Stuart Fitzrandolph Merrill (August 1, 1863 in

Hempstead, New York The Town of Hempstead (also known historically as South Hempstead) is the largest of the three Administrative divisions of New York#Town, towns in Nassau County, New York, Nassau County (alongside North Hempstead, New York, North Hempstead and Oys ...

– December 1, 1915 in

Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, u ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

) was an American poet, who wrote mostly in the

French language French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in Nor ...

. He belonged to the

Symbolist Symbolism was a late 19th-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images, mainly as a reaction against naturalism and realis ...

school. His principal books of poetry were ''Les Gammes'' (1887), ''Les Fastes'' (1891), and ''Petits Poèmes d'Automne'' (1895). Stuart Merrill - reading

Life

Merrill was the product of a conservative, wealthy, Protestant upbringing. In 1866, his father George received a diplomatic appointment to

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, where Merrill would learn French and live for the next 19 years.

Stéphane Mallarmé Stéphane Mallarmé ( , ; 18 March 1842 – 9 September 1898), pen name of Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of ...

was one of Merrill's school instructors. His classmates included future symbolists

René Ghil René François Ghilbert (27 September 1862 – 15 September 1925), known as René Ghil, was a French poet. He was a disciple of Stéphane Mallarmé, a major contributor to the Symbolism (arts), symbolist movement in France, although they later ...

and

Pierre Quillard Pierre Quillard (born Paris, 14 July 1864 - died Neuilly-sur-Seine, 4 February 1912) was a French symbolist poet, playwright, translator (from Greek), and journalist. An anarchist and supporter of Dreyfus, he later became one of the first ...

. Merrill ran a weekly journal, ''Le fou'', before returning to the States in 1884 to attend law school. On April 15, 1887, Merrill went to Madison Square Theater in New York to hear

Walt Whitman Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among t ...

give his famous "

Death of Abraham Lincoln On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was Assassination, assassinated by well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth, while attending the play ''Our American Cousin'' at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. S ...

" 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. When

George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...

attempted to circulate a petition in London calling for the release of

Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...

, imprisoned for

homosexuality Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to peop ...

, Merrill made a similar attempt to get notable artists and intellectuals to sign a similar petition in the United States. 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 to be published in America during his lifetime. The same year, he returned to Europe permanently and he married in 1891. For the years 1893–1908, his address was 53 Quai de Bourbon,

Île Saint-Louis Île Saint-Louis (), in size, is one of two natural islands in the Seine river, in Paris, France (the other natural island is the Île de la Cité, where Notre-Dame de Paris is located). Île Saint-Louis is connected to the rest of Paris by ...

, Paris. Several more books, including ''Les fastes'' in 1891 and ''Petits poèmes d’automne'' in 1895, were published before his death of heart disease in 1915. In 1927 a small traffic way in the

17th arrondissement of Paris The 17th arrondissement of Paris (''XVIIe arrondissement'') is one of the 20 arrondissements of the capital city of France. In spoken French, it is referred to as ''le dix-septième'' (; "the seventeenth"). The arrondissement, known as Batignoll ...

took the name Place Stuart-Merrill.

Works

* ''Les gammes'' (''The Ranges''), Vanier, Paris, 1887 * ''Pastels en 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

* * *
Poems by Stuart Merrill

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Merrill, Stuart 1863 births 1915 deaths People from Hempstead (village), New York French-language poets American male poets American poets in French American writers in French Symbolist poets French–English translators 19th-century translators 19th-century American male writers