Tuesday, February 9, 2010
The Legacy of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882): While beloved in the nineteenth-century for his heartfelt verse in poems like Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847) and The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858), critics and readers today often look askance at the poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Terms like shallow, sentimental, and escapist today cast a long shadow over Longfellow. However, Longfellow keeps good company in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey, London, where Longfellow's bust (and we imagine his spirit) converses with the immortals, the likes of Shakespeare, Milton, Austen, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. He remains the only American so honored. Having read, so far, long epic poems like Evangeline and The Courtship of Miles Standish, and shorter works like "The Skeleton in Armor," "The Fire of the Driftwood," and "The Wreck of the Hesperus," the questions our class have asked are whether Longfellow remains good company today and where does he stand among the nineteenth-century American Romantics. Is a Longfellow revival long overdue?
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I will post first on this. Yes, Longfellow deserves more attention!
ReplyDeleteFor five years, from 2002 to 2007, I ran a poetry reading workshop in Washington, DC, that brought together men and women who were homeless and students from The George Washington University. We would read and discuss poetry each week, and over the course of five years, we read many poets. From A to Z, you name the poet, we likely touched upon him or her: from Julia Alvarez to Paul Zimmer, and rest of the alphabet between.
Some beloved poets did not fare well. One person found the first ten sonnets in Shakespeare's sonnet sequence to be "kind of superficial." The group agreed.
Longfellow, in contrast, elicited liking (and, indeed, loving). One favorites was the classic, but now often decried as sentimental, "A Psalm of Life," whose final stanza calls forth action:
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
In Longfellow we seemed to have found an old friend.
William Dean Howells wrote of Longfellow after the poet's death: "Once your friend, Longfellow was always your friend; he would not think
evil of you, and if he knew evil of you, he would be the last of all that knew it to judge you for it." I read Longfellow's poetry much as Howells viewed the man, as a trusted, amiable companion.
I don't know if I can kind of digress from the question, but I have a feeling I will - sorry in advance!
ReplyDeleteThis was the first class where I read any of Longfellow's work, and I really enjoyed it. Although many poets are interesting and creative, I feel that Longfellow definitely does fit into the category with romantic poets such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, etc. I feel that we were also given a variety of his work from Miles Standish to Wreck of Hesperus. He is one of many authors/poets that can flirt with a variety of emotions, but I felt that he is one poet, since reading Wordsworth, that can actually get me to think about what he is really saying. I feel between Longfellow and his work, he allows readers to see/feel the connection he has for his final product. He allows us to feel his emotions with him, and as a poet, I think that's a very important quality to have - a connection with readers.
Great post on Longfellow. I agree with you. He is very candid about his emotions, and, like you say, this creates a connection with his readers. This is probably why he was so popular to nineteenth-century readers.
ReplyDeleteI believe that this Longfellow...fellow...does indeed deserve more looking at. I've addressed this before, but I'm irritated about the intellectual snobbery that seems to surround early 20th century analysis of Longfellow. Just because someone does not write material which, outwardly, does not make important statements about culture or politics should not disqualify his or her work for analysis by scholars. And, as we discovered in class discussions and in essays, Longfellow may very well have exhibited his feelings on contemporary issues in his works. Not blatantly, mind you, but in the subtle way in which a writer's personal thoughts and feelings would creep into plots and characters, where one character may, unintentionally of course, represent a certain point of view and the opposite or the antagonist of that character represents another. For example, John Alden and Miles Standish could have been (somewhat vague) representations of the attitudes of North and South, respectively.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, scholars may just have to accept that perhaps Longfellow wrote his work for the sake of enjoyment. He wrote his poetry during a very stressful time in America's history and perhaps people were just drawn to a diversion and perhaps all he wished to do was provide such a diversion.
If Longfellow has been discredited as a "worthwhile" poet by the "academy", they must not be judging on the ease of readability and enjoyment that one can obtain from Longfellow's work.
ReplyDeleteI discovered Longfellow when I was younger while perusing poetry collections I found around the house. What attracted me to his work was the fact that it seemed to embody everything a good poem should:
-enjoyment upon reading
-musicality when read aloud
- something heartfelt and genuine
-and something that could be shared with a friend and similarly appreciated for its beauty and simple, profound verse
"The Day is Done" seems to describe Longfellow's poetry to a tee. "Come, read to me some poem/some simple heartfelt lay/ that shall soothe this restless feeling/And banish the thoughts of day....Such songs have power to quiet/the restless pulse of care/and come like the benediction/that follows after prayer.
