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George Sterling

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George sterling

George Sterling (1869-1926) from The Testimony of the Suns, and other poems, 1903. Courtesy Internet Archive.

George Sterling (December 1, 1869 - November 17, 1926) was an American poet, who during his lifetime was celebrated in northern California as a great American poet, though never gaining comparable fame in the rest of the United States.

Life[]

Sterling was born in Sag Harbor, Long Island, New York, the eldest of 9 children. His father was Dr. George A. Sterling, a physician. His mother Mary was a member of the Havens family, prominent in Sag Harbor and the Shelter Island area.

His father was determined to make a priest of a son, and George was selected. For 2 years he attended St. Charles College in Maryland, where he was instructed in English by John Bannister Tabb, then an unpublished poet.

Sterling's uncle, Frank C. Havens, went to San Francisco in the late 19th century and established himself as a prominent lawyer and real estate developer. Sterling eventually followed him to the Bay Area in 1890 and worked for 18 years as a real estate broker.

800px-Mary Austin, Jack London, George Sterling, Jimmie Hooper, restored

(l to r) George Sterling, Mary Austin, Jack London, & James Hooper in Carmel, California. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Sterling became a significant figure in bohemian literary circles in northern California in the early 20th century. In the development of the artists' colony in Carmel, he was mentored by a much older Ambrose Bierce, and became close friends with Jack London and Clark Ashton Smith, and later a mentor to Robinson Jeffers. His association with Charles Rollo Peters may have led to his move to Carmel. The hamlet had been discovered by Charles Warren Stoddard and others, but Sterling made the place world famous. His aunt Missus Havens purchased a home for him in Carmel Pines where he lived for 6 years.

File:George Sterling with art 1907.jpg

Sterling, posing with caricatures of himself at the Bohemian Grove, 1907

Kevin Starr (1973) wrote:

"The uncrowned King of Bohemia (so his friends called him), Sterling had been at the center of every artistic circle in the San Francisco Bay Area. Celebrated as the embodiment of the local artistic scene, though forgotten today, Sterling had in his lifetime been linked with the immortals, his name carved on the walls of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition next to the great poets of the past."

Joseph Noel (1940) says that Sterling's poem, "A Wine of Wizardry,"[1] has "been classed by many authorities as the greatest poem ever written by an American author."

According to Noel, Sterling sent the final draft of A Wine of Wizardry to the normally acerbic and critical Ambrose Bierce. Bierce said "If I could find a flaw in it, I should quickly call your attention to it... It takes the breath away."

Sterling joined the Bohemian Club and acted in their theatrical productions each summer at the Bohemian Grove.[2] For the main Grove play in 1907, the club presented The Triumph of Bohemia, Sterling's verse drama depicting the battle between the "Spirit of Bohemia" and Mammon for the souls of the grove's woodmen.[3] Sterling also supplied lyrics for the musical numbers at the 1918 Grove play.[2]

Bierce, who acclaimed Sterling's poem "The Testimony of the Suns in his "Prattle" column in the San Francisco Examiner, arranged for the publication of "A Wine of Wizardry" in the September 1907 Cosmopolitan, which afforded Sterling some national notice. In an introduction to the poem, Bierce wrote "Whatever length of days may be according to this magazine, it is not likely to do anything more notable in literature than it accomplished in this issue by the publication of Mr. George Sterling's poem, 'A Wine of Wizardry.'" Bierce wrote to Sterling, "I hardly know how to speak of it. No poem in English of equal length has so bewildering a wealth of imagination. Not Spencer himself has flung such a profusion of jewels into so small a casket".

File:005-a-Ruby-kindles-in-the-vine-810x1146.jpg

George Sterling posed for an illustration by Adelaide Hanscom Leeson which appeared in a printing of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

Sterling fell into drinking and his wife departed. Noel, a personal acquaintance, says that when he began the poem, Sterling "was persuaded that there was another world than that we know. He repeated this to me so frequently that it became a trifle tiresome. Of the means he employed to get a glimpse of that other world, I am not so sure." He observes that "many before Sterling had used narcotics to this end;" that "George, a doctor's son, had always had access to whatever drugs he fancied;" says that Sterling's wife said "that George had purloined a great quantity of opium from his brother Wickham," and speaks of "internal evidence in the poem" in which "Sterling writes his Fancy awakened with a 'brow caressed by poppybloom.'" Despite all this, Noel makes a point of saying "there is no direct evidence that Sterling used narcotics."

