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Biography of Randolph Silliman BourneName: Randolph Silliman BourneBirth Date: May 30, 1886 Death Date: December 22, 1918 Place of Birth: Bloomfield, New Jersey, United States Nationality: American Gender: Male Occupations: antiwar activist, leader Randolph Silliman Bourne Randolph Silliman Bourne (1886-1918) was an American pacifist, cultural critic, and leader of the "youth movement" of the 1910s. His repudiation of official World War I attitudes inspired later pacifist dissenters.Randolph Bourne was born on May 30, 1886, in Bloomfield, N.J. His father abandoned the family when circumstances became straitened. Randolph's hunched back and twisted features set him apart from other children, as did his academic brilliance. He was puritanic in his will to help support his mother, and following high school graduation he worked for a maker of automatic music rolls and then as a piano accompanist. His "discovery" of socialism stirred him, but at age 23, for lack of alternatives, he entered Columbia University in New York City.At Columbia, Bourne's social and intellectual talents expanded. He shone academically and made many and varied friendships. Though then a follower of John Dewey, he was also a romantic who dreamed of …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…stricken with bronchial pneumonia on Dec. 17, 1918, and died 5 days later. His friends published his Untimely Papers (1919) and The History of a Literary Radical (1920). Best remembered is John Dos Passos' portrait of Bourne in his novel 1919 "A tiny twisted unscared ghost in a black cloak/ hopping along the grimy old brick and brownstone streets still left in downtown New York,/ crying out in a shrill soundless giggle:/ War is the health of the State." Further Reading Lillian Schlissel edited an anthology of Bourne's works, The World of Randolph Bourne (1965). His writings are replete with autobiographical details. Numerous essays by friends and admirers emphasize his idealism and personality. See, for example, Van Wyck Brooks, Emerson and Others (1927). Louis Filler, Randolph Bourne (1943), analyzes Bourne's career. Many additional details appear in John A. Moreau, Randolph Bourne: Legend and Reality (1966).Clayton, Bruce, Forgotten prophet: the life of Randolph Bourne, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984. |