company. Haffmans Verlag, Zurich 1999, p. 35
  3. ^ Roy Morris: Ambrose Bierce. Alone in bad company. Haffmans Verlag, Zurich 1999, p. 143
  4. ↑ Arno Heller: Ambrose Bierce: "Parker Adderson, Philosopher" - A story of wrong and right dying. In: Ed .: Klaus Lubbers, The English and American Short Story, Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1990, p. 89
  5. ↑ Rainer Schöwerling: Ambrose Bierce · An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1981, p. 149
  6. ↑ Arno Heller: Ambrose Bierce: "Parker Adderson, Philosopher" - A story of wrong and right dying. In: Ed .: Klaus Lubbers The English and American Short Story, Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1990, p. 89
  7. ↑ Rein A. Zondergeld : Lexicon of fantastic literature , Ambrose Bierce, Suhrkamp, ​​Fantastic Library, Frankfurt 1983, p. 35
  8. ^ Rein A. Zondergeld: Lexikon der phantastischen Literatur , Ambrose Bierce, Suhrkamp, ​​Fantastische Bibliothek, Frankfurt 1983, p. 36
  9. ↑ Jerôme von Gebsattel, In: Kindlers New Literature Lexicon. Volume 2, Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce, A resumed identity. Munich 1989, p. 671.
personal data
SURNAME Bierce, Ambrose
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bierce, Ambrose Gwinnett (full name); Bierce, Ambrose G. (alternative spelling); Bierce, Ambrosius (alternative spelling); Grile, Dod (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH June 24, 1842
PLACE OF BIRTH Meigs County Ohio
DATE OF DEATH 1914
Place of death Chihuahua , Mexico