Sterling also wrote a children's book, The Saga of the Pony Express.

Despite such famous mentors as Bierce and Ina Coolbrith, and his long association with London, Sterling himself never became well known outside California.

Sterling carried a vial of cyanide for many years. When asked about it he said "A prison becomes a home if you have the key".[4] Iin November 1926, Sterling used it at his residence at the Bohemian Club. Kevin Starr wrote that "When George Sterling's corpse was discovered in his room at the Bohemian Club ... the golden age of San Francisco's bohemia had definitely come to a miserable end."

Writing[]

Sterling's poetry is both visionary and mystical, but he also wrote ribald quatrains that were often unprintable and left unpublished.   His style reflects the Romantic charm of such poets as Shelley, Keats and Poe, and he provided guidance and encouragement to the similarly-inclined Clark Ashton Smith at the beginning of Smith's own career.

Sterling's most famous line was delivered to the city of San Francisco, "the cool, grey city of love!".[5]

Recognition[]

  • Sterling Road in Berkeley, California is named for him.
  • A stone bench was dedicated to Sterling on June 25th, 1926 at the crest of Hyde Street on Russian Hill in San Francisco.
  • He is depicted twice in novels by Jack London: as Russ Brissenden in the autobiographical Martin Eden (1909) and as Mark Hall in The Valley of the Moon (1913).

Publications[]

Testimony of the suns

Poetry[]

Plays[]

Non-fiction[]

Edited[]

  • Continent's End: An anthology of contemporary California poets. San Francisco: Book Club of California / John Henry Nash, 1925.

Letters[]

  • Give a Man a Boat He Can Sail: Letters (edited by James Henry). Detroit: Harlo, 1980.
  • From Baltimore to Bohemia: Letters of H.L. Mencken and George Sterling (with H.L. Mencken; edited by S.T. Joshi & Robert Sterling). Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press / London & Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2001.
  • Dear Master: Letters of George Sterling to Ambrose Beirce, 1900-1921. San Francisco: Book Club of California, 2002.


Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.[6]

See also[]

As_It_Was_in_the_Beginning_(Poetry_Audiobook)_by_George_Sterling

As It Was in the Beginning (Poetry Audiobook) by George Sterling

The_Siren's_Song_Poetry_Audiobook_by_George_Sterling

The Siren's Song Poetry Audiobook by George Sterling

The_Cool,_Grey_City_of_Love_San_Francisco_by_George_Sterling

The Cool, Grey City of Love San Francisco by George Sterling

References[]

  • Benediktsson, Thomas E. (1980).  George Sterling.  Boston: Twayne Publishers.  ISBN 0-8057-7313-4.
  • Cusatis, John (2006).  "George Sterling."  Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry, Volume 5, Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishers, 1530-1531.
  • Joshi, S. T. (2008).  “George Sterling: Prophet of the Suns,” chapter 1 in Emperors of Dreams: Some notes on weird poetry. Sydney: P’rea Press. ISBN 978-0-9804625-3-1 (pbk) and ISBN 978-0-9804625-4-8 (hbk).
  • Noel, Joseph (1940).  Footloose in Arcadia.  New York: Carrick and Evans.
  • Parry, Albert, "Lovely Chaos in Carmel and Taos", chapter 20 of Garretts & Pretenders: A history of bohemianism in America, 1933; republished in 1960 and 2005, Cosimo, Inc. ISBN 159605090X
  • Starr, Kevin (1973).  Americans and the California Dream 1850-1915.  Oxford University Press.  1986 reprint: ISBN 0-19-504233-6

Fonds[]

Notes[]

  1. ↑ A Wine of Wizardry at www.idiom.com
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Mencken, Henry Louis; Sterling, George; Joshi, S.T. From Baltimore to Bohemia: the letters of H.L. Mencken and George Sterling, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 2001, p. 252. ISBN 0838638694
  3. ↑ Weir, David. Decadent culture in the United States: art and literature against the American grain, 1890-1926, SUNY Press, 2007, p. 144. ISBN 0791472779
  4. ↑ The Documentary "The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick"
  5. ↑ The Cool, Grey City of Love, by George Sterling at alangullette.com
  6. ↑ Search results = au:George Sterling, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Apr. 15, 2014.

External links[]

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