Transcript 19th century American poets

19th century American poets
Hao Guilian, Ph,D.
Yunnan Normal University
Sept, 2009
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Longfellow predominantly wrote lyric
poems which are known for their
musicality and which often presented
stories of mythology and legend. He
became the most popular American
poet of his day and also had success
overseas. He has been criticized,
however, for imitating European styles
and writing specifically for the masses.
Longfellow in 1868 by Julia
Margaret Cameron
Popularity and significance
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There are two reasons for the popularity
and significance of Longfellow's poetry.
First, he had the gift of easy rhyme. He
wrote poetry as a bird sings, with natural
grace and melody. Read or heard once or
twice, his rhyme and meters cling to the
mind long after the sense may be
forgotten.
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Second, Longfellow wrote on obvious
themes which appeal to all kinds of people.
His poems are easily understood; they sing
their way into the consciousness of those
who read them. Above all, there is a
joyousness in them, a spirit of optimism
and faith in the goodness of life which
evokes immediate response in the
emotions of his readers.
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Americans owe a great debt to
Longfellow because he was among the
first of American writers to use native
themes. He wrote about the American
scene and landscape, the American
Indian (Song of Hiawatha), and
American history and tradition (The
Courtship of Miles Standish, Evangeline).
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He lived when giants walked the New England
earth, giants of intellect and feeling who
established the New Land as a source of
greatness. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Oliver Wendell
Holmes, and William Prescott were a few of the
great minds and spirits among whom Longfellow
took his place as a singer and as a
representative of America.
《人生礼赞》
—青年人的心对歌者说的话
不要在伤感的诗句里对我说，
人生不过是一场梦！——
昏睡的灵魂等于是死亡，
事物的真相和外表不同。
人生是真切的！人生是实在的！
它的归宿不是荒坟；
“你本是尘土，仍要归于尘土”，
这话说的并不是灵魂。
不是享乐，也不是受苦，
我们命定的目标和道路
而是行动；在每个明天，
都要比今天前进一步。
艺术永恒，时光飞逝，
我们的心，虽然勇敢、坚决，
仍然像闷声的鼓，它正在
伴奏向坟墓送葬的哀乐。
在这世界的辽阔战场上，
在这人生的营帐中，
莫学那听人驱策的哑畜，
要做一个战斗中的英雄！
别只靠将来，不管它多迷人！
让已逝的过去永久埋葬！
行动吧，——趁着现在的时光！
良知在心中，上帝在头上！
伟大的生平昭示我们：
我们能让生活更辉煌！
而当告别人世的时候，
留下脚印在时间的沙上；
也许我们有一个弟兄，
航行在庄严的人生大海；
船只沉没了，绝望的时候，
会看到这脚印而振作起来。
那么，让我们起来干吧，
对任何命运抱英雄气概；
不断地进取，不断的追求，
要学会劳动，学会等待。
Edgar Allan Poe
Main poems:
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Annabel Lee
To Helen
The Raven
The Sleeper
Sonnet—To
Science
Edgar Allan Poe
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One of the greatest and
unhappiest of American poets, a
master of the horror tale, and the
patron saint of the detective story.
First gained critical acclaim in
France and England. His
reputation in America was
relatively slight until the Frenchinfluenced writers and the
Lovecraft school created interest
in his work.
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Poe married his 13-year old
cousin, Virginia Clemm.
To Helen
Was this the face that
launched a thousand
ships?
------Marlowe
To Helen
In the first stanza, Helen’s beauty is
soothing (减轻痛苦的). It provides
security and safety to Helen's beauty, for
her beauty is as hypnotic(催眠的) for the
speaker as the ships that transported
another wanderer-Ulysses-home from
Troy.
To Helen
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Poe uses allusions to classical names and places,
as well as certain kinds of images to create the
impression of a far-off idealized, unreal woman,
like a Greek statue. words that support the image
of an ideal woman are "hyacinth“ and "classic”
"Naiad airs“ and "statue-like”. Helen stands, not
like a real woman, but like a saint in a "windowsniche.” She becomes a symbol both of beauty and
of frustration, a romantically idealized, yet
inaccessible image of the heart's desire.
致海伦
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海伦，你惊世之美浮现在我眼里
犹如那昔时尼西恩的三桅船
那样优雅地徐徐驶过芬芳之海
风尘仆仆、疲惫不堪的流浪者们
争先恐后地登上自己家乡的港岸
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早已习惯在绝望的大海上久久徘徊
你风信子般的秀发，你绝美的脸庞
你水中女神似的抒情调终于带我回家
光荣属于西腊
崇高属于罗马
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瞧！在那辉煌的窗口里
我看见你静静伫立如同塑像
手持玛瑙制作的灯
啊，心灵之女神
来自耶鲁撒冷圣城
Poe’s theory for poetry
short but achieve
maximum effect
poems
produce a feeling of beauty in the reader
"pure“, not to moralize
He stresses rhythm
真实能够满足人的理智,
感情能够满足人的心灵,
而美则能激动人的灵魂
insists on an even(规则的) metrical flow
Two Transitional Writers
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Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman are
considered sometimes as Romantic
poets by many critics.
Yet they could also be placed
comfortably in the post-Civil War era of
American Realism.
This is because they were both involved
in making the transition between
Romanticism and Realism.
Walt Whitman
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Walt Whitman was born May
31, 1819 on South Huntington,
Long Island, New York.
