Сочинения
Переводы на русский язык
- М. Л. Михайлов, «Песни о неграх» («Современник», 1861, т. 86);
- Д. Л. Михаловский («Вестник Европы» 1879, X; сборник «Иностранные поэты», СПб., 1876);
- Ю. Иванов («Вестник Европы», 1870, X),
- О. Михайлова (ib., 1889, XII);
- Вл. Орлов (ib., 1882, VIII);
- П. И. Вейнберг («Отечественные записки», 1869, № 5, 1875, № 5-6)
- Часть этих переводов вошла в сборн. Н. В. Гербеля «Английские поэты» (СПб. 1877) и в «Хрестоматию» Филонова.
- И. А. Бунин (первая публикация 1896) Электронное воспроизведение издания 1918 года.
Библиография
-
Лонгфелло Г.
Избранное / Сост. Д. М. Горфинкель; пер. с англ. под ред. Вс. А. Рождественского, Б. Б. Томашевского; вступ. ст. и коммент. Б. Б. Томашевского. — М.: ГИХЛ, 1958. — 687 с. — 25 000 экз. -
Лонгфелло Г.
Песнь о Гайавате. Уитмен У
. Стихотворения и поэмы. Дикинсон Э
. Стихотворения. — М.: Художественная литература, 1976. — 527 с. — (Библиотека всемирной литературы). — 303 000 экз. -
Лонгфелло Г.
Обломки мачт: Стихи / Пер. с англ. Р. Дубровкина; предисл. О. Алякринского. — М.-СПб.: Летний сад, 2002. — 62 с. — 25 000 экз.
Early Years
Longfellow was born on February 27, 1807, in Portland, Maine, to an established New England family. His father, a prominent lawyer, expected his son would follow in his profession. Young Henry attended Portland Academy, a private school and then Bowdoin College, in Maine. Among his fellow students was the writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Longfellow was an excellent student, showing proficiency in foreign languages. Upon graduation, in 1825, he was offered a position to teach modern languages at Bowdoin, but on the condition that he first travel to Europe, at his own expense, to research the languages. There he developed a lifelong love of the Old World civilizations.
Upon returning from Europe, because the study of foreign languages was so new in America, Longfellow had to write his own textbooks. In addition to teaching, he published his first book Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea, a collection of travel essays on his European experience. His work earned him a professorship at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Return to the United States
Upon his return to the United States, Henry Longfellow wrote to Bowdoin that he does not want to accept the position as a professor due to the low salary. However, the trustees agreed to raise his pay from $600 to $800 and for additional $100 give him the duties of college librarian. Longfellow accepted the offer and began working at his alma mater.
Besides his teaching work, Longfellow also translated textbooks in French, Italian and Spanish. One of his first translated poetry books was from the medieval Spanish poet Jorge Manrique. The book was published in 1833. His next published project was a travel book Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea. He was being considered for a position at the New York University as a professor; however, since the university was in developmental stages, there was no salary.
Although highly paid, Henry Longfellow did not enjoy his work. His luck changed in 1834 when he was offered the Smith Professorship of Modern Languages by the president of Harvard College Josiah Quincy III. For the position, Longfellow was asked to travel Europe once again, where he improved his German and learned Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Finnish and Icelandic.
During this time, Longfellow was married to Marie Storer Potter. At the time of the trip, she was pregnant, but had a miscarriage in her sixth month of pregnancy, and soon after she died, being 22 years old. Three years after her death, Longfellow wrote a poem dedicated to her- “Footsteps of Angels”.
In 1836, Henry Longfellow returned to the United States and began working at Harvard. He continued to write poetry and published his debut book in 1839, titled Voices of the Night. For the most part, the book was translations of works from other authors, but also included nine original poems. Just two years later, he published his second book Ballads and Other Poems.
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Major projects in later years
Following the tragic death of Longfellow’s second wife in a fire
in their home in 1861, he busied himself with the
Tales of a Wayside Inn
(1863), in which various speakers, sitting around a fireplace, narrate
stories. Other tales appeared in 1872 and 1873. Longfellow also
translated poetry from eighteen languages. His most significant
translation,
published in 1867, was of a long poem by the medieval writer Dante
Alighieri (1265–1321) called the
Divine Comedy.
In the last phase of Longfellow’s long career, he worked on
another major project,
The Christus: A Mystery.
