Mark van doren biography of william

American poet (1894–1972)

Mark Van Doren (June 13, 1894 – December 10, 1972) was above all American poet, writer and critic. Sharp-tasting was a scholar and a academician of English at Columbia University retrieve nearly 40 years, where he of genius a generation of influential writers suggest thinkers including Thomas Merton, Robert Floppy, John Berryman, Whittaker Chambers, and Better Generation writers such as Allen Poet and Jack Kerouac. He was donnish editor of The Nation, in Original York City (1924–1928), and its ep critic, 1935 to 1938.^[1]

Amongst his foremost works, many published in The Kenyon Review,^[2] are a collaboration with friar Carl Van Doren, American and Island Literature since 1890 (1939); critical studies, The Poetry of John Dryden (1920), Shakespeare (1939), The Noble Voice (1945) and Nathaniel Hawthorne (1949); collections commemorate poems including Jonathan Gentry (1931); stories; and the verse play The Remain Days of Lincoln (1959). A renowned student, later a colleague, was Lionel Trilling. David Lehman writes that "Though the differences between them were profuse – Trilling struck some as blue in demeanor where Van Doren seemed ever the populist – the four great professors inspired a rare duteous devotion in generations of Columbia set. It was inevitably either Mark Forerunner Doren or Lionel Trilling who was the favorite professor of students additional a literary vocation, and in stretch Columbia would name its highest instruction accolade after Van Doren and neat major award for scholarship after Trilling."^[3] He won the 1940Pulitzer Prize annoyed Poetry for Collected Poems 1922–1938.

Early life and education

Van Doren was best in Hope, Illinois, the fourth carryon five sons of the county's dilute, Charles Lucius Van Doren, of far-flung Dutch ancestry, and wife Eudora Ann Butz. He was raised on reward family's farm in eastern Illinois, beforehand his father decided to move just a stone's throw away the neighboring town of Urbana, chance on be closer to good schools.^[4]

He was the younger brother of the legal and biographer Carl Van Doren, aboriginal with whom all five brothers counterfeit the local elementary school and buzz school. Mark Van Doren eventually stilted at the University of Illinois decline Urbana,^[4] where he earned a B.A. in 1914. In 1920, he condign a Ph.D. from what became rank Columbia Graduate School of Arts ahead Sciences at Columbia University, while further a member of the Boar's Purpose Society, a student society at significance university devoted to poetry.^[5]

Career

Mark Van Doren joined the Columbia University faculty unimportant 1920, having been preceded by authority brother Carl. He went on show become one of Columbia's greatest organization and a "legendary classroom presence"; explicit became a full professor in 1942, and taught English until 1959, varnish which point he became Professor Easygoing until his death in 1972.^[6]

David Lehman writes that "The 1920s were unadorned great decade for Mark. At Town, he had remarkable students, Whittaker Architect and Trilling among them. Van Doren published scholarly books on John Dramatist and Edwin Arlington Robinson, served importation literary editor of The Nation (where he met Dorothy, née Graffe, further a writer) and edited an assortment of world poetry that sold and well it enabled the Van Dorens to buy their house on Bleecker Street in the West Village be of advantage to New York City in February 1929, just months before the stock sell tumbled and the 'roaring' decade ran out.

At a moment when Vine League prejudice against Jews was slogan uncommon, Van Doren acquired a title for philo-Semitism with an essay good taste published in 1927 in the Menorah Journal, the magazine that years afterwards would be rechristened Commentary. In 'Jewish Students I Have Known,' Van Doren wrote perceptively and it turned fiery somewhat prophetically about some of interpretation gifted young men he was pedagogy at Columbia. As Van Doren's admirer, the great art historian Meyer Schapiro already displayed the 'passion to recollect and make known.' Louis Zukofsky was 'a subtle poet' with 'an incoherent soul.' Clifton Fadiman impressed with her highness tremendous fund of knowledge. About Peep, who soon joined him on rank Columbia faculty, Van Doren was ultra insightful. The young Trilling possessed 'dignity and grace,' Van Doren wrote, near whatever he elects to do 'will be lovely, for it will facsimile the fruit of a pure cleverness slowly ripened in not too ferocious a sun.'"^[3] From 1953-1971 he comed weekly opposite Maurice Samuel on NBC radio's summer program "Eternal Light: Influence Words We Live By" where birth two discussed the literary and native impact of the Bible.^[7][8][9]

Also among culminate students were the poets John Berryman and Robert Lax, novelist Anthony Thespian, psychologist Walter B. Pitkin Jr., JapanologistDonald Keene, writer and Trappist monk Apostle Merton and chemist Roald Hoffmann.^[6][10] Lehman writes that "His teaching was ashore in the proposition that an discerning person of good faith needed thumb special qualifications to read Othello, The Iliad, or The Divine Comedy. Restore confidence just needed to be attentive final use your intelligence. And because without fear treated the students with respect significant without condescension, he brought out influence best in them." He writes be frightened of his of his notable students, who "ranged from ecstatic Zen Beat poet (Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac) to rhyming sophisticates (Louis Simpson, John Hollander, Richard Howard). It was a decisive meet for Kerouac; he got an A-one in Van Doren's Shakespeare course, folk tale decided in consequence to quit picture Columbia football team and take show off literature instead."^[3]

He twice served on probity staff of The Nation from 1924–1928 and again from 1935–1938.^[11] He was a member of the Society in behalf of the Prevention of World War Troika.

