Руфус Уилмот Грисволд: Америка антологиясының авторы және әдеби өмірі

American anthologist (1815–1857)

Rufus Wilmot Griswold (February 13, 1815 – August 27, 1857) was an American anthologist, editor, poet, and critic. Born in Vermont, Griswold left home when he was 15 years old. He worked as a journalist, editor, and critic in Philadelphia, New York City, and elsewhere. He built a strong literary reputation, in part due to his 1842 collection The Poets and Poetry of America. This anthology, the most comprehensive of its time, included what he deemed the best examples of American poetry. He produced revised versions and similar anthologies for the remainder of his life, although many of the poets he promoted have since faded into obscurity. Many writers hoped to have their work included in one of these editions, although they commented harshly on Griswold's abrasive character. Griswold was married three times: his first wife died young, his second marriage ended in a public and controversial divorce, and his third wife left him after the previous divorce was almost repealed. Edgar Allan Poe, whose poetry had been included in Griswold's anthology, published a critical response that questioned which poets were included. This began a rivalry which grew when Griswold succeeded Poe as editor of Graham's Magazine at a salary higher than Poe's. Later, the two competed for the attention of poet Frances Sargent Osgood. They never reconciled their differences, and after Poe's mysterious death in 1849, Griswold wrote an unsympathetic obituary. Claiming to be Poe's chosen literary executor, he began a campaign to harm Poe's reputation that lasted until his own death eight years later. Griswold considered himself an expert in American poetry and was an early proponent of its inclusion on the school curriculum. He also supported the introduction of copyright legislation, speaking to Congress on behalf of the publishing industry, but he was not above infringing the copyright of other people's work. A fellow editor remarked "even while haranguing the loudest, [he] is purloining the fastest".

Griswold was born to Rufus and Deborah (Wass) Griswold on February 13, 1815, in Vermont, near Rutland, and raised a strict Calvinist in the hamlet of Benson. He was the twelfth of fourteen children and his father was a farmer and shoemaker. As a child, Griswold was complex, unpredictable, and reckless. He left home when he was 15, calling himself a "solitary soul, wandering through the world, a homeless, joyless outcast". Griswold moved to Albany, New York, and lived with a 22 year old flute playing journalist named George C. Foster, a writer best known for his work New York by Gas Light. Griswold attempted to enroll at the Rensselaer School in 1830, but was not allowed to take any classes after he was caught attempting to play a prank on a professor.

On August 20, 1845, Griswold married Charlotte Myers, a Jewish woman; she was 42 and he was 33. Griswold had been pressured into the marriage by the woman's aunts despite his concern about their difference in religious beliefs. On their wedding night, he discovered that she was, according to Griswold biographer Joy Bayless, "through some physical misfortune, incapable of being a wife" or, as Poe biographer Kenneth Silverman explains, incapable of having sex. The contract forbade Griswold from remarrying and paid him $1,000 (~$ in ) for expenses in exchange for his daughter Caroline staying with the Myers family. After this separation, Griswold immediately moved back to Philadelphia.

A few years later, Griswold moved back to New York City, leaving his younger daughter in the care of the Myers family and his elder daughter, Emily, with relatives on her mother's side. He had by now earned the nickname "Grand Turk", and in the summer of 1847, made plans to edit an anthology of poetry by American women. He believed that women were incapable of the same kind of "intellectual" poetry as men and believed they needed to be divided: "The conditions of aesthetic ability in the two sexes are probably distinct, or even opposite", he wrote in his introduction. The selections he chose for The Female Poets of America were not necessarily the greatest examples of poetry but instead were chosen because they emphasized traditional morality and values. The same year, Griswold began working on what he considered "the maximum opus of his life", an extensive biographical dictionary. Although he worked on it for several years and even advertised for it, he never produced it. He also helped Elizabeth F. Ellet publish her book Women of the American Revolution, and was angered when she did not acknowledge his assistance in the book. In July 1848, he visited poet Sarah Helen Whitman in Providence, Rhode Island, but he had been suffering with vertigo and exhaustion, rarely leaving his apartment at New York University, and was unable to write without taking opium. He wrote to publisher James T. Fields: "I am in a terrible condition, physically and mentally. I do not know what the end will be  I am exhausted—betwixt life and death—and heaven and hell." Griswold continued editing and contributing literary criticism for various publications, both full time and freelance, including 22 months from July 1, 1850, to April 1, 1852, with The International Magazine. There, he worked with contributors including Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Mary E. Hewitt and John R. Thompson. In the November 10, 1855, issue of The Criterion, Griswold anonymously reviewed the first edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, declaring: "It is impossible to image how any man's fancy could have conceived such a mass of stupid filth". Griswold charged that Whitman was guilty of "the vilest imaginings and shamefullest license", a "degrading, beastly sensuality." Referring to Whitman's poetry, Griswold said he left "this gathering of muck to the laws which  must have the power to suppress such gross obscenity." Whitman later included Griswold's review in a new edition of Leaves of Grass. He ended his review with a phrase in Latin referring to "that horrible sin, among Christians not to be named", the stock phrase long associated with Christian condemnations of sodomy, referring in this instance to homosexual, rather than heterosexual sodomy. Griswold was the first person in the 19th century to publicly point to and stress the theme of erotic desire and acts between men in Whitman's poetry. More attention to that aspect of Whitman's poetry surfaced late in the 19th century.

After a brief flirtation with poet Alice Cary, Griswold pursued a relationship with Harriet McCrillis. He originally did not want to divorce Charlotte Myers because he "dreaded the publicity" and because of her love for his daughter. He applied for divorce at the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia on March 25, 1852. Elizabeth Ellet and Ann S. Stephens wrote to Myers urging her not to grant the divorce, and to McCrillis not to marry him. To convince Myers to agree to the divorce, Griswold allowed her to keep his daughter Caroline if she signed a statement that she had deserted him. She agreed, and the divorce was made official December 18; he likely never saw Myers or his daughter again. McCrillis and Griswold were married shortly thereafter on December 26, 1852, and settled at 196 West Twenty third Street in New York. Their son, William, was born on October 9, 1853. Ellet and Stephens continued writing to Griswold's ex wife, urging her to have the divorce repealed. Myers was convinced and filed in Philadelphia on September 23, 1853. The court, however, had lost records of the divorce and had to delay the appeal. Adding to Griswold's troubles, that fall, a gas leak in his home caused an explosion and a fire.