Completed in 1872, this work was concerned with «various aspects
of Christendom in the Apostolic, Middle, and Modern Ages.» The
work came in three parts. An earlier work,
The Golden Legend
(1851), formed part II; part III,
The New England Tragedies
(1868), dealt with Puritan (a religious group in New England that
stressed a strict moral code) themes; and, finally, part I,
The Divine Tragedy
(1871), concerned the life of Jesus Christ.
Several more volumes of Longfellow’s verse were issued before his
death on March 24, 1882, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After his death,
he became the first American whose bust (sculpture of one’s head)
was placed in the Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey, London,
England.
Second marriage and further career
While on a trip to Switzerland, Longfellow met the Boston industrialist Nathan Appleton and fell for his daughter Frances. The independent young lady was not interested in marriage, but Longfellow was determined to marry her. She was finally convinced only seven years later and wrote a letter to him agreeing to the wedding.
During his courtship, Henry Longfellow wrote the prose book Hyperion, published in 1839 and the play The Spanish Student, published in 1842. During the seven years of courtship, Longfellow was struggling with depression and panic attacks, and at one point took a six-month leave of absence from Harvard. In 1842, Longfellow also published Poems of Slavery, in which he publicly supported abolitionism.
After marrying Frances in 1843, Henry Longfellow wrote his only love poem, the sonnet “The Evening Star.” The couple had six children together. His career was going well, and Longfellow was loved by his students and successful with his poetry. By 1850, his income from poetry brought around $1,900 a year. In 1854, Longfellow retired from Harvard. A few years later, he was awarded an honorary doctorate of laws in 1859.
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Personal Life
Longfellow married Mary Storer Potter, also from a distinguished family. Before he began at Harvard, they traveled to northern Europe. While in Germany, Mary died following a miscarriage, in 1836. Devastated, Longfellow returned to the United States seeking solace. He turned to his writing, channeling his personal experiences into his work. He soon published the romance novel Hyperion, where he unabashedly told of his unrequited love for Frances Appleton, whom he had met in Europe soon after his first wife died. After seven years, they married in 1843 and would go on to have six children.
QUICK FACTS
- Birth Year: 1807
- Birth date: February 27, 1807
- Birth State: Maine
- Birth City: Portland
- Birth Country: United States
- Gender: Male
- Best Known For: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a famed 19th-century scholar, novelist and poet, known for works like ‘Voices of the Night,’ ‘Evangeline’ and ‘The Song of Hiawatha.’
- Industries
- Writing and Publishing
- Fiction and Poetry
- Astrological Sign: Pisces
- Schools
Bowdoin College
- Death Year: 1882
- Death date: March 24, 1882
- Death State: Massachusetts
- Death City: Cambridge
- Death Country: United States
CITATION INFORMATION
- Article Title: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Biography
- Author: Biography.com Editors
- Website Name: The Biography.com website
- Url: https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/henry-wadsworth-longfellow
- Access Date:
- Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
- Last Updated: June 19, 2020
- Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
Marriages
Drawing of Fanny Appleton Longfellow
Longfellow was a devoted husband and father, with a keen feeling for the pleasures of home. But his marriages ended in sadness and tragedy.
After his first wife died, Longfellow married Frances «Fanny» Appleton in 1843, daughter of the merchant Nathan Appleton, who bought the Craigie House overlooking the Charles River as a wedding present to the pair. While he was courting Miss Appleton, he frequently walked from Harvard to her home in Boston, crossing the river via the West Boston Bridge. That bridge was subsequently demolished and replaced, in 1906, by a new bridge, which was eventually renamed as the Longfellow Bridge.
His love for Fanny is evident in the following lines from Longfellow’s only love-poem, the sonnet «The Evening Star,» which he wrote in October, 1845: «O my beloved, my sweet Hersperus!/ My morning and my evening star of love!»
Their home became a meeting place for students as well as literary and philosophical figures, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Julia Ward Howe, and Charles Sumner. During their happy marriage, Longfellow sired six children (two boys and four girls).
Longfellow settled in Cambridge, where he remained for the rest of his life, although he spent summers at his home in Nahant. He retired from Harvard in 1854, devoting himself entirely to writing. He was awarded an honorary doctorate of Laws from Harvard in 1859.
On a hot July day, while sealing her daughter’s curls in an envelope, Fanny’s light summer dress caught fire.
Longfellow attempted to extinguish the flames, badly burning himself. Fanny died the next day, on July 10, 1861. Longfellow was devastated by her death and never fully recovered. The strength of his grief is still evident in these lines from a sonnet, «The Cross of Snow» (1879) which he wrote eighteen years later, to commemorate her death:
- Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
- These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
- And seasons, changeless since the day she died.
