Frederic Prokosch
Encyclopedia
Frederic Prokosch was an American writer, known for his novels, poetry, memoirs and criticism. He was also a distinguished translator.
, into an intellectual family that travelled widely. His father, Eduard Prokosch
, an Austria
n immigrant, was Professor of Germanic Languages at Yale University
at the time of his death in 1938. Prokosch was graduated from Haverford College
in 1925 and received a Ph.D. in English in 1932 from Yale University. In his youth, he was an accomplished racquetball
player; he represented the Yale Club in the 1937 New York State squash racquets championship. He won the squash-racquets championship of France in 1938.
During World War II, Prokosch was a cultural attaché at the American Legation in Sweden
. He spent most of the remainder of his life in Europe, where he led a peripatetic existence. His interests were sports (tennis
and squash
), lepidoptery, and the printing of limited editions of poems that he admired.
Prokosch was involved at least twice in forgeries for profit. In 1948 he forged William Butler Yeats's presentation inscription on a copy of his own privately printed edition of Yeat's "The Singing Head and the Lady." In 1968 he arranged to sell a number of these editions (soon to be labeled the "butterfly books"). When it was discovered that the pamphlets had been printed long after their alleged imprint dates, Prokosch admitted to the forgeries. When questioned, he characterized his actions as a prank.
From early on, Prokosch sought to surround himself with a veil of mystification and cast his life into a hopeless riddle. Approaching his sixtieth year, he boasted that no person had succeeded in knowing him as an integral personality: "I have spent my life alone, utterly alone, and no biography of me could ever more than scratch the surface. All the facts in Who’s Who, or whatever, are so utterly meaningless. My real life (if I ever dared to write it!) has transpired in darkness, secrecy, fleeting contacts and incommunicable delights, any number of strange picaresque escapades and even crimes, and I don't think that any of my 'friends' have even the faintest notion of what I'm really lie or have any idea of what my life has really consisted of. . . .With all the surface 'respectability,' diplomatic and scholarly and illustrious social contacts, my real life has been subversive, anarchic, vicious, lonely, and capricious."
The publication of Voices: A Memoir in 1983, advertised as a record of his encounters with some of the century's leading artists and writers, returned Prokosch to the limelight. His early novels The Asiatics and The Seven Who Fled were reissued to much public acclaim. In 2010, “Voices” was shown to be almost wholly fictitious and part of an enormous hoax. Prokosch died in Le Plan-de-Grasse (near Grasse
), France
.
said about The Seven Who Fled, "Prokosch has invented what might be called the geographical novel, in which he mingles sensuality with irony, lucidity with mystery. He conveys a fatalistic sense of life half hidden beneath a rich animal energy. He is a master of moods and undertones, a virtuoso in the feeling of place, and he writes in a style of supple elegance."
New York Times critic L.H. Titterton wrote about The Asiatics:
Writing in the New York Times, Harold Strauss said about The Seven Who Fled (which won the Harper Prize):
After the 1930s, popular interest in Prokosch's writing declined, but he continued to write steadily and to solidify his reputation as a writer’s writer with an elite following that included Thomas Mann
, André Gide
, Sinclair Lewis
, Albert Camus
, Thornton Wilder
, Dylan Thomas
, Anthony Burgess
, Raymond Queneau
, Somerset Maugham, Lawrence Durrell
, Gore Vidal
, and T.S. Eliot. “Pondering about Prokosch and his fate, I have come to the conclusion,” wrote Isaac Bashevis Singer, “that he is himself in a way at fault for being so woefully neglected. He has not cared to husband his natural riches….His roots are in this land. If Prokosch, like Faulkner, had limited his creative energies to one milieu, one region, he would certainly be counted today among the pillars of American literature.” Among the most noteworthy of Prokosch’s latter-day writings are A Tale for Midnight (1955), a Gothicized retelling of the Cenci story; The Missolonghi Manuscript (1968), a “mediation” on the romantic artist; and America, My Wilderness (1972), an excursion into magical realism. Prokosch was named a Commander dans l'Order des Arts et Lettres by the French government in 1984 and awarded the Volterra Prize two years later. His novels have been translated into fifteen languages.
Biography
Prokosch was born in Madison, WisconsinMadison, Wisconsin
Madison is the capital of the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Dane County. It is also home to the University of Wisconsin–Madison....
, into an intellectual family that travelled widely. His father, Eduard Prokosch
Eduard Prokosch
Eduard Prokosch, was a historical linguist who specialized in Indo-European and, specifically, Proto-Germanic studies. He was the father of Frederic Prokosch....