He was almost entirely selfeducated, especially admiring
the work of Dante,
Shakespeare, and Homer.
His mother described him as
“very good, but very strange”.
His brother described him as
being “stubborner [sic] than a
load of bricks.”
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (first
edition). Brooklyn: 1855
Career
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Apprenticed to a printer.
Taught school at 17.
Editor of The Brooklyn Eagle, a
respected newspaper, but was fired for
his outspoken opposition to slavery.
Civil War nurse.
Whitman’s Poetry
Whitman declared that his poetry would
have:
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Long lines that capture the rhythms of
natural speech
Free verse
Vocabulary drawn from everyday speech
A base in reality, not morality
Leaves of Grass
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The first version of his masterpiece, Leaves of Grass,
appeared in 1855.
Emerson praised Whitman’s poetry as “the most
extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has
yet to contribute”.
Whitman used these words, written by Emerson in a
letter to Whitman, in a later introduction to Leaves of
Grass. Emerson was not amused.
John Greenleaf Whittier threw his copy of the book into
the fireplace.
Another critic dismissed it as “just a barbaric yawp.”
Longfellow, Holmes, and Lowell were equally
unimpressed.
Even Thoreau was appalled by Whitman’s poetry, and he
was certainly no conformist!
What’s his deal?
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Why were so many writers shocked by
Whitman?
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His lack of regular rhyme and meter (free
verse) and nontraditional poetic style and
subject matter shocked more traditional
writers.
He also wrote poetry with unabashedly sexual
imagery and themes, some of them
homoerotic. Examples include the Calamus
poems and “I Sing the Body Electric”.
O Captain! My Captain!
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Whitman wrote poetry in praise of
Abraham Lincoln
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“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”
(an elegy written after Lincoln’s
assassination).
“O Captain! My Captain!” memorializes
Lincoln’s passing as the death of a great man
and the death of the era he dominated.
啊，船长，我的船长哟！
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啊，船长，我的船长哟！我们可怕的航程已经终
了，
我们的船渡过了每一个难关，我们追求的锦标已
经得到，
港口就在前面，我已经听见钟声，听见了人们的
欢呼，
千万双眼睛在望着我们的船，它坚定，威严而且
勇敢；
只是，啊！心哟！心哟！心哟！
啊，鲜红的血滴，
就在那甲板上，我的船长躺下了，
他已浑身冰凉，停止了呼吸。
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啊，船长，我的船长哟！起来听听这钟声，
起来吧，——旌旗正为你招展，——号角为你长鸣
，
为你，人们准备了无数的花束和花环，——为你，
人群挤满了海岸，
为你，这晃动着的群众在欢呼，转动着他们殷切的
脸面；
这里，船长，亲爱的父亲哟！
让你的头枕着我的手臂吧！
在甲板上，这真是一场梦——
你已浑身冰凉，停止了呼吸。
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我的船长不回答我的话，他的嘴唇惨白而僵硬，
我的父亲，感觉不到我的手臂，他已没有脉搏，也
没有了生命，
我们的船已经安全地下锚了，它的航程已经终了，
从可怕的旅程归来，这胜利的船，目的已经达到；
啊，欢呼吧，海岸，鸣响吧，钟声！
只是我以悲痛的步履，
漫步在甲板上，那里我的船长躺着，
他已浑身冰凉，停止了呼吸。
Emily Dickinson: “The Poet of
the Inner-Soul”
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Emily Dickinson was born in 1830
and was destined to become one
of the greatest poets of all time.
Like many authors, Dickinson was
not known until after her death in
1886.
She was, in fact, a very reclusive
and quiet woman who hardly ever
left her home town.
The picture you see here is one of
two known photos of Emily.
Emily’s Home in Amherst,
Massachusetts ; and her grave
Higginson’s Comments on
Dickinson
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"A recluse by temperament and habit, literally spending
years without setting her foot beyond the doorstep, and
many more years during which her walks were strictly
limited to her father's grounds, she habitually concealed
her mind, like her person, from all but a very few friends;
and it was with great difficulty that she was persuaded to
print, during her lifetime, three or four poems. Yet she
wrote verses in great abundance; and though curiously
indifferent to all conventional rules, had yet a rigorous
literary standard of her own, and often altered a word
many times to suit an ear which had its own tenacious
fastidiousness."
Features of Dickinson’s poetry:
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--telling images, striking, suggestive and
connotative sometimes incomprehensible
--a severe economy of expression
--direct and plain words, simple syntax
--faulty grammar
--no regular rhyme
--unusual capitalization
--unusual use of punctuation marks
“I’M nobody! Who are you?”
I ’M nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there ’s a pair of us—
don’t tell!
They ’d banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the
livelong day
To an admiring bog!
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我是无名之辈，
你又是谁？
你也不是政要显贵？
那我们就是天生一对！
别吱声，不要张嘴，
免得他们来乱发淫威！
当要人多么乏味，
招摇过市，唾沫横飞，
象青蛙呼应泥潭的赞美，
把自己的名字成天鼓吹！
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“Dickinson used precise language and unique
poetic forms to simultaneously reveal and
conceal her private thoughts and feelings”
(Elements of Literature 345).
Dickinson is known for using poetry as private
observation.
Her poems are carefully crafted in rhyme and
meter.
Thank you! And…
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Work HARD on your assignment!