Sadakichi Hartmann

Photograph of Hartmann from 1914 by Howard D. Beach

Carl Sadakichi Hartmann (1867-1944) 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 was temporarily recognized as a sort of 'King of Bohemia' in New York's Greenwich Village. 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 visiting his daughter in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Hartmann wrote some of the earliest English language haiku. He was also one of the first critics to write about photography.

References

Weaver, Jane (ed.). Sadakichi Hartmann: Critical Modernist. University of California Press, 1991. ISBN 978-0520067677

External links

• Detailed Biography, Bibliography and More at Modern American Poetry
• Drifting Flowers of the Sea and Other Poems, downloadable, at Google Books

Donate to Wikimedia