, an Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n immigrant, was Professor of Germanic Languages at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
at the time of his death in 1938. Prokosch was graduated from Haverford College
Haverford College
Haverford College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college located in Haverford, Pennsylvania, United States, a suburb of Philadelphia...
in 1925 and received a Ph.D. in English in 1932 from Yale University. In his youth, he was an accomplished racquetball
Racquetball
For other sports often called "paddleball", see Paddleball .Racquetball is a racquet sport played with a hollow rubber ball in an indoor or outdoor court...
player; he represented the Yale Club in the 1937 New York State squash racquets championship. He won the squash-racquets championship of France in 1938.
During World War II, Prokosch was a cultural attaché at the American Legation in Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
. He spent most of the remainder of his life in Europe, where he led a peripatetic existence. His interests were sports (tennis
Tennis
Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...
and squash
Squash (sport)
Squash is a high-speed racquet sport played by two players in a four-walled court with a small, hollow rubber ball...
), lepidoptery, and the printing of limited editions of poems that he admired.
Prokosch was involved at least twice in forgeries for profit. In 1948 he forged William Butler Yeats's presentation inscription on a copy of his own privately printed edition of Yeat's "The Singing Head and the Lady." In 1968 he arranged to sell a number of these editions (soon to be labeled the "butterfly books"). When it was discovered that the pamphlets had been printed long after their alleged imprint dates, Prokosch admitted to the forgeries. When questioned, he characterized his actions as a prank.
From early on, Prokosch sought to surround himself with a veil of mystification and cast his life into a hopeless riddle. Approaching his sixtieth year, he boasted that no person had succeeded in knowing him as an integral personality: "I have spent my life alone, utterly alone, and no biography of me could ever more than scratch the surface. All the facts in Who’s Who, or whatever, are so utterly meaningless. My real life (if I ever dared to write it!) has transpired in darkness, secrecy, fleeting contacts and incommunicable delights, any number of strange picaresque escapades and even crimes, and I don't think that any of my 'friends' have even the faintest notion of what I'm really lie or have any idea of what my life has really consisted of. . . .With all the surface 'respectability,' diplomatic and scholarly and illustrious social contacts, my real life has been subversive, anarchic, vicious, lonely, and capricious."
The publication of Voices: A Memoir in 1983, advertised as a record of his encounters with some of the century's leading artists and writers, returned Prokosch to the limelight. His early novels The Asiatics and The Seven Who Fled were reissued to much public acclaim. In 2010, “Voices” was shown to be almost wholly fictitious and part of an enormous hoax. Prokosch died in Le Plan-de-Grasse (near Grasse
Grasse
-See also:*Route Napoléon*Ancient Diocese of Grasse*Communes of the Alpes-Maritimes department-External links:*...
), France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
.
Literary work
Prokosch's novels The Asiatics and The Seven Who Fled received widespread attention in the 1930s. The action in both of these narratives takes place in Asia, a continent Prokosch had not visited but wrote about from his imagination. Landscape descriptions are so prevalent that the landscape often takes on the role of a character in its own right. Albert CamusAlbert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
said about The Seven Who Fled, "Prokosch has invented what might be called the geographical novel, in which he mingles sensuality with irony, lucidity with mystery. He conveys a fatalistic sense of life half hidden beneath a rich animal energy. He is a master of moods and undertones, a virtuoso in the feeling of place, and he writes in a style of supple elegance."
New York Times critic L.H. Titterton wrote about The Asiatics:
- "Whether such adventures ever happened to any one man, or whether, as seems far more likely, the author has supplemented certain experiences of his own by a rich imagination, using as its basis information gathered through wide reading, is immaterial. For this is actually a quiet, meditative book into which adventurous episodes have been introduced simply as a device for displaing various aspects of the Asiatic mind and spirit. It is the work of a man of a deeply poetic nature possessed of an astonishing ability to describe in a few words a color, a scene, an odor, an emotional situation, an attitude of mind, an idea; words so well chosen that passage after passage seems perfectly to express some truth that we have many times, in a stumbling way, attempted to state.
Writing in the New York Times, Harold Strauss said about The Seven Who Fled (which won the Harper Prize):
- In singing, supple prose, with an evocative power strange to our earthbound ears, with passion and often with fury, Frederic Prokosch takes us off to the vast, mysterious reaches of Central Asia. It is a weird adventure of the spirit on which he leads us. For, mistake not, despite the apparently realistic description of the endless reaches of the desert, of the topless towers of the snow-capped mountains, of the huddling villages in which men rot away in poverty and disease, this Central Asia of Prokosch's is not actual place upon the face of the earth. Like XanaduXanadu-Description of Xanadu by Toghon Temur :The lament of Toghon Temur Khan , concerning the loss of Daidu and Heibun Shanduu in 1368, is recorded in many Mongolian historical chronicles...
, like ArcadiaArcadia (utopia)Arcadia refers to a vision of pastoralism and harmony with nature. The term is derived from the Greek province of the same name which dates to antiquity; the province's mountainous topography and sparse population of pastoralists later caused the word Arcadia to develop into a poetic byword for an...
