The Complete Works

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Book Overview

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1015697275
• ISBN13: 9781015697270
• Release Date: October 2022
• Publisher: Legare Street Press
• Length: 314 Pages
• Weight: 1.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

...Appreciate his deeper insight, his profounder soul...

[This review applies to _The Works of Henry WadsworthLongfellow_ published by The Wordsworth Poetry Library.] * * * * * * * * * Poor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -- not only do manypeople get his name and the name of William Wordsworthmixed up, but he seems "doomed" in "modern" times tobe labeled, filed, and forgotten as a "sentimental,sing-song poet." What an injustice! This man wasconsidered to be the premier poet of his day, and whileit is true that fashions in taste change, it is nottrue that deeper insight, once gained, is meant to bebrushed aside. Few people ever achieve deeper insight,so we should listen sometimes to those who do. There are many poems in this complete collectionwhich even modern academics may not be aware of. I wassurprised to learn that a modern academic admitted thathe had no idea of where the idea of "poetic inspiration"came from [ancient Greece] though he could have probablyspouted quotes from Marx or Derrida line for line. Wehave lost contact with the knowledge and culture, notonly of America's past, but of the world's cultural past. Too much attention has been lost on Longfellow in"immortalizing" him for the memorized poems. Moreattention needs to be paid to him, especially inthese modern times, for his deeper insights, hisoffering up of the Orphic, Pythagorean, and hermetictraditions as well. As one modern critic has said ofhim: "If Longfellow's achievements have been minimizedin our century, that is partly because students ofAmerican literature have been less interested in theconservative aesthetics of restraint than in the comparatively radical-experimental aesthetics of visionary romanticism." -- Lawrence Buell; "Introduction"to _Selected Poems_ (Penguin Classics). Yet, modernsare cutting themselves off from an even loftiervisionary past...one that extends back to ancienttimes and has richly influenced the thought andwritings of many of the world's more profoundthinkers and poets. Longfellow was also a translatorof the work of other poets -- but we should understandthat we can tell something about a poet and histhinking...and his being shaped by experience...inhis selection of the poems that he wishes to take thetime and effort to translate. Thus, we should look carefully -- and listencarefully - to Longfellow when he chooses to translate"Coplas De Manrique" (from the Spanish). It is notjust everyone who would translate, or understand, something like this: "But O, how false and full of guile/That world, which wore so soft a smile/But to betray!/She, that had been his friend before,/Now from thefated monarch tore/Her charms away." And the explanatory note which was printed withthe poem helps us to see why Longfellow chose it:"In the language of his historian, 'Don Jorge Manrique,in [this] elegant Ode, full of poetic beauties, richembellishments of genius, and high moral reflections,mourned the death of his father as with a funeral hymn.This praise is not exaggerated. The poem is a modelof its kind.