Edgar Saltus

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Edgar Everston Saltus (born October 8, 1855 in New York , † July 31, 1921 there ) was an American writer.

Edgar Saltus

Life

Saltus was born in New York in 1855 as a descendant of the Dutch admiral Cornelis Evertsen , who had conquered Nieuw Amsterdam (later New York) in 1673 . Saltus attended St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire . His parents' marriage fell apart, and after leaving school, Saltus traveled with his mother to Paris , where he studied at the Sorbonne . There he met Victor Hugo and Paul Verlaine through the mediation of a poet friend of his . He then stayed in Heidelberg and Munich , where he was strongly influenced by the German philosophy of the time. Upon his return to the States, he received a law degree from Columbia University in New York, the city where he died in 1921. Saltus was married three times and had one daughter. His third wife wrote the biography Edgar Saltus: The Man .

Literary work

Saltus made a name for himself primarily through his study Imperial Purple (1892) on the late Roman decadence . He wrote a number of novels, short stories, essays, biographies, historical and philosophical treatises and translated, among others, short stories by Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly and Honoré de Balzac . Saltus was personally acquainted with Oscar Wilde , about whom he wrote a short narrative treatise. He is considered an excellent stylist of his time. In his work, influences from Balzac, Flaubert , Ralph Waldo Emerson and above all Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann as well as an examination of theosophical approaches can be proven. The novels often deal with the failure of love relationships, intrigue, the pursuit of material prosperity, the decadent attitudes of the rich, murder and incest . In addition to New York, the scenes are often Paris, in Mr. Incoul's Misadventure (1887) also Biarritz and Baden-Baden . For the fourth volume of the English translation of Wolfgang Menzel's history of the Germans up to the newest days (1855/56) Saltus contributed a chapter on the most recent events in the German Empire .

reception

While Saltus was highly regarded as a writer and essayist during his lifetime, he was quickly forgotten in the following years. One of his early advocates while still alive, Carl Van Vechten , wrote in 1918 that Saltus had created a mythology of New York at the turn of the century and the early 20th century in his work. Two of his novels were made into films, The Paliser Case (1920) and Daughters of the Rich (1923), but it was not until after the publication of an essay by Claire Sprague in 1968 that some of his works were reprinted. Henry Miller must have valued Saltus, as Jason deBoer wrote in his column on Saltus in 2001.

Works (selection)

  • Balzac (1884) (biography)
  • The Philosophy of Disenchantment (1885)
  • The Anatomy of Negation (1886)
  • Mr. Incoul's Misadventure (1887) (novel)
  • The Truth about Tristrem Varick (1887) (Novel)
  • A Transient Guest and Other Episodes (1889) (short stories)
  • Imperial Purple (1892)
  • Daughters of the Rich (1900) (novel)
  • The Perfume of Eros: A Fifth Avenue Incident (1905) (novel)
  • Historia Amoris (1906) (on the history of love)
  • The Lords of the Ghostland (1907) (on the history of the ideal)
  • The Monster (1912) (novel)
  • Oscar Wilde, An Idler's Impressions (1917) (Biographical Story)
  • The Paliser Case (1919) (novel)
  • The Imperial Orgy (1920) (on the history of the Russian tsars)
  • The Ghost Girl (1922 posthumous) (novel)

Translations of Saltus' works into German are not yet available.

Web links

Wikisource: Edgar Saltus  - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Marie Saltus: Edgar Saltus, The Man . Chicago (Pascal Covici) 1925.
  2. ^ Wolfgang Menzel: Germany from the earliest period . New York 1899.
  3. ^ Carl Van Vechten: Edgar Saltus . Online at www.readbookonline.net .
  4. ^ Claire Sprague: Edgar Saltus . New York (Twayne Publishers) 1968.
  5. ↑ Jason deBoer: Edgar Saltus. Forgotten Genius of American Letters? ( Memento of February 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) in the Fierce Language column .
personal data
SURNAME Saltus, Edgar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Saltus, Edgar Everston
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer and translator
DATE OF BIRTH October 8, 1855
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH July 31, 1921
Place of death new York