Sadakichi Hartmann



Carl Sadakichi Hartmann (November 8, 1867 - November 22, 1944) was a critic and poet of German and Japanese descent.

Hartmann, born on the artificial island of Dejima, Nagasaki and raised in Germany, became an American citizen in 1894. An important early participant in modernism, Hartmann was a friend of such diverse figures as Walt Whitman, Stéphane Mallarmé and Ezra Pound. His poetry, deeply influenced by the Symbolists as well as Eastern literature, includes 1904's Drifting Flowers of the Sea and Other Poems, 1913's My Rubaiyat and 1915's Japanese Rhythms. His works of criticism include Shakespeare in Art (1901) and Japanese Art (1904). During the 1910s, Hartmann let himself be crowned King of the Bohemians by Guido Bruno in New York's Greenwich Village. Hartmann wrote some of the earliest English language haiku. He was also one of the first critics to write about photography, with regular essays in Alfred Steiglitz's Camera Notes.

Later years found him living in Hollywood and Banning, California. He made a brief appearance in the Douglas Fairbanks film The Thief of Bagdad as the court magician. In 1944, he died while visiting his daughter in St. Petersburg, Florida.