Katherine Anne Porter:
Contemporary
Author-Allen Tate
by Terence Makoid
Just as writers grow and develop in various stages
of life, so does their subject matter
Allen Tate was one of these writers that cultivated a variety
of topics over his time as an author of poetry. According
to Hobson, Tate was born as
John Orley Allen Tate
in Kentucky in 1899,
and lacked support during his early childhood from a failed family, both
financially and martially. This need for support
and love drove him away from his family and into college at
Vanderbilt University
Fugitive . This unique journal was named after
its contributors, including John Ransom, and Robert Penn Warren to name
a few, that wanted to flee “from the high-caste Brahmins of the Old South”
( Hobson
2). After graduating Vanderbilt magna
cum laude, Tate was motivated to travel for inspirational opportunities,
going to New York,
London and Paris
, and then back again to the ‘Agrarian’ south, each destination incorporating
a peak point to his life and writing. in 1918 through
1922 where he began his writing career in a poetry journal known as the
In New York
, Tate initiated the beginning stage of writing, working for whomever
he could while starting a family. According to
Havird, Tate wrote freelance articles and reviews for the
Nation and the New
Republic
. Tate wrote an introduction to Crane’s first volume
of poetry White Buildings (1926).
He spent much of his four years in New York
(1924-1928) writing various poems for his first collection,
Mr. Pope and Other Poems along with a biography on, Stonewall
Jackson: The Good Soldier. Here Tate still was
still connected to his roots in the south, even though he had physically
removed himself from that society. In the meantime
Tate commenced a relationship with Caroline Gordon, a novelist, marrying
her in 1925 with a child not far behind. Following,
Tate accepted a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1928, taking him and his wife abroad
(
Havird
5).
In Europe he met and worked
with many of his idols and superior literary philosophers of his time.
Although Tate had once idolized H. L. Mecken
, who criticized the south for its lack of culture, Tate moved his favoritism
toward French symbolism (
Lauter
2). As Hobson recalles
, Tate began his European excursion in London
, where he met and worked with T. S. Eliot, one that Tate admired for
most of his career. He loved Eliot’s social and political
concerns found within his literature. Tate then
went on to Paris where he became
friends with the famous writers Robert Frost and Ernest Hemingway.
He also got to meet with Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald,
although only staying acquaintances, as he gave them little of his time
for they had hardly any use to him (Hobson 10). However,
abroad he still pondered about his southern upbringings and what those
experiences meant to him and his writing,
Tate decided to return to Clarksville
, Tennessee in 1930, where Tate settled
onto a farm with his family and embraced the southern culture he had left
so many years ago. Havird
explained how Tate contributed to the publication of I’ll
Take My Stand (1930) which held strong against the urban industrialized
north. Tate also became co-editor of
Who Owns
America?
in 1936, which promoted a more political side of him, voicing
against Fascism and Communism and for Democracy.
At his time he also published The Mediterranean and Other Poems
(1936) as well as a self-analytical essay “Narcissus as Narcissus”
(1938) that presented his mission in the analysis of looking at the modern
era versus the past. Also in 1938, Tate published
The Fathers, a thorough examination of the south, and its
weakness and civilization. After becoming well known
for this novel, he was granted residency at Princeton
University, where he taught
and influenced many until 1942. He later became
the editor of the Sewanee Review until 1947 and then went
back to teaching at the University
of Minnesota from 1951 until
his retirement. Tate began to go away from this
agrarianism and began to write on secular subject matter.
He published The Forlorn Demon: Didactic
and Critical Essays , which included a depiction of the hell of human
existence which knows no end (Havird 8).
This end to agrarianism in his writing marked a new beginning
ot
his most pensive ending years of his life.
Tate converted to Roman Catholicism in 1950, as he believed that, “[t]
he end of social man is communion in time through love, which
is beyond time” (Havird
Through this internal reflection period, Tate divorced Gordon in 1959,
remarried Isabella Gardener same year, though divorcing her and remarrying
in 1966 a former student of his from Minnesota
. This final marriage gave him a second child in
1969. Even though Roman Catholicism denounces divorcing,
he felt that this new path in life would bring greatness to him.
Havird explains that he had finished
his influence on his society and then looked upon changing himself, being
more secular and realizing what he wanted out of his life (
Havird 12). Even with all of these drastic
changes, Tate passed away not to long in 1979. 12).
Allen Tate was always a man on the go, in constant pursuit of the meaning
to each part of his life. He began writing for a
poetry journal with his peers and professors at
Vanderbilt University
, which sparked his interest to follow this career path in a turbulent
and meaningful life. Each destination always brought
a unique influence to his writing, whether up north, in Europe
or back at home in the south. Tate tried to find
various ways of leaving his past behind in the south, by disregarding its
culture as an old way of doing things. However, in
his later years he learned to appreciate what the south for what it was
and became a great influence to the ‘agrarianism’ period of writing.
Works Cited
Academy of
American Poets,
The. “Allen Tate”. via
the World Wide Web:
http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=16
Havird, David. “Allen
Tate’s Life and Career”. Via the World Wide
Web:
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/tate/life.htm
.
Hobson, Fred. “
Allen Tate's ambivalent, artificial relationship with the South
”.
The Cosmopolitan Provincial. December 2000.
Via the World Wide Web:
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/12/hobson.htm
Lauter, Paul. ed. “Allen Tate.” The Heath
Anthology of American Literature. 4th
ed. Via the World Wide
Web:
http://college.hmco.com/english/lauter/heath/4e/students/author_pages/modern/tate_al.html
Porter
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