Guy Davenport

Guy Davenport – Life, Work, and Literary Legacy

Guy Davenport (1927–2005) was an American polymath—short-story writer, essayist, translator, critic, painter, and teacher—who fused classical erudition, modernist innovation, and visual art. Explore his biography, major works, style, and ongoing influence.

Introduction

Guy Mattison Davenport (November 23, 1927 – January 4, 2005) was a uniquely versatile American writer and scholar whose work spans fiction, essays, poetry, translation, and visual art. Known for his densely allusive, fragmentary, collage-like style, Davenport is often described as a “writer’s writer”—one whose influence is greater among serious readers, critics, and other writers than in popular mass readership.

He saw his writing as an “assemblage” of text, image, history, myth, and intellect, creating texts that demand active readers. Over his life he also taught, drew or painted, translated ancient Greek texts, and corresponded with leading literary figures.

Early Life and Education

Guy Davenport was born in Anderson, South Carolina, to Guy Mattison Davenport (an agent for the Railway Express Agency) and Marie Fant Davenport. From childhood he showed a lively literary and artistic energy: at around age 12 he produced a small neighborhood newspaper, drawing illustrations and writing the stories himself.

At about 13, after a broken leg confined him to rest, he began reading with renewed intensity, delving into biography and literature. He left high school early and enrolled at Duke University shortly after his 17th birthday, where he majored in classics and English and graduated summa cum laude.

He won a Rhodes Scholarship and studied at Merton College, Oxford from 1948 to 1950. At Oxford he worked under (or studied in the milieu of) eminent scholars, including an engagement with Old English under J. R. R. Tolkien. His thesis engaged with James Joyce—a lifelong literary influence.

After returning to the U.S., Davenport was drafted into the U.S. Army (1950–1952), serving in the 756th Field Artillery and with the XVIII Airborne Corps. After his service, he taught briefly at Washington University in St. Louis before pursuing a PhD at Harvard, under literary figures such as Harry Levin and Archibald MacLeish.

Academic and Teaching Career

After earning his doctorate, Davenport taught at Haverford College from 1961 to 1963. In 1963 he joined the University of Kentucky, a post he would hold for decades, becoming a prominent figure in the humanities there.

In 1990, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, which precipitated his retirement from full teaching duties. For many years he held emeritus status at Kentucky and remained active in writing, painting, and intellectual life until his death.

Major Works, Themes & Style

Fiction & Short Stories

Davenport entered the realm of fiction relatively late, publishing his first short-story collection Tatlin!: Six Stories in 1974. Over the years he released multiple collections, such as Da Vinci’s Bicycle (1979) — considered one of his most important works — Eclogues, Apples and Pears, The Jules Verne Steam Balloon, The Drummer of the Eleventh North Devonshire Fusiliers, A Table of Green Fields, The Cardiff Team, Twelve Stories, and others.

His stories often blend historical and fictional figures, narrative experimentation, collage-like technique, and utopian or imaginal visions. Da Vinci’s Bicycle integrates characters like Leonardo da Vinci, Gertrude Stein, and Richard Nixon within imaginative reconstructions.

Hilton Kramer praised Davenport’s short stories as possessing “intellectual density of the learned essay … lyrical concision … and a structure that often resembles a film documentary.”

Essays, Criticism & Nonfiction

Davenport was a prolific essayist, publishing over 400 essays, reviews, introductions, and criticism in his lifetime. His major essay collections include:

• The Geography of the Imagination (1981)

• Every Force Evolves a Form (1987)

• The Hunter Gracchus and Other Papers on Literature and Art (1996)

• Objects on a Table: Harmonious Disarray in Art and Literature (1998)

• The Death of Picasso: New and Selected Writing (2003)

His essays often weave literary, historical, aesthetic, philosophical, and scientific threads—occasionally entering political or cultural commentary.

Translation & Poetry

Davenport was also an accomplished translator of ancient Greek and classical texts, contributing volumes such as Carmina Archilochi: The Fragments of Archilochos, Sappho: Songs and Fragments, Herakleitos and Diogenes, The Mimes of Herondas, Anakreon, and the composite work 7 Greeks. He also translated selected poems of Rilke and ancient Egyptian maxims.

