Sadakichi Hartmann, American decadent

Logo-costive, I will only exude that Hartmann should be on every good decadence enthusiast's reading list (see Huneker's and Thompson's remarks in the essay below. Fine accolades from the editors of M'lle New York).

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/hartmann/life.htm

Sadakichi Hartmann is primarily known as an art critic. He was also a playwright and a poet. A protege of Walt Whitman and a friend of Stephane Mallarme, Hartmann arrived in the US in his early teens. The the son of a German father and a Japanese mother, he was nearly interred when in his mid-seventies at the outset of the second world war.

Here is a link to one of his short stories (furnishing the title of his 1899 collection), Schopenhauer in the Air:

https://archive.org/details/jstor-20494241

Other links to articles on SH:

http://www.believermag.com/issues/201305/?read=article_legro

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/hartmann/poetry.htm

Very interesting! I knew nothing of Sadakichi Hartmann, except that "The Thief of Bagdad"(1924) is one of my favorite films because of the lavish production featuring fantastic sets designed by William Cameron Menzies and the wonderful cast. Anna May Wong is unforgettable in it. It is exciting to learn about this very interesting man who played the magician in that remarkable film.

Mahlon Blaine claimed that he also contributed to the design of the film but it may be another of his yarns...
J

Sadakichi Hartmann, some early poems:

CYANOGEN SEAS ARE SURGING

Cyanogen seas are surging over fierce
cinnabarine strands, where white amazons
are marching in the radiance of the sands.

Oh, were my lambent love flame but like
the surging sea, deluge the red of the
desert and drown the white virgins in me.

(1897)

-------------------------------------------

THE COURTESAN'S COMPLAINT

When within me you move like a dream,
your soul roam o'er distant streams, on
whose surface idoneously gleam strange
flowers of other lives.

For love is destined to doom, when passion
in starlit gloom spins in her sinister
loom the shroud for the joys of night.

(1897)