Early poetry
Longfellow’s poem «Hymn to the Night,» in
Voices of the Night,
conveys the poet’s debt to Novalis and his romantic kinship with
the «calm, majestic presence of the Night.» However,
«A Psalm of Life,» one of the best-known poems from this
first volume, reflects the influence of the famed German poet Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). His forceful philosophy
suggested to Longfellow the direction of his hymn to action:
«Life is real! Life is earnest! / Be not like dumb, driven
cattle! / Be a hero in the strife.»
Voices of the Night
was well received, and within a few years forty-three thousand copies
had been sold. Longfellow’s audience as a popular writer was
assured.
Longfellow’s next volume,
Ballads and Other Poems
(1842), contained two strong narrative poems, «The Wreck of the
Hesperus» and «The Skeleton in Armor,» as well as
the sentimental verses «Maidenhood» and «The Rainy
Day» («Into each life some rain must fall, / Some days
must be dark and dreary») and the moralizing (explaining in the
sense of right and wrong) poem «The Village Blacksmith.»
Later Years and Death
In the last 20 years of his life, Longfellow continued to enjoy fame with honors bestowed on him in Europe and America. Among the admirers of his work were Queen Victoria, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Prime Minister William Gladstone, Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde.
Longfellow also experienced more sorrow in his personal life. In 1861, a house fire killed his wife, Fanny, and that same year, the country was plunged into the Civil War. His young son, Charley, ran off to fight without his approval. After his wife’s death, he immersed himself in the translation of Dante’s The Divine Comedy, a monumental effort, published in 1867.
In March 1882, Longfellow had developed severe stomach pains caused by acute peritonitis. With the aid of opium and his friends and family who were with him, he endured the pain for several days before succumbing on March 24, 1882. At the time of his death, he was one of the most successful writers in America, with an estate worth an estimated $356,000.
Prolific Writer
Longfellow would produce some of his best work such as Voices of the Night, a collection of poems including Hymn to the Night and A Psalm of Life, which gained him immediate popularity. Other publications followed such as Ballads and Other Poems, containing “The Wreck of the Hesperus” and the “Village Blacksmith.” During this time, Longfellow also taught full time at Harvard and directed the Modern Languages Department. Due to budget cuts, he covered many of the teaching positions himself.
Longfellow’s popularity seemed to grow, as did his collection of works. He wrote about a multitude of subjects: slavery in Poems on Slavery, literature of Europe in an anthology The Poets and Poetry of Europe, and American Indians in The Song of Hiawatha. One of the early practitioners of self-marketing, Longfellow expanded his audience becoming one of the best-selling authors in the world.
Young writer
During Longfellow’s three years in Europe his lifelong harmony
with Old World (European) civilization was firmly established. He
returned home in 1829 and two years later married Mary Storer Potter. In
1833 he published
Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage beyond the Sea,
a collection of picturesque (forming a pleasing picture) travel essays
modeled after Washington Irving’s (1783–1859)
Sketch Book.
In 1834 Longfellow accepted a professorship at Harvard University in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. He did not start his new job until 1837, after
he had completed a tour of European and Scandinavian (northern European)
countries. During this trip his wife died. While staying at Heidelberg,
Germany, he came under the spell of the works of the German romantic
poet Novalis (1772–1801). Novalis’s moody, mystical
(pertaining to a spiritual event) nocturnalism (pertaining to the night)
struck a responsive chord in the grieving Longfellow.
In 1839 Longfellow published the sentimental prose romance
Hyperion
and his first volume of poetry,
Voices of the Night.
In
Hyperion
he rather indiscreetly (lacking sound judgment) told the story of his
courtship of Frances Appleton, whom he had met in Europe soon after his
wife’s death. They were married in 1843. Her father, a wealthy
Boston, Massachusetts, merchant, gave them
Early life and education
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born on February 27, 1807, in Portland, Maine, Massachusetts. His father Stephen Longfellow was a lawyer, and his grandfather Peleg used to be a general in the American Revolutionary War and later became a Member of Congress. Longfellow was the second child of his parents, who had eight children together.
Longfellow began his education at three years of age when he started attending a dame school. Three years later, he was enrolled in the Portland Academy. His mother encouraged the young boy to read, and he soon earned a reputation of being very serious.
