Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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OVERVIEW

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 – 1882) was an American author and poet with quite a tragic life [1]. His work, however, illustrates the very epitome of the American Dream with its idealistic messages that range from living life to its fullest, to triumphing over grief, to “happily ever after” endings [8]. By combining unique pentameters with well-fitted words, Longfellow’s poetry is both memorable and direct; in reading such literature, one can easily relate with the general emotions, comprehend the meanings, and learn from the poetry while still appreciating its depth [1]. It is no wonder, then, why Henry Wadsworth Longfellow skyrocketed into popularity, and that his writing has entertained people of all ages and from all over the globe [3].

BIOGRAPHY

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (b. February 27, 1807) was more of a world citizen than just solely an American [1]. At the beginning, however, Henry resided in the Massachusetts area (nowadays Portland, Maine) with his parents, Stephen and Zilpah Longfellow [2]. His numerous siblings prompted the Longfellows to remember the children’s names and birth order with a catchy little rhyme, “Stephen and Henry/Elizabeth and Anne/Alex and Mary/Ellen and Sam” [1]. Henry was quite a unique individual, though; he soon exceeded the educational norm of his peers and learned the alphabet at three, and read both the English and Latin languages by the age of six [1, 3]. His childhood was best summarized by his brother Samuel, who said, “In truth he was a very lively and merry boy, though of refined and quiet tastes. He did not like the 'rough and tumble' to which some of his schoolmates were given. But he joined in the ball games, kite-flying, swimming in summer; snowballing, coasting, and skating in winter” [1]. Henry additionally began his college years early when he was fourteen years old, and he attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine with his older brother Stephan [1]. After graduation, Henry went on to study many different European languages and traversed Europe, spending three years abroad [3]. The study of language assisted Henry Wadsworth Longfellow greatly in his occupations; first, from 1829 to 1834 he returned to Bowdoin College and taught there, and then, from 1836 to 1854, Longfellow held a similar position of a Professor of Language at Harvard [3]. His personal life during this time was far more complex; in 1831 he wedded a long-time friend Mary Storer Potter, who later died of a miscarriage four years later (1835) during a vacation in Europe [3]. While he was still overseas, Henry met Fanny Appleton, a native of Boston, and they eventually married on July 13, 1843 after a long courtship [3]. Henry’s years with Fanny were wonderful; they lived in the Craigie House in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had six children, and regularly hosted literary wonders such as Emerson, Hawthorne, and Holmes [1]. Nonetheless, tragedy did visit the legendary Craigie Home; their daughter, sixteen-month-old Fanny, passed away in 1848, and then Fanny herself died in a fire on July 9, 1861 [3]. Henry’s life went considerably downhill after his wife passed away: although he still continued to make trips to Europe, persisted in writing and became even more internationally well-known, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow lost his passion for life [1]. Later, he contracted peritonitis and died on March 24, 1882 at the age of seventy-five (75) years old [2, 3].

CAREER

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s career centered on his loves of language and writing. His first teaching position was at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Massachusetts, as a professor of Modern Language [3]. He taught French, Spanish and Italian during his four-year stay as well as managed the college library for a meager salary of $900 [1, 3]. Nevertheless, akin to his youth, he exceeded expectations and somehow authored many critical essays and six foreign language textbooks despite his overwhelming workload and personal life [1]. Henry’s prolific studies and talent soon attracted the attention of larger colleges, and in 1834 he earned “the Smith Professorship of Modern Language at Harvard College” [1]. In this position, Henry also taught German—he learned this language in his two-year European travels between 1834 and 1836—and consequently, did the work of four men [1]. His years at Harvard (1836-1854) were the most prolific and fame-worthy in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s writing life. The poetry collections of Voices in the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems (1841) earned Henry world-wide fame [2]. In addition, Henry wrote Evangeline (1847) during his eventful employment at Harvard [2]. Then, in 1854, Henry ended his occupation at Harvard College to pursue a dedicated writing career and soon created his famous works of The Song of Hiawatha (1855), The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858), and Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863-1873) [1]. Personal tragedies lessened his writing output in the 1860’s; despite this, he found time to translate Dante’s Divine Comedy, a literary wonder in itself, and write short yet meaningful poetry, such as Flower-de-Luce (1867) [2]. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s last years were marked with international recognition for he received honorary degrees from both Cambridge and Oxford [3].

LITERARY INFLUENCES

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had a variety of literary heroes, and many were foreign poets. In his childhood, he enjoyed and copied the 18^th century writers such as Thomas Gray, Oliver Goldsmith and William Cowper (9) [4]. While these early writers formed his sensibility, other romantic authors—specifically Sir Walter Scott, Alexander Campbell, John Moore, and Samuel Rogers—assisted in forming Henry’s capabilities as a poet (9) [4]. Nonetheless, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s greatest influence was American William Cullen Bryant, a popular poet in the early 1800’s, and it was evinced by Henry’s poetry with its “distinctly Bryantesque cachet” (9) [4]. Later in life, Henry was extremely affected by the German romantics (particularly Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Musaeus and Uhland) in addition to his frequent visitors Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Oliver Wendell Holmes (34) [1, 4].

MOVEMENT

Longfellow was primarily associated with the enormous movement of his time, Romanticism, which spanned between 1780 and 1850 [5]. Romantics differed with the previous Age of Enlightenment, saying that this Renaissance reduced men to machinery; instead, themes of individualism, the supernatural, idealism, a reverence for nature, and a benevolent God were dominant in the Romantic era [5]. In the area of prose and poetry, the Romantics used an amble amount of unbridled emotion—ranging from Gothic horror to overwhelming joy—and applied unconventional writing styles, characters and settings (i.e. Bali or South Africa) [5]. Then, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow somewhat participated in transcendentalism. Transcendentalism is considered as the offspring of the Romantic era, and transcendentalist writers continue to fall away from highly structured or confining forms of writing and thinking [6]. In transcendentalism, the significance of personal identity is magnified as the individual looks into themselves for light, knowledge and truth [6].

KEY STYLISTIC ELEMENTS

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote many genres in his lifetime, and they ranged from language textbooks to romantic, lyric poetry to theater plays [7]. Perhaps his most well-known style is the narrative poem as many of Henry’s famous works—Evangeline, The Song of Hiawatha, The Courtship of Miles Standish, and Tales of a Wayside Inn—fell under this category [7]. Advocates from The Big Read (a program by the National Endowment of the Arts) describe these four poems as “antithetical to the lyric traditions of modern poetry, which prize verbal compression, intellectual complexity, elliptical style, and self-referential movement” [7]. Instead, Longfellow’s style is simple, clear, emotionally direct and overflowing in memorable phrases, such as “footprints in the sands of time” (from “A Psalm of Life”) or “The patter of little feet” (from “The Children’s Hour”) [7].

THEMATIC CONCERNS

There are multiple themes in Longfellow's works; his principle subjects pertain to high ideals that often may seem irrational or childlike compared to authors such as Edgar Allan Poe. Under these high ideals, one finds the common threads of living life to its potential, moral excellence, and happy endings for main characters [8]. In “A Psalm of Life,” Longfellow particularly stressed the importance of purposely living life and doing one’s best [8]. Then, in many of his writings, there is a blissful and just conclusion, with optimistic overtones, particularly in The Courtship of Miles Standish [1]. Longfellow additionally uses such topics as freedom and true love in his poetry—themes that the masses can relate to—especially in his major works Evangeline, The Courtship of Miles Standish, and “Paul Revere’s Ride” [2]. These poems could also be categorized under another prominent theme: the presence of history which Longfellow incorporates in many of his poems [1]. By relying on historical facts and culture, Longfellow makes “history come to life” such as in The Song of Hiawatha or Evangeline. The final subject that is present in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s writings is nature [14]. Many critics believe that both the forests and the ocean near Portland (his childhood home) and later, the Craigie House, were often used by Longfellow as symbols for the restless mystery of life and one’s existence [14].

LIST OF WORKS

Aftermath (1873)
Ballads and Other Poems (1841)
Christus: A Mystery (1872)
Evangeline (1847)
Flower-de-Luce (1867)
Household Poems (1863)
Hyperion: A Romance (1839)
Kavanagh: A Tale (1849)

Keramos and Other Poems (1878)
Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimmage Beyond the Sea (1835)

Paul Revere's Ride (1860)

Poems on Slavery (1842)
Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863-1873)
The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems (1845)
The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858)
The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri (1867)

The Golden Legend (1851)
The Masque of Pandora and Other Poems (1875)
The New England Tragedies (1868)

The Seaside and the Fireside (1849)
The Song of Hiawatha (1855)
The Spanish Student (1843)

Three Books of Song (1872)
Ultima Thule (1880)
Voices of the Night (1839)

... and many more [2].