, like AtlantisAtlantisAtlantis is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC....
or Aea or PoictesmePoictesmePoictesme is a fictional country or province which forms the setting of the fantasy works of James Branch Cabell, known collectively as The Biography of Manuel. Poictesme is ruled by the Count Dom Manuel....
, it is a phantom manufactured by a restless mind. ...Whatever the meaning of this book, and there will be much debate on that score, its wild lyrinative splendor and its profound emotional content mark it as a memorable novel.
After the 1930s, popular interest in Prokosch's writing declined, but he continued to write steadily and to solidify his reputation as a writer’s writer with an elite following that included Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
, André Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
, Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...
, Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
, Thornton Wilder
Thornton Wilder
Thornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He received three Pulitzer Prizes, one for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and two for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and a National Book Award for his novel The Eighth Day.-Early years:Wilder was born in Madison,...
, Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
, Anthony Burgess
Anthony Burgess
John Burgess Wilson – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works...
, Raymond Queneau
Raymond Queneau
Raymond Queneau was a French poet and novelist and the co-founder of Ouvroir de littérature potentielle .-Biography:Born in Le Havre, Seine-Maritime, Queneau was the only child of Auguste Queneau and Joséphine Mignot...
, Somerset Maugham, Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence George Durrell was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer, though he resisted affiliation with Britain and preferred to be considered cosmopolitan...
, Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
, and T.S. Eliot. “Pondering about Prokosch and his fate, I have come to the conclusion,” wrote Isaac Bashevis Singer, “that he is himself in a way at fault for being so woefully neglected. He has not cared to husband his natural riches….His roots are in this land. If Prokosch, like Faulkner, had limited his creative energies to one milieu, one region, he would certainly be counted today among the pillars of American literature.” Among the most noteworthy of Prokosch’s latter-day writings are A Tale for Midnight (1955), a Gothicized retelling of the Cenci story; The Missolonghi Manuscript (1968), a “mediation” on the romantic artist; and America, My Wilderness (1972), an excursion into magical realism. Prokosch was named a Commander dans l'Order des Arts et Lettres by the French government in 1984 and awarded the Volterra Prize two years later. His novels have been translated into fifteen languages.
Works
- The Asiatics (1935) novel
- The Assassins (1936) poems
- The Seven Who Fled (1937) novel
- The Carnival (1938) poems
- Night of the Poor (1938) novel
- Death at Sea (1940) poems
- The Skies of Europe (1941) novel
- The Conspirators (1943) novel (made into a movie by the same name in 1944)
- Some poems of Friedrich HoelderlinFriedrich HölderlinJohann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin was a major German lyric poet, commonly associated with the artistic movement known as Romanticism. Hölderlin was also an important thinker in the development of German Idealism, particularly his early association with and philosophical influence on his...
(1943) translator - Chosen Poems (1945) poems
- Age of Thunder (1945) novel
- Louise LabéLouise LabéLouise Labé, , also identified as La Belle Cordière, , was a female French poet of the Renaissance, born at Lyon, the daughter of a rich ropemaker, Pierre Charly, and his second wife, Etiennette Roybet...
, Love sonnets (1947) translator - Storm and Echo (1948) novel
- Nine days to Mukalla (1953) novel
- A Tale of Midnight (1955) novel
- Under the Winter Moon (1958) novel, written under the pseudonym of "Teresa Brooke"
- Mother Was Always in Love (1960) novel by Philip Van Rensselaer and Frederic Prokosch, uncredited author
- A Ballad of Love (1960) novel
- The Seven Sisters (1962) novel
- The Dark Dancer (1964) novel
- The Wreck of the Cassandra (1966) novel
- The Missolonghi Manuscript (1968) novel
- Voices: a Memoir (1984) fictional autobiography
Further reading
- Squires, Radcliffe (1964) Frederic Prokosch. New York: Twayne Publishers.
- Max, Peter (1969) Frederic Prokosch, ein Romantiker des 20. Jahrhunderts: Mit bes. Berücks. d. Romane "The Asiatics" u. "The Seven Who Fled". Winterthur: Schellenberg.
- Barker, Nicolas (1987) The Butterfly Books: an Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Twentieth Century Pamphlets. London: Bertram Rota.
- Vidal, Gore (2000) "The Collector", in The Last Empire (Essays 1952-2000). Vintage.
- Greenfield, Robert M. (2010) Dreamer's Journey: The Life and Writings of Frederic Prokosch. Newark: University of Delaware Press.
External links
- Frederic Prokosch and the Butterfly Books, an account of Prokosch's forgeries of his own work.
- Harry Ransom Humanities Research CenterHarry Ransom Humanities Research CenterThe Harry Ransom Center is a library and archive at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the United States and Europe. The Ransom Center houses 36 million literary manuscripts, 1 million rare books, 5 million photographs, and more...
, where a large collection of Prokosch's papers is held at the (at the University of Texas at Austin).