Nathaniel Tarn (June 30, 1928 – June 26, 2024) was a French-American poet, essayist, anthropologist, and translator. He was born Edward Michael Mendelson in Paris, France, to a French-Romanian mother and a British-Lithuanian father.
Tarn lived in Paris until the age of seven, then in Belgium until the age of 11; when World War II began, the family moved to England. He emigrated to the United States in 1970 and taught at several American universities, primarily Rutgers, where he was a professor from 1972 until 1985. He lived outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, after his retirement from Rutgers.
Tarn was educated at Lycée d'Anvers and Clifton College and graduated with degrees in history and English from King's College, Cambridge. He returned to Paris and, after some journalism and radio work, discovered anthropology at the Musée de l'Homme, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes and the Collège de France. A Smith-Mundt-Fulbright grant took him to the University of Chicago; he did fieldwork for his doctorate in anthropology with the Highlands Maya of Guatemala.
In 1958, a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation administered by the Royal Institute of International Affairs sent him to Burma for 18 months, after which he became an instructor at London School of Economics and then lecturer in Southeast Asian Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. Even after moving primarily to literature, he continued to write and publish anthropological work on the Highland Maya and on the sociology of Buddhist institutions, as E. Michael Mendelson.
Tarn published his first volume of poetry, Old Savage/Young City, with Jonathan Cape in 1964 and a translation of Pablo Neruda's The Heights of Macchu Picchu in 1966 (broadcast by the BBC Third Programme in 1966), and began building a new poetry program at Cape. He left anthropology in 1967. From 1967 to 1969, he joined Cape as General Editor of the international series Cape Editions and as a Founding Director of the Cape-Goliard Press, specializing in contemporary American Poetry with emphasis on Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Louis Zukofsky and their peers and successors. In 1970, with a principal interest in the American literary scene, Tarn immigrated to the United States as Visiting Professor of Romance Languages, Princeton University, and eventually became a citizen. Later, he moved to Rutgers. Later, he taught English and American Literature, Epic Poetry, Folklore and other subjects at the Universities of Pennsylvania, Colorado, and New Mexico.
As poet, literary and cultural critic (Views from the Weaving Mountain, University of New Mexico Press, 1991, and The Embattled Lyric, Stanford University Press, 2007), translator (he was the first to render Victor Segalen's "Stèles" into English, continued work on Neruda, Latin American and French poets) and editor (with many magazines), Tarn published some thirty books and booklets in his various disciplines. His work has been translated into 10 foreign languages. In 1985, he took early retirement as Professor Emeritus of Poetry, Comparative Literature & Anthropology from Rutgers University and lived near Santa Fe, New Mexico. His interests ranged from bird watching, gardening, classical music, opera and ballet, and much varied collecting, to aviation and world history.
Among many recognitions, Tarn received the Guinness Prize for Poetry for two poems in 1963, the Wenner Gren fellowship in 1978 and 1980, a Commonwealth of Pennsylvania fellowship in 1984, a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship in 1958, and was a finalist in the Phi Beta Kappa poetry awards for Selected Poems 1950–2000. His work was variously supported by the Fulbright Program, the Wenner Gren Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the American Philosophical Society, and a number of other foundations. Tarn's literary and anthropological papers are held by Stanford University Libraries.
Tarn died on June 26, 2024, less than a week before his 96th birthday, in Hertfordshire, England.
Old Savage/Young City. London: Cape, 1964; New York: Random House, 1966
Penguin Modern Poets no. 7. London: Penguin Books, 1966
Where Babylon Ends. London: Cape Goliard Press; New York: Grossman, 1968.
The Beautiful Contradictions. London: Cape Goliard Press, 1969; New York: Random House, 1970; New York: New Directions, 2013.
October: A Sequence of Ten Poems Followed by Requiem Pro Duabus Filiis Israel. London: Trigram Press, 1969.
A Nowhere for Vallejo: Choices, October. New York: Random House, 1971; London: Cape, 1972.
Le Belle Contraddizioni (tr. Roberto Sanesi). Milan & Samedan, Switz.: Munt Press, 1973
The Persephones. Santa Barbara, California: Tree, 1974; Sherman Oaks, California: Ninja Press, 2009.
Lyrics for the Bride of God. New York: New Directions, and London: Cape, 1975.
The House of Leaves. Santa Barbara, California: Black Sparrow Press, 1976.