BEST KNOWN WORK

Longfellow's best known poem is "A Psalm of Life". This poem has been beloved since it's release because of "...its evocative eloquence, such is its superior effect on every person regardless of class, religion and nationality that it transcends the boundaries of a mere song, and in the right sense, transforms into a psalm – a path to be followed for glorified and righteous life" [15]. "A Psalm of Life" encourages people to live in the moment, contrasting the common religious view of that time that the earthly life was only a life of suffering to get to Heaven. A line from the poem states, "Let us, then, be up and doing,/With a heart for any fate," which indicates the message to seize the day within this poem, empowering people across the nations.

EXCERPTS FROM WORKS

“TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream ! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real ! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day” ("A Psalm of Life") [9].

“Chispa:

Aberununcio Satanus! And a plague on all lovers who ramble about at night, drinking the elements, instead of sleeping quietly in their beds. Every dead man to his cemetery, say I; and every friar to his monastery. Now, here’s my master, Victorian, yesterday a cow-keeper, and to-day a gentleman; yesterday a student, and to-day a lover; and I must be up later than a nightingale, for the abbot sings so must the sacristan respond. God grant he may soon be married, for then all this serenading will cease. Ay, marry! marry! marry! Mother, what does marry mean? It means to spin, to bear children, and to weep, my daughter! And, of a truth, there is something more in matrimony than a wedding ring” (The Spanish Student) [10].

“THE sun is bright,—the air is clear,
The darting swallows soar and sing,
And from the stately elms I hear
The blue-bird prophesying Spring.

So blue yon winding river flows,
It seems an outlet from the sky,
Where waiting till the west wind blows,
The freighted clouds at anchor lie” ("It Is Not Always May") [9].

"A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.” (Paul Revere’s Ride) [9].

RECEPTION

In the January 1856 edition of The North American Review, Edward Everett Hale reviewed Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha. Hale critiqued, “We do not believe that a series of Indian legends should be written in the state or dignity of Paradise Lost; nor do we believe that they should have been wrought into an epic, because other countries and times have loved epics, nor into a string of rhymed ballads, because other countries and times have loved such … The essential characteristic of Indian life, and so of Indian literature, is that it is childlike. These children of the forest are truly always children … There is nothing Classical about him. [Hiawatha] cannot graduate at a classical college. He cannot fight in an English regiment. He cannot make his bow at a French court. And for all these reasons, he cannot be sung about in an epic poem” [13].

Nathaniel Hawthorne greatly admired the poem collection Voices of the Night, writing, “Nothing equal to some of them … was ever written in this world,—this western world, I mean; and it would not hurt my conscience much to include the other hemisphere” [4].

William Peterfield Trent remarked about Longfellow in The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907-1921), saying, “It may be gathered from this brief survey of a long life and a productive career that Longfellow’s reputation, in the opinion of the present writer, was amply deserved in the poet’s day, and rested in the main on his gifts as a story-teller in verse, on his power to transplant to American literature some of the colour and melody and romantic charm of the complex European literatures he had studied, and, more especially, on his skill in expressing in comparatively artless lyrics of sentiment and reflection homely and wholesome thoughts and feelings which he shared with his countrymen of all classes throughout a broad land the occupation of which proceeded apace during his own span of years” [11].

In 2010, James Russell Lowell reviewed the works of Longfellow, and particularly The Courtship of Miles Standish. He said, “Many of the pieces in this volume having already shone as captain jewels in Maga’s carcanet, need no comment from us; and we should, perhaps, have avoided the delicate responsibility of criticizing one of our most precious contributors, had it not been that we have seen some very unfair attempts to depreciate Mr. Longfellow, and that, as it seemed to us, for qualities which stamp him as a true and original poet. The writer who appeals to more peculiar moods of mind, to more complex or more esoteric motives of emotion, may be a greater favorite with the few; but he whose verse is in sympathy with moods that are human and not personal, with emotions that do not belong to periods in the development of individual minds, but to all men in all years, wins the gratitude and love of whoever can read the language which he makes musical with solace and aspiration” [12].

Comments (1)

"Victor Hugo saluted Longfellow as a man who brought honor to America. . . ", from in text citation [14]. I love Hugo. This makes me want to read more of Longfellow. Excellent wiki!

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