Stuart Merrill

Stuart Fitzrandolph Merrill (August 1, 1863 – 1915) was an American poet, born in Hempstead, New Yorkcite web
url = http://home.jps.net/~nada/merrill.htm
title = Ramez Qureshi on Stuart Merrill's The White Tomb: Selected Writing
accessdate = 2007-09-12
last = Qureshi
first = Ramez] , who wrote mostly in the French language. He belonged to the Symbolist school. His principal books of poetry were "Les Gammes" (1887). "Les Fastes" (1891), and "Petits Poèmes d'Automne" (1895).

Life

Merrill had a conservative, wealthy, Protestant upbringing. In 1866, his father George received a diplomatic appointment to Paris, where Merrill would learn French and live for the next 19 years. Stéphane Mallarmé was one of Merrill’s school instructors. His classmates included future symbolists René Ghil and Pierre Quillard. Merrill ran a weekly journal, "Le fou", before returning to the States in 1884 to attend law school. On April 15th, 1887, Merrill went to Madison Square Theater in New York to hear Walt Whitman give his famous "Death of Abraham Lincoln" lecture. Afterwards, Merrill had the opportunity to meet Whitman, an experience he later recorded in the magazine "Le Masque." [Stuart Merrill, "Walt Whitman" (Toronto: Henry S. Saunders, 1922)]

Also in 1887, Merrill published his first book of poems, "Les gammes", in Paris, and received wide critical acclaim in Europe. As his literary career took off he participated in radical political causes, siding with the anarchists in the famous Haymarket riots. Although Merrill's father disinherited him for his politics, his mother would continue to support him financially throughout his life.

In 1890, Merrill published "Pastels in Prose", a collection of his translations of French prose poems. This was his only book ever to be published in America. The same year, he returned to Europe permanently. He married in 1891, and published several more books before his death of heart disease in 1915, including "Les fastes" in 1891 and "Petits poems d’automne" in 1895.

Works

* "Les gammes" ("The Ranges"), Vanier, Paris, 1887
* "Pastels in Prose", Harper & Brothers, New York, 1890
* "Les Fastes" ("The Record"), 1891
* "Petits Poèmes d'Automne" ("Little Autumnal Poems"), 1895
* "Les quatre saisons" ("The Four Seasons"), Mercure de France, Paris, 1900
* "Walt Whitman", Henry S. Saunders, 1922
* "Prose et vers : œuvres posthumes" ("Prose and Verse: Posthumous Works"), A. Messein, Paris, 1925
* "The White Tomb: Selected Writing", Talisman House, 1999

References

External links

* [http://www.blackcatpoems.com/m/stuart_merrill.html Poems by Stuart Merrill]
* [http://poesie.webnet.fr/auteurs/merrill.html Selected poems (in French)]