Robinson Jeffers

John Robinson Jeffers ( born January 10, 1887 in Allegheny, now Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, † January 20, 1962 in Carmel -by-the -Sea, California ) was an American poet, playwright and natural philosopher. The German-speaking largely remained unknown author was traded in the United States during his lifetime as " the most important poets of the 20th century," but got its polarizing, humanism is remote attitude increasingly public criticism.

  • 2.1 Publications (selection)
  • 2.2 German translations
  • 2.3 secondary literature

Life and work

Childhood, Youth and Student Years

John Robinson Jeffers was the son of Presbyterian theologian Dr. William Hamilton Jeffers and Annie Robinson Tuttle. He had a brother, Hamilton Jeffers, who was a well-known astronomer at the Lick Observatory. As a child, Robinson Jeffers interested in the written word. The family fostered his literary ambitions: He received lessons in Greek, Hebrew and Latin and was taught in private schools in Germany and Switzerland, where he also learned German and French and was influenced by Nietzsche and Freud's writings. At 15, he went to the University of Pennsylvania, but moved due to the family's move to Los Angeles the following year at the Occidental College. It changed hands several times, the universities, studied astronomy, geology, philology, philosophy and theology. In 1906 he took up medical studies. In a literature seminar he learned in the same year, the already married Una Call Kuster know. The two fell in love. 1910 Jeffers broke off his studies and went to Washington to study forestry. Without graduating, he returned a year later to Los Angeles back and continued the love affair with Una Call Kuster continues. When her husband, a lawyer, found out about it, it came about a scandal that reached for a front page of the Los Angeles Times; Finally, the marriage ended in divorce. Robinson and Una married in 1913 and moved in the same year to Carmel -by-the -Sea. The two had a daughter in 1914, who died just a day after her birth and twin sons who were born in 1916.

Tor House and Hawk Tower

Robinson Jeffers was fascinated by the original, at the time still unspoiled landscape of the American west coast, which he and Ithaca, the home of Homer and its mythology, the Iliad, compared. With the help of an inheritance he purchased a piece of land in the then sparsely settled area of Monterey County, just south of Carmel. His house was built with the help of a builder Jeffers, who trained him for the masons and stone mason, 1919 itself was ready. Jeffers called the built of granite rocks House Gate House inspired by the Cornish term " gate" which designates eroded rock formations. In subsequent years, Jeffers afforested on the barren coastline with eucalyptus and cypress trees also began an equally layered granite rock four-story tower, which he called Hawk Tower to build next to the house. Robinson Jeffers worked all his life to the rustic estate. The Tor House and Hawk Tower of were completed in the 1950s and 1960s by Jeffers ' eldest son and later put on the initiative of his friend, photographer Ansel Adams as Tor House Foundation under monument protection.

Literary Achievements

Although Jeffers had in 1912 published his first book of poems flagons and Apples, remained from the literary success over the following years. His second book of poems, Californians, appeared in 1916. Only in 1924 received his narrative poetry Tamar attention. The book was a commercial success and meant for Jeffers the beginning of a productive work time. In subsequent years, the poems Roan Stallion (1925 ), The Tower Beyond Tragedy (1926 ), The Woman at Point Sur ( 1927), Cawdor (1928) and Dear Judas (1929 ) emerged. Latest from the mid-1920s was Jeffers as a renowned author and enjoyed as " sealing Outdoorsman " high popularity. He quickly became regarded by his countrymen as " the most important American poet of the 20th century ", which equally rapid hostility of the established writers and critics called forth, who proclaimed the style of a refined lyricism while Jeffers with his realist poetry opposed to contemporary tastes. He polarized: Some revered him as a natural philosophical poet God while his opponents attacked him a long sentence. Jeffers, however, showed unaffected. His following publications consolidate its reputation, it appeared Thusor 's Landing (1932 ), search Counsels You Gave to Me ( 1937), Be Angry at the Sun (1941 ) and other works.

Jeffers ' " Inhumanismus "

With the processing of Euripides' Medea, Jeffers scored 1948 a success on Broadway. He had the actress Judith Anderson written on the body 's role. In the same year his work The Double Axe, where he introduced a state of mind, which he described as " Inhumanismus " appeared. Contrary to the established humanism presented Jeffers humans not as a measure, but only as part of what constitutes plus called on in the preface of the book " finally grow up and no longer acting like a self- self-conscious toddler or like a mental patient. " For the American public, which is confirmed by the victory of World War II in its humanistic mission and in patriotism saw strengthened, this statement was an affront. Jeffers ' own longtime publisher distanced himself already in the work of the author and should not call him in future anthologies.

1950 died Jeffers ' wife Una from cancer. Hit hard by the loss of the writer sat in the aftermath apart with death; a topic that should determine his last, published in his lifetime work hunger Field of 1954. Robinson Jeffers died ten days after his 75th birthday. Postum was a year later published the unfinished work, The Beginning and the End of his estate.

Bibliography

Publications (selection)

  • Flagons and Apples. Grafton, Los Angeles 1912.
  • Californians. Macmillan, New York, 1916.
  • Tamar and Other Poems. Peter G. Boyle, New York, 1924.
  • Roan Stallion, Tamar and Other Poems. Boni & Liveright, London 1925; Hogarth, London 1928; Modern Library, New York, 1935.
  • Cawdor and Other Poems. H. Liveright, New York 1928; Hogarth, London, 1930.
  • Dear Judas and Other Poems. H. Liveright, New York 1929; Hogarth, London, 1930.
  • Thusor 's Landing and Other Poems. Liveright, New York, 1932.
  • Give Your Heart to the Hawks and Other Poems. Random House, New York 1933.
  • Solstice and Other Poems. Random House, New York 1935.
  • Search Counsels You Gave to Me and Other Poems. Random House, New York 1937.
  • The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers. Random House, New York 1938.
  • Medea: Freely Adapted from the ' Medea ' of Euripides. Random House, New York 1946.
  • The Double Axe and Other Poems. Random House, New York 1948.
  • Hunger Field and Other Poems. Random House, New York 1954.

Posthumously

  • The Beginning and the End and Other Poems. Random House, New York 1963.
  • The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers. 5 - volume collection edited. by Tim Hunt, Stanford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3890-4

The most extensive collections of Robinson Jeffers ' manuscripts, letters and records are in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin and in the libraries of Occidental College, the University of California and Yale University.

German translations

  • The time to come. Translated by Eva Hesse, Carl Hanser Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-446-23008-8
  • Robinson Jeffers - Selected Poems. Translated by Kai- Michael Gustmann, Rain book, Leipzig, 1997, ISBN 3-00-001363-6
  • Robinson Jeffers: Poetry. German with an afterword by Eva Hesse, Andreas -Haller -Verlag, Passau 1984
  • Dramas: The source, Medea, the woman from Crete. Translated by Eva Hesse, Rowohlt, Reinbek 1960

Secondary literature

  • James Karman: Robinson Jeffers: Poet of California. Story Line Press, 1994, ISBN 0-934257-58-2.
  • Botho Strauss: Jeffers - Act I and II play as a paperback edition, Hanser, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-446-19528-9.
Carmel-by-the-Sea, California Monterey County, California Medea (play) Broadway theatre Anthology Austin (Texas) Integrated Authority File
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