Dates

• Existence: 3 January 1884 - 7 April 1962

Biography

A graduate of Nashville’s Webb Preparatory, Sidney Mttron Hirsch attended a variety of different colleges but failed to graduate. He served in the navy for a few years and toured the Far East before returning to Nashville. He left Nashville to spend a brief time in Paris, where he picked up extra money by modeling. From Paris he went to New York, where he continued his modeling career by posing for sculptures for Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. While in New York, he turned to writing plays without achieving much success. Upon his return to Nashville in 1913, he was successful in getting his play The Fire Regained performed for the May Festival, sponsored by the Nashville Art Association and the Board of Trade, and which made use of the full scale replica of the Parthenon built for the Tennessee Centennial in 1898. The performance brought Hirsch the renown he was looking for, but he was unable to build upon his success. Hirsch soon came in contact with Stanley Johnson, a friend of Hirsch’s half-brother Nat, and with Donald Davidson, a friend of his half-sister Goldie. Johnson and Davidson soon introduced their English professor, John Crowe Ransom, to the reclusive Hirsch, and soon the four were meeting regularly to talk about poetry. The talks continued after Hirsch moved in with his brother-in-law James Frank, who volunteered the use of his house as a meeting place for the group of talented authors. It was Sidney Hirsch who first suggested publishing the growing body of poetry being produced by the group, and the title The Fugitive was selected as an embodiment of the archetypal fugitive character - an outcast with mysterious knowledge - so prevalent in poetry. Hirsch’s influence with the group faded as it began to fall apart in the late 1920s with the departure of a number of the group from Nashville, while others moved away from writing poetry to other forms of literature. Hirsch died in Nashville in 1962.

Found in 3 Collections and/or Records: