Conrad Potter Aiken

Conrad Potter Aiken was an American novelist and poet, whose work includes poetry, short stories, novels, a play and an autobiography.

Early Years

Aiken was the son of wealthy, socially prominent New Englanders who had moved to Savannah, Georgia, where his father became a highly respected physician and surgeon. But then something happened for which, as Aiken later said, no one could ever find a reason. Without warning or apparent cause, his father became increasingly irascible, unpredictable, and violent. Then, early in the morning of February 27, 1901, he murdered his wife and shot himself. According to his own writings, Aiken (who was eleven years old) heard the gunshots and discovered the bodies. He was raised by his aunt in Massachusetts. Aiken was educated at private schools and at Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts, then at Harvard University where he edited the Advocate with T.S. Eliot who became a lifelong friend and associate.

Aiken's earliest poetry was written partly under the influence of a beloved teacher, the philosopher George Santayana This relation shaped Aiken as a poet who was deeply musical in his approach and, at the same time, philosophical in seeking answers to his own problems and the problems of the modern world.

Adult Years

Aiken was deeply influenced by symbolism, especially in his earlier works. In 1930 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Selected Poems. Many of his writings had psychological themes. He wrote the widely anthologized short story Silent Snow, Secret Snow (1934). His collections of verse include Earth Triumphant (1911), The Charnel Rose (1918) and And In the Hanging Gardens (1933). His poem Music I Heard has been set to music by a number of composers, including Leonard Bernstein and Henry Cowell.

Aiken wrote or edited more than 51 books, the first of which was published in 1914, two years after his graduation from Harvard. His work includes novels, short stories (The Collected Short Stories appeared in 1961), criticism, autobiography, and, most important of all, poetry. He was awarded the National Medal for Literature, the Gold Medal for Poetry from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Pulitzer Prize, the Bollingen Prize, and the National Book Award. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, taught briefly at Harvard, and served as Consultant in Poetry for the Library of Congress from 1950 to 1952. He was also largely responsible for establishing Emily Dickinson's reputation as a major American poet.

After 1960, when his work was rediscovered by readers and critics, a new view of Aiken emerged—one that emphasized his psychological problems, along with his continuing study of Sigmund Freud, Carl G. Jung, and other depth psychologists. Two of his five novels deal with depth psychology.

Conrad Aiken's interest in Freud was reciprocated by the great psychoanalyst, who was equally interested in how Aiken used Freudian concepts in his fiction. Freud went so far as to call Aiken's Great Circle one of his favorite novels. At one point Freud expressed interest in meeting Aiken face-to-face to discuss psychoanalysis. Aiken agreed and set off to Europe, but by chance on the boat over met Erich Fromm, a Freud disciple, who convinced Aiken that it would be a bad idea for the writer to have sessions with Freud. Because of this, the two never met.

Personal Life

Conrad and his family with Jessie McDonald lived in England, where his third child was born, from 1921 to the beginning of World War II. During his time in England, he served in loco parentis as well as mentor to the budding English author Malcolm Lowry. In 1923 he acted as a witness at the marriage of his friend the poet W. H. Davies. In 1950, he became Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, more commonly known as Poet Laureate of the United States.

Aiken returned to Savannah for the last 11 years of his life. Aiken's tomb, located in Bonaventure Cemetery on the banks of the Wilmington River, was made famous by its mention in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, the bestselling book by John Berendt. According to local legend, Aiken wished to have his tombstone fashioned in the shape of a bench as an invitation to visitors to stop and enjoy a martini at his grave. Its inscriptions read "Give my love to the world," and "Cosmos Mariner—Destination Unknown."

He was married three times: first to Jessie McDonald (1912–1929); second to Clarissa Lorenz (1930) (author of a biography, Lorelei Two); and third to Mary Hoover (1937). He was the father, by Jessie McDonald, of the English writers Jane Aiken Hodge and Joan Aiken. Aiken had three younger siblings, Kempton, Robert and Elizabeth. They were adopted by Frederick Winslow Taylor and his wife Louise, a distant relative, and took Taylor's last name. Kempton was known as K. P. A. Taylor (Kempton Potter Aiken Taylor) and Robert was known as Robert P. A. Taylor (Robert Potter Aiken Taylor). Kempton helped establish the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry.

The best source for information on Aiken's life is his autobiographical novel Ushant (1952), one of his major works. In this book he speaks candidly about his various affairs and marriages, his attempted suicide and fear of insanity, and his friendships with T.S. Eliot (who appears in the book as The Tsetse), Ezra Pound (Rabbi Ben Ezra), and other accomplished men.

Awards and Recognition

Named Poetry Consultant of the Library of Congress from 1950–1952, Conrad Aiken has earned numerous prestigious national writing awards, including a National Book Award, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry, the National Institute of Arts and Letters Gold Medal and the National Medal for Literature. Honored by his native state in 1973 with the title of Poet Laureate, Aiken will always be remembered in his native state as the first Georgia-born author to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1930, for his Selected Poems.

Aiken was the first winner of the Poetry Society of America (PSA) Shelley Memorial Award in 1929.

In 2009, The Library of America selected Aiken’s 1931 story “Mr. Arcularis” for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American Fantastic Tales.

Conrad Potter Aiken's Works:

Poems

Morning Song of Senlin
A Letter from Li Po
All Lovely Things
Beloved, Let Us Once More Praise the Rain
Chiarascuro, Rose
Discordants
Evening Song of Senlin
Hatteras Calling
Improvisations: Light and Snow
Music I Heard
Nocturne of Remembered Spring
Senlin: His Cloudy Destiny
Senlin: His Dark Origins
Senlin: His Futile Preoccupations
Tetelestai
The Carver
The House Of Dust
The Room
The Trenches
The Window
Turns And Movies: Dancing Adairs
Turns And Movies: Duval's Birds
Turns And Movies: Rose And Murray
Turns And Movies: The Cornet
Turns And Movies: Violet Moore And Bert Moore
Turns And Movies: Zudora

Poetry collections

Earth Triumphant (Aiken, 1914)
Turns and Movies and other Tales in Verse (Aiken, 1916, Houghton Mifflin)
Nocturne of Remembered Spring: And Other Poems (Aiken, 1917)
Charnel Rose (Aiken, 1918)
Selected Poems (Dickinson/Aiken, 1924)

Novels, short stories, memoirs and literary criticism

The Jig of Forslin (1916)
Scepticisms: Notes on Contemporary Poetry (1919)
Blue Voyage (1927)
Great Circle (1933)
King Coffin (1935)
A Heart for the Gods of Mexico (1939)
The Conversation (1940)
Ushant (1952)
Collected Short Stories (1960)
A Reviewer's ABC: Collected Criticism of Conrad Aiken from 1916 to the Present (1961)
Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken (1966)
Thee (1967)