Henry Longfellow quickly became fluent in Latin. He left Portland Academy when he was 14 years old, and began attending Bowdoin College in Maine. There, Longfellow joined the Peucinian Society student group.
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Prolific Writer
Longfellow would produce some of his best work such as Voices of the Night, a collection of poems including Hymn to the Night and A Psalm of Life, which gained him immediate popularity. Other publications followed such as Ballads and Other Poems, containing “The Wreck of the Hesperus” and the “Village Blacksmith.” During this time, Longfellow also taught full time at Harvard and directed the Modern Languages Department. Due to budget cuts, he covered many of the teaching positions himself.
Longfellow’s popularity seemed to grow, as did his collection of works. He wrote about a multitude of subjects: slavery in Poems on Slavery, literature of Europe in an anthology The Poets and Poetry of Europe, and American Indians in The Song of Hiawatha. One of the early practitioners of self-marketing, Longfellow expanded his audience becoming one of the best-selling authors in the world.
Personal Life
Longfellow married Mary Storer Potter, also from a distinguished family. Before he began at Harvard, they traveled to northern Europe. While in Germany, Mary died following a miscarriage, in 1836. Devastated, Longfellow returned to the United States seeking solace. He turned to his writing, channeling his personal experiences into his work. He soon published the romance novel Hyperion, where he unabashedly told of his unrequited love for Frances Appleton, whom he had met in Europe soon after his first wife died. After seven years, they married in 1843 and would go on to have six children.
QUICK FACTS
- Birth Year: 1807
- Birth date: February 27, 1807
- Birth State: Maine
- Birth City: Portland
- Birth Country: United States
- Gender: Male
- Best Known For: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a famed 19th-century scholar, novelist and poet, known for works like ‘Voices of the Night,’ ‘Evangeline’ and ‘The Song of Hiawatha.’
- Industries
- Writing and Publishing
- Fiction and Poetry
- Astrological Sign: Pisces
- Schools
Bowdoin College
- Death Year: 1882
- Death date: March 24, 1882
- Death State: Massachusetts
- Death City: Cambridge
- Death Country: United States
CITATION INFORMATION
- Article Title: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Biography
- Author: Biography.com Editors
- Website Name: The Biography.com website
- Url: https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/henry-wadsworth-longfellow
- Access Date:
- Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
- Last Updated: June 19, 2020
- Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
Credits
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Later Years and Death
In the last 20 years of his life, Longfellow continued to enjoy fame with honors bestowed on him in Europe and America. Among the admirers of his work were Queen Victoria, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Prime Minister William Gladstone, Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde.
Longfellow also experienced more sorrow in his personal life. In 1861, a house fire killed his wife, Fanny, and that same year, the country was plunged into the Civil War. His young son, Charley, ran off to fight without his approval. After his wife’s death, he immersed himself in the translation of Dante’s The Divine Comedy, a monumental effort, published in 1867.
In March 1882, Longfellow had developed severe stomach pains caused by acute peritonitis. With the aid of opium and his friends and family who were with him, he endured the pain for several days before succumbing on March 24, 1882. At the time of his death, he was one of the most successful writers in America, with an estate worth an estimated $356,000.
Early life and education
Longfellow was born in 1807, the son of Stephen and Zilpah (Wadsworth) Longfellow. He was the second of seven children. He was born and grew up in what is now known as the Wadsworth-Longfellow House, a Federal style house that was located on the corner of Hancock and Fore Streets in Portland, Maine. The house was demolished in 1955. Longfellow’s father was a lawyer and congressman and his maternal grandfather, Peleg Wadsworth Sr., was a general in the American Revolutionary War. He was descended from the Longfellow family who came to America from Otley in Yorkshire, England, and from Priscilla and John Alden, a Mayflower Puritan couple on his father’s side.
The Longfellow family faith was Unitarian, and Henry’s younger brother, Samuel, became a minister in the Unitarian church. Samuel Longfellow later wrote Henry’s biography and commented about his brother’s spiritual life: «It permeated his life. His nature was at heart devout: His ideas of life and death, and of what lies beyond, were essentially cheerful, hopeful, optimistic. He did not care to talk much on theological points, but he believed in the supreme good in the world and in the universe.»
Longfellow was enrolled in a «dame school» at the age of three and by the age of six, when he entered the Portland Academy, he was able to read and write very well. He remained at the Portland Academy until the age of fourteen and entered Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, in 1822. At the age of nineteen he graduated fourth in a class of 38 students. At Bowdoin, he met Nathaniel Hawthorne, who became his lifelong friend.