Longfellow's poetry is just that-- the poetry that I turn to when curled up in bed for the night and wish to read something pleasant and calming before sleep. I think this quality has much merit. Longfellow's work makes a stark contrast from the poetry of Robert Browning (who lived around the same time as Longfellow) which is very complex and not very accessible, but to Longfellow who is able to achieve a lasting impression with his work in less words and with less headache( for the reader) in disciphering them.
One more thing.. the essay on Longfellow's poetry and its social and political relevance in Hiawatha and Miles Standish, really allowed me to appreciate Longfellow on another level. Longfellow says much more with his work than first meets the eye. He approaches matters of loss, grief, death, struggle, longing,search for identity and meaning in a very subtle yet powerful manner.
It says something when I can mention Longfellow to someone (like my dad) and he can rattle off names of his poems and some verses without much trouble. This shows that Longfellow's work was worth remembering long after he is first read or studied in school.
Sorry, My thoughts got a little jumbled in the middle there. What I was trying to say is that the poetry of Longfellow and Browning are both worthwhile, yet Longfellow's is much more enjoyable and more easily diciphered by the reader. Longfellow's work would most likely be the choice of someone looking for a poem to read after a long day!
ReplyDeleteIn reply to Devon:
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with what you said, in regards to the criteria critics must have used in judging the quality of Longfellow's work. Obviously, he can't be compared to poets such as Walt Whitman, or others in the same vein, where their work was highly philosophical and questioning of the world. Certainly, Longfellow had his philosophical moments, as in "The Village Blacksmith" (in my view), but largely, he is a poet simply to relax with, not one to challenge your mind with. The only explanation I can come up with as to why he has, in recent, years, been forgotten about and largely discredited, is maybe because at the time he was writing, as a poet he was thrust into a larger group, many of whom were writing more philosophical works. Upon encountering Longfellow, then, critics may be of the impression that he simply missed the mark, when clearly he was not trying to be that kind of poet. Again, this is just speculation, and I'm probably way off, I was just trying to reason out why he's so seldom read these days.
Great comments.
ReplyDeleteAnother potential factor to keep in mind is that Longfellow was prolific and the poems that are anthologized, even in the excellent edited collection by Lawrence Buell, represent only a handful of his poems. It is possible that some of his most complicated pieces are not included in the Penguin edition.
To get a sense of the breadth of Longfellow's life work, one needs only to crack open any of the fourteen volumes of _The Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_ (811.34 L86y v.1 - v. 14). The collection can be found in its entirety--minus volume one, which is right beside me now--on the third floor of the Kemp Library. There may be a lot more depth here in these pages.
I'm reading the entire _The Poems on Slavery_, a slender eight poem collection, from which Buell excerpted two poems. Longfellow wrote these on a transatlantic steamship voyage from London to New York after having completing a six month leave from teaching. Apparently, he was uncomfortable in his dark, cramped cabin and was also very likely thinking of Charles Dickens, whom he had spent time with in London. Dickens had recently published his _American Notes_, which contained a very strong critique of American society, including slavery. Longfellow published the poems in December 1842.
I find this story itself very interesting. We see Dickens's powerful influence on the thirty-four year old Longfellow. _American Notes_ begins with Dickens describing how uncomfortable he was in his own uncomfortable, confining cabin. Longfellow is having the same experience. In the final chapters of _American Notes_, Dickens addresses American slavery in very forthright terms. Longfellow makes a similar attempt, this time in verse.
I think that Longfellow is in fact underrated. He is actually a good writer, but for some reason his reputation, at least in America, seems to have altered what he really is about as a writer. I think that maybe people think Longfellow isn't as great of a writer as many others around. I myself have not had much experience in reading Longfellow until taking this class, but I think that his poems and stories are really good and bring meanings of them ou in depth. I think his time for 'revival' is long overdue.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, sorry I'm a little late to this conversation. Like everyone else who has posted here, I enjoyed reading Longfellow this semester. With that said, I understand that there are people who turn their noses to Longfellow's work. This dismissive attitude toward his work is no different then the way music critics are disgusted when they have to talk about most of the pop music on the radio, and the way movie critics constantly bash shallow, brainless movies like Transformers (sorry, if there are any Transformers fans here). However, the main difference here is that Longfellow's work is far from brainless. There isn't a writer that I know of who can connect to readers better then Longfellow can. I have a feeling that long after I finish this class I will continue to read poems such as "The Skeleton in the Armor", "The Day is Done", "The Children's Hour", etc. In other words, Longfellow deserves more attention, and I'm happy to be part of a class that gave him the respect he deserves.
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