Countee Cullen

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Countee Cullen, photographed by Carl van Vechten , 1941

Countée LeRoy Porter ( Countée Cullen ) e.g. Sometimes also written without an accent, (born May 30, 1903 ; † January 9, 1946 in New York City ) was an American author and leading poet of the " Harlem Renaissance ".

biography

Cullen was born in 1903 under the name Countee LeRoy Porter. He was raised by his grandmother. It is unclear whether Cullen was born in Louisville , Kentucky , or in Baltimore . Cullen attended De Witt Clinton High School in New York and received special recognition in 1922 for his studies in Latin. In 1918 his grandmother died and Cullen was adopted by Rev Frederick Ashbury Cullen, who was a Reverend at the Salem Methodist Episcopal Church in Harlem . His mother first contacted him in the 1920s, when he had achieved fame as a poet.

Cullen won several poetry competitions at a young age. At the De Witt Clinton High School , which he attended, he participated in the school newspaper and was a member of the Arista Honor Society . After graduating from high school, Cullen studied at New York University and participated in the university newspaper. As a student he published poetry in the prominent "Negro magazines" The Crisis , under the direction of WEB Du Bois, and in Opportunity from the National Urban League . Cullen received prizes from both publications. Cullen has also published poetry in Harper's , Century Magazine and Poetry . In 1925, Cullen graduated and published his first edition of poetry: Color .

Cullen became the leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance , a period in which African-American artists such as Jean Toomer , Nella Larsen , Georgia Douglas Johnson , George Schuyler, and Anne Spencer and Langston Hughes flourished , particularly in urban areas. Cullen went to Harvard where he received his Masters .

In April 1928, Cullen married Nina Yolande Du Bois, daughter of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois . The marriage failed after only two months when Cullen traveled to Europe with his best friend. Nina divorced two years later and stated that Cullen had confessed that he was gay (“Cullen had confessed that he was sexually attracted to men”). In 1928 Cullen traveled to France as a Guggenheim Fellow . In the years that followed, Cullen wrote more poetry, prose, and a drama. In 1940 Cullen married Ida Mae Robertson for the second time.

Countee Cullen wrote in his letters, which he always signed with a pseudonym, about his sexual relations only in coded form.

Cullen died on January 9, 1946. After his death, Cullen was considered the most honored African American author of his time. A collection of his best work has been put together in On These I Stand .

Works

poetry

  • Heritage. dt. The legacy. in Meuter (see German literature) pp. 92–97
  • Color , 1925
  • Copper Sun , 1927
  • The Ballad of the Brown Girl , 1928
  • The Black Christ and Other Poems , 1929
  • Tableau
  • The Medea and Some Other Poems , 1935
  • On These I Stand: An Anthology of the Best Poems of Countee Cullen , 1947
  • My Soul's High Song: The Collected Writings of Countee Cullen , 1991
  • For a lady I know

prose

  • One Way to Heaven , 1931
  • The Lost Zoo , 1940
  • My Lives and How I Lost Them , 1942

drama

  • St. Louis Woman , 1946

literature

  • Hanna Meuter : "I sing America too". American Negro seals. Bilingual. Ed. And transl. Together with Paul Therstappen . Wolfgang Jess, Dresden 1932. With short biographies. 1st row: The new negro. The voice of the awakening Afro-America . Part 1; New edition ibid. 1959
  • Charles Molesworth: And bid him sing: a biography of Countée Cullen , Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-226-53364-3

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Countee Cullen (1903–1946), Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture ( Memento of the original of July 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.si.umich.edu
  2. ^ Gerard Early, About Countee Cullen's Life and Career, Jan. 2, 2007
  3. ↑ See e.g. B. the biographical details of Countee Cullen . On: The Baltimore Literary Heritage Project . Retrieved January 5, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Cullen, Countee
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cullen, Countée; Porter, Countee LeRoy (maiden name); Porter, Countée LeRoy (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American author
DATE OF BIRTH May 30, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Louisville, Kentucky or Baltimore
DATE OF DEATH January 9, 1946
Place of death New York City