After graduating in 1825, he was offered a professorship at Bowdoin College with the condition that he first spend some time in Europe for further language study. He toured Europe between 1826 and 1829, and upon returning, went on to become the first professor of modern languages at Bowdoin, as well as a part-time librarian. During his years at the college, he wrote textbooks in French, Italian, and Spanish, and a travel book, Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea. In 1831, he married Mary Storer Potter of Portland.
In 1834, Longfellow was offered the Smith Professorship of French and Spanish at Harvard with the stipulation that he spend a year or so in Europe to perfect his German. Tragically, his young wife, who had accompanied Henry to Europe, died during the trip in Rotterdam, after suffering a miscarriage in 1835. Mary was only 22 years old when she died. In 1838, he wrote a touching poem, «Footsteps of Angels,» in her memory. Longfellow continued his travels for about a year after Mary’s death. During this time Longfellow came under the influence of German Romanticism. When he returned to the United States, he took up the professorship at Harvard University (1836-1854) and began publishing his poetry, including Voices of the Night, in 1839, and Ballads and Other Poems, which included his famous poem «The Village Blacksmith,» in 1841.
Beginning of writing
Henry Longfellow began writing poems while he was still a student at Portland Academy. He published his first poem “The Battle of Lovell’s Pond” in 1820 in the Portland Gazette. Since then, he continued to submit his poetry to various newspapers and magazines. One of the biggest influences for Longfellow was his professor Thomas Cogswell Upham. His professor encouraged Longfellow to publish, and in one year since 1824, he managed to release 40 poems.
Henry Longfellow graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825 and soon after got a job as a professor of modern languages there. However, firstly Longfellow had to learn the languages. One of the versions of how he got the job, was that one of his trustees, Benjamin Orr was impressed by his translation of Horace from Latin that he did.
In 1826, Longfellow embarked on a journey to Europe on the board of ship Cadmus. During the next three years, Longfellow traveled to Spain, France, Italy, Germany, and England. His father sponsored the trip and cost him a considerable amount of money for the time- $2, 604. Despite the expenses, Longfellow learned French, Spanish, Portuguese and German languages.
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Bibliography
Poetry
Ballads and Other Poems (1841): including «The Skeleton in Armor,» «The Wreck of the Hesperus,» and «The Village Blacksmith»
Christus: A Mystery (1872)
Evangeline (1847)
Poems on Slavery (1842)
Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863): including «The Ride of Paul Revere»
The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems (1845)
The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858)
The Golden Legend (1851)
The Masque of Pandora and Other Poems (1875)
The Song of Hiawatha (1855)
Ultima Thule (1880)
Voices of the Night (1839): including «The Psalm of Life» and «Footsteps of Angels»
The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri (1867, translation)
Drama
The Spanish Student (1843)
Essays
Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimmage Beyond the Sea (1835)
Fiction
Hyperion: A Romance (1839)
Поэзия
Писательский стиль Генри Лонгфелло подтверждает, что он примыкал к браминам. Эстетские наклонности, гармония и умеренность преобладали в числе его предпочтений. Генри делал акцент на балладах и лирических произведениях. После 1840-х в его стихах появились эпические черты.
В 1841-м опубликовали сборник «Баллады и другие стихотворения», в котором Лонгфелло продемонстрировал склонность к эпосу. Стих «Гибель “Вечерней Звезды”» был написан наподобие английской морской баллады. Генри продолжал развивать тематику, руководствуясь данными из истории Новой Англии. В поэзии автор особенно ценил динамику ритмов и обновление поэтических форм.
Из произведений, опубликованных с 1841-го по 1845-й, наибольшую популярность имели стихотворения «Деревенский кузнец» и Excelsior!. Они освещали патриархальный американский строй, несли похвалы природе, естеству сельской жизни и цельному характеру лирического героя. В 1842-м опубликовали сборник «Стихи о рабстве». Произведения в нем были описательны и не претендовали на протест против рабовладельческого строя.
В 1849-м публика увидела сборник стихов «На берегу моря и у камина», ставший продолжением маринистической тематики. Поэма «Постройка корабля» оказалась центральной. Циклы «Перелетные птицы» и «Рассказы придорожной гостиницы», вышедшие позднее, собрали в себе материалы разных лет. Лонгфелло уже завоевал авторитет и был любим публикой аристократического и простого происхождения.