His own poetry includes Flowers and Leaves: Poema vel Sonata, Carmina Autumni Primaeque Veris Transformationem, Thasos and Ohio, Goldfinch Thistle Star, The Resurrection in Cookham Churchyard, and others.

Visual Art & Book Design

Alongside writing, Davenport was a lifelong draftsman, painter, and illustrator. His notebooks often combine drawings, pasted images, and textual fragments. He provided illustrations for his own works and for other authors’ books, such as Hugh Kenner’s The Stoic Comedians and The Counterfeiters. In his early fiction he especially sought to integrate text and drawing as a unified medium (though later he scaled back that ambition).

He also had a deep interest in typography, book design, and small press craft—many of his works were first issued in limited or artisanal editions.

Intellectual & Aesthetic Themes

Allusiveness, Collage & Fragmentation

Davenport’s work is marked by a dense network of allusion—to literature, philosophy, science, art, history, and myth. He frequently used collage or montage: juxtaposing quotations, visual fragments, historical episodes, and imaginative reconstructions. He embraced fragmentation—not as failure, but as a way to mirror how we think and remember in culture.

Utopian Imagination & Fourierism

Though not a political writer in the narrow sense, Davenport had “a radical idealistic streak” and was influenced by the French utopian thinker Charles Fourier, who believed suppression of desire damaged civilization. Some of his stories explore small communal experiments, attempts to reimagine life, and the tension between order and freedom.

Reading, Memory & the Act of Attention

One recurrent theme is reading itself—how memory, attention, and cultural artifacts interact. Davenport’s essays and fiction often meditate on how we read the past, how we inhabit texts, and how language shapes perception.

Integration of Word and Image

He consistently sought to collapse the separation between verbal and visual expression. In his fiction and notebooks, images and words cohabit; reading and seeing become interwoven acts.

Classical Tradition & Modern Experiment

Davenport combined deep engagement with classical and ancient literature (through translation, allusion, scholarship) with formal innovation and modernism. He saw continuity across eras, yet was unafraid to experiment with form.

Later Years & Death

In his later years Davenport continued writing, painting, translating, and lecturing. He spent much of his life in Lexington, Kentucky, where he became deeply rooted in local and regional intellectual communities.

He died on January 4, 2005, in Lexington, of lung cancer, at age 77.

Legacy and Influence

Guy Davenport’s influence is felt especially among writers, scholars, and serious readers who value hybrid forms, erudition, and aesthetic ambition. He remains a touchstone for writers interested in the intersections of art, literature, and visual thinking.

Some markers of his legacy:

• His posthumous The Guy Davenport Reader (edited by Erik Reece) collects key writings across genres, ensuring access for new readers.

• Smaller presses and scholars continue to keep his works alive via new editions, bibliographies (e.g. Guy Davenport: A Descriptive Bibliography) and critical studies.

• He is often cited in studies of postmodernism, literary collage, and interdisciplinary aesthetics.

• His devotion to reading, craft, and cross-disciplinary thinking inspires many in humanities and arts.

Selected Quotes

While Davenport is not primarily known for pithy quotation, a few statements give insight into his sensibility:

“Writing as assemblage.”
(One phrase he used to describe his approach to writing—integrating disparate elements rather than one linear narrative.)

“I live almost exclusively off fried baloney, Campbell’s soup, and Snickers bars.”
(A self-deprecating remark about his diet from a personal essay)

“He has given [the short story] … some of its difficulty too … and a structure that often resembles a film documentary.”
(Hilton Kramer’s description of Da Vinci’s Bicycle)

Lessons from Guy Davenport’s Life & Work

1. Embrace hybridity. Davenport’s life shows that one need not be limited to a single genre or mode—writing, translating, drawing, and scholarship can inform one another.

2. Read broadly, think deeply. His work rewards readers who come armed with cultural, historical, poetic knowledge—the more you know, the more you appreciate.

3. Experiment with form. He was unafraid to challenge narrative conventions, to collage, fragment, juxtapose, and invite active reading.

4. Persist quietly. Though not a mass-market author, he built a lasting intellectual presence through consistency, depth, and fidelity to his artistic vision.

5. Value the life of the mind. Davenport treated writing as extension of thinking—reading, seeing, remembering—and strove to keep art, scholarship, and curiosity entwined.