![]() ![]() Again, in his year at Harvard (1892 1893), where he studied under Barrett Wendell and Charles Eliot Norton, he held a night long discussion with his friend John Alden, in which the two discovered ecstatically "the open secret of the universe" - that all nature and life are God. Anderson and in certain moments of mystical insight, such as the time in the library "in the silence of noon" when he looked up from the words of Plotinus to see the unity of himself with the universe, he felt the wonder of being alive. During his three years at the university in Iowa City (1889 1892), he first began to experience the joys of literature under Professor Melville B. The first comprises his Davenport years and includes his novels the second is made up of his years in Greenwich Village and takes in his playwrit ing and the third covers his life as a poet in Greece.īy the time Cook began to write Roderick Taliaferro, the first novel of which he was sole author, his characteristic outlook on life was well established - an awareness of the mystery and beauty of existence. Cook's career conveniently falls into three distinct periods. In doing this, I shall be verifying Babette Deutsch's statement and show ing that Cook's importance for American literature lies not in his writings, but in his life. Rather I propose to evaluate Cook's career as a whole, examin ing his works and making use of biographical material not found in the Glaspell book, including some previously unpublished letters. I do not intend here to retell this story, for it has been narrated fully, if somewhat romantically and sentimentally, by Miss Glaspell in her book, which includes many extracts from Cook's unpublished writings. One may find there the story of his friendship with Floyd Dell, of his publishing novels, and of his writing for Dell's Friday Literary Review (the Chicago Evening Post literary supplement) the account of his move to Greenwich Village and Provincetown, where he founded the Provincetown Players, wrote plays for them, and directed their activities until 1922 and finally the description of his fulfilling a lifelong dream by sailing to Greece and becoming a shepherd and poet among the Parnassian hills, where he was admired by the natives and honored at his death by the removal of a stone from the ruins of the ancient temple of Delphi to mark his grave. In that book, The Road to the Temple, one may read how Cook, a member of an important family of Davenport, Iowa, became a young poet on the Mississippi and how he was educated at The University of Iowa, at Harvard, and at Heidelberg. But there has been no extended discussion of his career except for the biography that his wife, the playwright and novelist Susan Glaspell, prepared after his death and published in 1926-1927. The name of George Cram Cook (1873 1924) is mentioned briefly in most of the literary histories because he was the founder of the Provincetown Players and, therefore, the discoverer of Eugene O'Neill. Other commentators, too, recognized that his life was the living out of a myth, and the Dial reviewer saw both his poems and his life as "symbols wherein we may read one man's quest for the perfection of beauty." Although Cook has been praised for various things by some and completely ignored by others, it is only in relation to this quest that the activities of his life can be interpreted. It would be difficult to think of a more appropriate motto for George Cram Cook's career than "the poetry of living," for he engaged himself in a continual search for beauty, a search which made of his own life a work of art. In 1926 Babette Deutsch, reviewing George Cram Cook's posthumous volume of verse, Greek Coins, said, "The poetry of living, not the poetry of words, was his, and his poems are great where they catch the reflection of his life. ![]() George Cram Cook and the Poetry of Living, ![]()
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