Поэзия не была единственным жанром, интересовавшим Лонгфелло. Он также пробовал себя в создании поэм и драм. Поздний этап творчества литератора был посвящен работе с материалом прорелигиозного характера. Часть произведений автора составляют переводы и подражания зарубежным литераторам.
Ярким примером расположенности автора к религиозному направлению стало произведение «Золотая легенда» 1851 года. Оно и драмы «Трагедии Новой Англии» 1868-го, «Божественная трагедия» 1871-го были объединены под названием «Христос: Мистерия». К примерам освещения проблемы рабовладельческого строя в творчестве Генри Лонгфелло относится «Песнь о Гайавате» 1855 года издания. Это интерпретация карельского эпоса, в основу которой легли легенды коренных индейцев, проживавших на территории нынешних США.
В 1880-м опубликовали сборник «Крайняя Фула». На закате творческой биографии Лонгфелло совмещал поэзию и драматургию, все чаще ставя религиозные темы во главу угла. Ярким примером является драма «Испанский студент».
Early Years
Longfellow was born on February 27, 1807, in Portland, Maine, to an established New England family. His father, a prominent lawyer, expected his son would follow in his profession. Young Henry attended Portland Academy, a private school and then Bowdoin College, in Maine. Among his fellow students was the writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Longfellow was an excellent student, showing proficiency in foreign languages. Upon graduation, in 1825, he was offered a position to teach modern languages at Bowdoin, but on the condition that he first travel to Europe, at his own expense, to research the languages. There he developed a lifelong love of the Old World civilizations.
Upon returning from Europe, because the study of foreign languages was so new in America, Longfellow had to write his own textbooks. In addition to teaching, he published his first book Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea, a collection of travel essays on his European experience. His work earned him a professorship at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Later life
In 1861, Henry Longfellow suffered a significant personal loss, when his wife suddenly died. She was closing an envelope with hot wax sealing, and her dress caught on fire. Frances was severely burned and died the following day. While trying to save his wife, Longfellow also acquired terrible burns and could not attend her funeral. He also stopped shaving due to the severe burns to his face. Longfellow was severely devastated by the death of his wife and worried that he would be sent to an insane asylum.
One of his major works after retirement was the translation of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, which took him several years to perfect. To work on the translation, he organized weekly meetings with other intellectuals, called The Dante Club. In 1874, Longfellow published “The Hanging of the Crane” in New York Ledger, and received $3,000 for it- the highest price ever paid for a poem.
In 1882, Henry Longfellow began to feel stomach pain and took some opium to relieve it, before going to bed. His pain continued for several days, and finally, Longfellow died on March 24, 1882. He was buried at the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, together with both of his wives. The following year, a collection of his works was published.
Детство и юность
Генри родился 27 февраля 1807 года в городе Портлэнд. Имя Уодсворт досталось мальчику от деда, морского лейтенанта. Семья была обеспеченной и пользовалась уважением горожан. Отец работал адвокатом и состоял в конгрессе. Мечтатель Генри любил читать и размышлять о путешествиях. В 13 лет юноша сделал первые шаги в поэзии и начал печататься в местной газете.
Лонгфелло окончил Боуденский колледж при Гарварде в 1825-м. Он получил предложение преподавать на кафедре новых языков, но перед назначением отправился в путешествие, затянувшееся на 3 года. Побывав в Испании, Франции, Италии и Англии, поэт вернулся домой и приступил к работе.
Спустя 6 лет Генри стал профессором Гарварда. Начало педагогической деятельности предварило годовое путешествие. Параллельно с преподавательской деятельностью Лонгфелло продолжал заниматься творчеством.
Epic poems
Longfellow wrote several epic poems. An epic poem is a long poem that
tells a story, typically about a hero, and centers on uncommon
achievements and events. He achieved a national reputation with the
publication of
Evangeline
(1847), a highly sentimental narrative poem on the expulsion (driving
out) of the French from Acadia. He wrote
Evangeline
in dactylic hexameters. Dactyls are poetic feet of three syllables,
with the first syllable long or accented and the others short or
unaccented. Hexameters are verses having six poetic feet. The book was
enthusiastically received.
Longfellow next released the unimaginative romantic novel
Kavanagh
(1849) and
By the Seaside and the Fireside
(1850), which contained the very popular nationalistic (designed to
arouse pride in one’s country) poem «The Building of the
Ship»: «Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! / Sail on, O
UNION, strong and great!»