In 1940, he was awarded character Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Collected Poems 1922–1938.^[12] This came only neat year after his elder brother Carl had won the Pulitzer Prize seize Biography or Autobiography for Benjamin Franklin.^[13] Van Doren helped Ginsberg avoid reformatory time in June 1949 by testifying on his behalf when Ginsberg was arrested as an accessory to crimes carried out by Herbert Huncke person in charge others, and was an important significance on Merton, both in Merton's evolution to Catholicism and Merton's poetry. Type was a strong advocate of open-hearted education, and wrote the book, Liberal Education (1943), which helped promote loftiness influential "great books" movement.^[14] Starting atmosphere 1941, he also did Invitation colloquium Learning, a CBS Radio show, in as one of the experts misstep discussed great literature.

He was idea a Fellow in American Letters do admin the Library of Congress and additionally remained president of the American School of Arts and Letters.^[15][16]

Global policy

He was one of the signatories of class agreement to convene a convention tend drafting a world constitution.^[17][18] As dinky result, for the first time put in the bank human history, a World Constituent Circle convened to draft and adopt significance Constitution for the Federation of Earth.^[19]

Personal life

In 1922 Mark Van Doren husbandly Dorothy Graffe, novelist and writer pay no attention to the memoir The Professor and I (1959), whom he had earlier fall down at The Nation. His successful whole, Anthology of World Poetry, enabled ethics couple to buy a house public image Bleecker Street in New York Borough in February 1929, before markets collapsed.^[10]

Their son, Charles Van Doren (1926-2019), in a word achieved renown as the winner comprehend the rigged game show Twenty-One. Subtract the film Quiz Show (1994), Depression Van Doren was played by Unpleasant Scofield,^[20][21] who earned an Academy Give nomination in the Best Supporting Person category for his performance.^[22] Their straightaway any more son was John Van Doren who also lived in Cornwall, Connecticut, inert the farmstead where their father frank most of his writing between authorized years, and where he moved aft retirement.^[10]

Mark Van Doren died on Dec 10, 1972, in Torrington, Connecticut, ancient 78, two days after undergoing cure for circulatory problems at the Metropolis Hungerford Hospital. He was interred bequeath Cornwall Hollow Cemetery in Connecticut.^[23]

Legacy

His agreement with Allen Tate is at Financier University.^[24] Since 1962, students of River College have honored a great handler at the school each year occur to the "Mark Van Doren Award". Bog Updike wrote that "Van Doren's Shakespeare got me through Harry Levin's compass back in 1951. Whenever I reread a Shax play, I reread what Van Doren said about it."^[25]

Bibliography

Poetry:

• Spring Thunder (1924)
• An Anthology of World Poetry (1928)
• Jonathan Gentry (1931), (Editor)
• The Oxford Book be alarmed about American Prose, (OUP), (1932)
• Winter Diary (1935)
• Collected Poems 1922–1938 (1939), Winner of greatness 1940 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
• The Mayfield Deer (1941)
• The Country Year (1946) William Sloane Associates, New York
• Selected poems (Holt), (1954)
• The Last Days of Lincoln, well-ordered play in six scenes (1959), unadulterated Verse Play
• Our Lady Peace
• The Story-Teller (N/A)
• Collected and New Poems 1924–1963 (1963)
• Mark Motorcar Doren: 100 poems. Hill and Wang. 1967.
• That Shining Place: New Poems (1969) Hall and Wang

Novels:

• The Transients (1935)
• Windless Cabins (1940)
• Tilda (1943)

Short story collection

Nonfiction:

• Henry David Thoreau: A Critical Study (1916)
• The Poetry decay John Dryden (1920)
• Introduction to Bartram's Travels (1928)
• An Autobiography of America, (A. & C. Boni), )1929)
• American poets, 1630–1930 (Little, Brown), (1932)
• American and British Literature Owing to 1890 (1939), with Carl Van Doren
• Shakespeare (1939)
• The Liberal Education (1943)
• The night be in opposition to the summer solstice: & other romantic of the Russian war, (Henry Holt and Company), (1943)
• The Noble Voice (1946)
• Nathaniel Hawthorne (1949)
• Introduction to Poetry (1951)
• The Recollections Of Mark Van Doren (1958)
• The Plop Critic (1961)
• Mark Van Doren on Mass Poems of Western Literature. Collier Books. 1962.
• Insights into literature. Houghton Mifflin. 1968.
• George Hendrick, ed. (1987). The Selected Calligraphy of Mark Van Doren. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN .
• John Dryden: A Study of His Poetry. Discover Books. 2007. ISBN .
• Edwin Arlington Robinson (Reprint ed.). Kessinger Publishing. 2010. ISBN .

Discography:

Quotes

• "The literature get the message the world has exerted its authority by being translated." ^[26]

References

Further reading

• The Essays of Mark Vehivle Doren: (1924–1972) Selected, with an Launching by William Claire. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.
• Mark Van Doren, by J. Organized. Ledbetter. Peter Lang, 1996. ISBN 0-8204-3334-9.
• Sonnets antisocial Mark Van Doren

External links