Charles Warren Stoddard

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Charles Warren Stoddard

Charles Warren Stoddard (born August 7, 1843 in Rochester (New York) , † April 23, 1909 in Monterey , California ) was an American writer.

Life

Stoddard is a direct descendant of Anthony Stoddard from England , who settled in Boston , Massachusetts in 1639 . During his childhood and youth he moved several times: in 1855 with his parents to New York City , who soon afterwards took him to San Francisco , California. In 1857 he returned alone to his grandparents in New York, then back to his family in San Francisco.

He started writing poetry, which he anonymously sent to a local newspaper. They met with great public interest and were later published as a book under the title Poems by Charles Warren Stoddard . His poor health prevented him from pursuing college education. He tried his hand at the theater, but soon realized that he was not suitable for the stage.

In 1864 he traveled to the islands of the South Seas and wrote his Idyls from there - letters that he sent to a friend who published them as a book. William Dean Howells said of them: "This is the easiest, most lovable, wildest, freshest thing that has ever been written about life in this summer ocean." Stoddard made four more trips to the South Seas and gave his impressions in Lazy Letters from Low Latitudes and The Island of Tranquil Delights again. He visited Molokai repeatedly , where he made closer acquaintance with Father Damien , the apostle of lepers. The result was the booklet The Lepers of Molokai , which, together with the famous letter from Robert Louis Stevenson, did much to strengthen Father Damien's public image. In 1867, shortly after his first voyage to the South Seas, Stoddard joined the Catholic Church , to which he was deeply attached. He told the story of his conversion in the book A Troubled Heart and How it was Comforted . His saying has come down to us about this book: "Here you have my whole open inner life." From his change of faith stems the exuberant optimism that won everyone who knew him for Stoddard.

From 1873 he went on a long tour as a special correspondent, without any precise requirements on the part of his client of the San Francisco Chronicle . He was on the road for five years, during which he traveled to Europe and as far as Palestine and Egypt . From this trip he sent letters to his editors, few of which have been republished, although some are among his best works.

Charles Warren Stoddard

By 1880 Stoddard was an associate editor of Overland Monthly .

In 1885 he decided to settle down and accepted the chair of English literature at the University of Notre Dame , Indiana , but soon retired for health reasons. A corresponding position at the Catholic University in Washington, DC , which he held from 1889, he had to give up in 1902 also for health reasons. Shortly thereafter, he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to devote himself fully to his literary work. A life-threatening illness thwarted his plan, but he did not remain idle. He continued his Exits and Entrances , a collection of essays and sketches that he called his favorite work - possibly because it was about his close friend Robert Louis Stevenson and other literary friendships. During this time he wrote his only novel, For the Pleasure of His Company , of which he said, "Here are my confessions."

Speculations, especially on the part of the American gay movement, about a possible homosexuality of Stoddard refer to passages in his writings in which he extolled the South Sea islanders' tendency towards same-sex bonds, as well as his preference for friendships with homosexual men. At the end of 1866 he sent the new edition of his poems to Herman Melville with the note that he had not found any traces of Melville in Hawaii . Stoddard's cover letter may not have taken a specifically homosexual undertone from Melville; in any case, the draft of his reply that has survived contains no corresponding references.

The character of Kory-Kory from Melville's Typee inspired Stoddard to write a tale in which he celebrated the kind of friendship that Melville dealt with more than once. He was in lively correspondence with Walt Whitman , whose fascination with the erotic charisma of the male body can be inferred from his poems.

Most of his writings are so strictly biographical because Stoddard hoped by laying enough clues to enable his readers to understand his entire life story. In 1905 he returned to Monterey, California, hoping to restore his health, but hovered between life and death until he died in 1909 at the age of 66.

Since 1898 he was an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

plant

From the point of view of outsiders, Stoddard was full of contradictions. Mostly he was a bohemian , but at a high level - one who couldn't resist the call from afar and, as he put it, always had his homeland with him. Yet he remained a mystic and hermit even on his travels. “Imaginative and easy to impress”: The two attributes that Stoddard attributed to his friends in the South Pacific also apply particularly well to himself. His charm - amiability, peacefulness, tenderness, friendliness - can be found in his writings. Major English-language authors have praised Stoddard's works and accused American audiences of indifference to him. The best known is the sentence by Stevenson, passed down by Jean Giono : "There are only two writers who have brilliantly described the South Seas, and they are two Americans: Herman Melville and Charles Warren Stoddard."

Stoddard was never translated into German. For readers of our time it is too strongly Christian to be legible. But he was a sociable person with a rich soul - a practicing Christian who did not attract attention through penetrating piety, but instead used his beliefs, which were perceived as enriching, as an opportunity to do good, to be a good person - a traveler too, to him one place in the world was never enough, and which there was always an urge to share about it.

A Trip to Hawaii (2nd edition, 1892)

Works

Source

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Members: Charles Warren Stoddard. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 28, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Stoddard, Charles Warren
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH August 7, 1843
PLACE OF BIRTH Rochester , New York
DATE OF DEATH April 23, 1909
Place of death Monterey , California