Cosmos Mariner - Destination Unknown

He was born in Savannah in 1889 and lived in an elegant townhouse on Oglethorpe Avenue across the street from Colonial Cemetery. He often played in that ancient burial ground amidst tabby crypts and tombstones where the mortal remains of many of Georgia's aristocracy found rest. From the time he was eight or nine he wanted to be a poet, soon found himself captured by the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and happily sharing the terror with his brother and sisters.

With his parents immersed in Savannah society and surrounded by wealth, privilege, and pedigree, he seemed destined for success. After all, his father was a successful New England physician and both parents had a long heritage steeped in unitarianism and transcendental thought. But all was not well. One day, when he was eleven, he returned home to find his mother shot to death, his father dead by suicide. Conrad Aiken's world changed forever that day and he would never fully recover from the horror he saw.

Separated from his brothers and sisters, young Aiken lived with relatives in New England, but never felt he had a home. After attending private schools, he studied at Harvard under the guidance of philosopher and writer, George Santayana, and struck up a life-long friendship with fellow student, T. S. Eliot.

Aiken wrote lyrical poetry, weighted with symbolism and psychological exploration so deep that, in his own words, "Freud was in everything after 1912." By 1920, he had moved predominantly to prose expressing his "faith in consciousness" and endless search for knowledge as the means to quell his personal chaos and bring order and structure to the larger consciousness of the world. In all, he wrote or edited fifty books, including his poetry, short stories, five novels, and one autobiography.

For all of his output, Conrad Aiken never achieved the level of fame of his good friend, T. S. Eliot, or other contemporaries. There are several reasons for his obscurity. He was deeply introverted to the point of being clinically shy. His shyness led him to avoid readings that, for a poet, were lifelines to his audience. Furthermore, he chose to be a most candid critic, a posture that did not endear him to his fellow writers. And finally, during his middle years, he was a resident of both the United States and Europe. Many writers, benefactors, and salons on both sides of the Atlantic could never quite identify him as one of their own. By 1960, he had been resident in the U.S for some years and "rediscovered." Aiken eventually returned part-time to the elegance of Savannah. He spent the winters living next to his boyhood home and became the focus of social and academic circles and sought out by admirers until his death in 1973.

If you wander toward the eastern bluff in Savannah's magnificent Bonaventure Cemetery, you will arrive at Aiken Way. There, with the vast salt marshes of the Wilmington River spreading out to the distant treeline, you will find a memorial bench Aiken installed before his death. Next to it is a headstone bearing the identical death dates of his parents, an eerie reminder of the chaos we all face in our lives.

For those of us who have found our peace, there is a profound release there under the live oaks and Spanish moss. Others may not be so fortunate. Aiken is one them. In life, he was restless, a constant searcher forever sailing through an uncertain sea. He felt the same about death and wanted us to know. How fitting it was that he should find his epitaph quite by accident while perusing the Savannah newspapers. It appeared in the daily list of port activity and read simply: "Cosmos Mariner - Destination Unknown." Aiken indeed saw himself a cosmic mariner who arrived in this world on this day, August 5, 1889. On August 17, 1973, he cast off without a port of call, destination unknown. He left behind, engraved on the bench the wish, "Give my love to the world." It is a rather confident wish coming from a restless sailor. We can pray that every man should find safe harbor, all the while knowing that we are not the final judge of his navigation. We are left merely to explore the products of a shy and troubled man who could appreciate a bawdy pun and have his say in singing words and lilting prose.


Read more about Conrad Aiken and his work at these sources which form the core of my blog entry:

The New Georgia Encyclopedia, Conrad Aiken, entry by Ted R. Spivey
Wikipedia entry, Conrad Aiken
Conrad Aiken: Prodigy Unitarian Poet, by Richard A. Kellaway
The Art of Poetry No. 9, Conrad Aiken, The Paris Review