The Song of Hiawatha E-Book

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

• Herausgeber: Jazzybee Verlag
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Deutsch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 193

Beschreibung

This is the completely illustrated and annotated edition including an extensive primer on the author's life and works and many splendid drawings by Harrsion Fisher. 'This Indian Edda, if I may so call it,' says the author, 'is founded on a tradition, prevalent among the North American Indians, of a personage of miraculous birth, who was sent among them to clear their rivers, forests, and fishing-grounds, and to teach them the arts of peace. He was known among different tribes by the several names of Michabou, Chiabo, Manabozho, Tarcuyawagon, and Hiawatha. ' We are further informed, that 'the scene of the poem is among the Ojibways on the southern shore of Lake Superior, in the region between the Pictured Rocks and the Grand Sable.' Here then, at last, is a genuine American poem, by a native of America; a poem redolent of pine-forests and the smoke of wigwams. ' In reading American poetry, we never get beyond the shores of Kent,' said a surly critic some years ago. It is obvious enough, that if this complaint was justifiable then, it is utterly without foundation now. Longfellow's poem created an immense and instant sensation, not only in this country, but in England. It was read, it was quoted, it was praised, it was ridiculed, it was dramatized, it was parodied, it was attacked as a plagiarism. It remains to this day the most parodied poem in the English language.

Leseprobe

The Song of Hiawatha

Henry W. Longfellow

Contents:

Introductory To Hiawatha

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – A Primer

The Song of Hiawatha

Introduction

I - The Peace-Pipe

II - The Four Winds

III - Hiawatha's Childhood

IV - Hiawatha and Mudjekeewis

V - Hiawatha's Fasting

VI - Hiawatha's Friends

VII - Hiawatha's Sailing

VIII - Hiawatha's Fishing

IX - Hiawatha and the Pearl-Feather

X - Hiawatha's Wooing

XI - Hiawatha's Wedding-Feast

XII - The Son of the Evening Star

XIII - Blessing the Cornfields

XIV - Picture-Writing

XV - Hiawatha's Lamentation

XVI - Pau-Puk-Keewis

XVII - The Hunting of Pau-Puk-Keewis

XVIII - The Death of Kwasind

XIX - The Ghosts

XX - The Famine

XXI - The White Man's Foot

XXII - Hiawatha's Departure

Vocabulary

The Song of Hiawatha, H. W.Longfellow

Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck

86450 Altenmünster, Loschberg 9

Germany

ISBN: 9783849623579

www.jazzybee-verlag.de

www.facebook.com/jazzybeeverlag

[email protected]

Introductory To Hiawatha

The Red Man in North America has alternately been the victim of the poet and the politician. The wrongs suffered through the emissaries of the State may be of a more vital character than those inflicted by the Muse, yet they cannot be more real; for it has been the custom of the poet to clothe the Red Man in a histrionic garb, and invest him with exaggerated action. In literature he has, therefore, on the whole, had more than his due. The " Noble " overshadows the '' Poor Indian.'' Still there have been exceptions to the general rule, and thus a great character has occasionally been allowed to stand far below the true level. This, perhaps, has been the case with Hiawatha, the Sage of the Iroquois.

In saying this, however, I have no desire to reflect upon the course adopted by the author of the beautiful poem of " Hiawatha." His representations are, in the main, founded on Indian traditions. He has drawn the character of Hiawatha as the Red Men themselves have often represented it. Besides, he had a perfect right to choose his own point of observation. The liberty that the circumstances of the case afford has not been abused. He has simply selected those aspects best adapted for pictorial effect. Yet while this is an age in which we are accustomed to view a story on its most winning side, we are nevertheless entitled to the right of independent judgment, and to the use of the same liberty as is accorded to the Poet, in an effort to present what appears to be a more probable view of the history of the great Iroquois Chief.

At a time like the present, it may appear a somewhat unpromising task to present Hiawatha as anything like a historic person, or seek to preserve the name from the atmosphere of grotesque fable. Yet this, perhaps, is a task that might be undertaken; for when we remember how easily, with the lapse of time, an individual, even in civilized society, becomes invested with an air of romance, we shall hardly feel inclined to question the existence of the tendency among rude and uncivilized tribes.

It has already been remarked that Mr. Longfellow was perfectly justified in presenting that view of the Indian Sage which he has given in his poem; still it will perhaps prove interesting to employ our liberty in making a brief comparison of the Indian who appears on his page with the Indian found among the better class of Algic traditions; that is, a comparison of Hiawatha as his character is popularly conceived, and Hiawatha as he possibly was.

How, then, does the character of Hiawatha appear in the poem of Mr. Longfellow?

First, however, let us hear what Mr. Schoolcraft says of the sources of the poet's information.

In speaking of the legends upon which Mr. Longfellow has relied, the historian says, in substance, that they represent Hiawatha on the whole, as an impersonation of evil. The evil is not, indeed, without mitigation, yet the essential badness of Hiawatha is combined with low cunning, ineffable weakness, and the paltriest ambition. Consequently we find that the character which the poet represents, continually reminds us of its origin. Certain qualities may be depressed, and some may be exaggerated, while others may be left out altogether, and yet the feeble trickster is always there, holding himself up to view amid all the affluence of rhythm and imagery and art, as a compound of opposite and often contemptible qualities. This, once more let it be remembered, I state, not as a fault, but as a fact.

I might, perhaps, have been told at the outset that similar characters abound everywhere in history. There, for instance, is Josheka of the Algonquins; who finds a parallel, in turn, among the mythical creations of the distant South. Why not, then, place the story of Hiawatha with his? To this it may be replied that, while found among them, it is not of them. The story of Hiawatha evidently belongs to a more modern age, and is not by any means to be properly included in the class of myths at all. The story is essentially of the nature of a legend. It does not deal with a quality. It sets forth no transcendental truth. It rather tells the story of a life, and gives, seemingly, amid all its wild exaggerations, a modicum of historic truth. Let us, therefore, endeavor to make this more apparent.

In dealing with the native tribes of America, the historian has generally given almost exclusive prominence to the two branches that so strongly established themselves in Mexico and Peru. And yet the famous Confederacy of the Iroquois or Five Nations, was established not more than one or two centuries after the Mexican and Peruvian monarchies, and is quite as worthy, in many respects, of high consideration. Especially does this appear to be the case in connection with the present subject, for the reason that this Confederacy of the Iroquois was founded through the agency of Hiawatha, a fact that Mr. Longfellow's poem does not set forth. This brings the hero within comparatively modern times, somewhere near the thirteenth century.

Until about this period the five nations composing the league were widely scattered over large portions of the country. But an invasion from the north led them, under the guidance of Hiawatha, to unite for the extirpation of the common foe. The League of the Iroquois was fashioned after the Greek Amphictyonic League, and while the union was real and practical, each of the five banded tribes was left with its separate and sovereign right. And so conscious were the Indian leaders of the wisdom and advantages of their system, that in the year 1774, they gravely urged it upon the representatives of the Colonies for the acceptance of the American people. Republicanism did not begin with Greece, nor was it the exclusive issue of the American Revolution. The white man may be slow to recognize the fact, yet it is nevertheless not too much to affirm, that essential republicanism in this country began with the League of the Five Nations, who were taught the advantages of the system by Hiawatha; all of which is worthy of finding expression in a peculiarly American poem.

What we may call the historic character of Hiawatha forms a distinct point which the writer desires to present and keep in view; and yet there is the separate inquiry, namely, whether we have ground for claiming a loftier character for Hiawatha, and one everyway more dignified and pure, than the conception now before the people.

The eccentric Thoreau used sometimes to wonder what it was in the character of Christ that made a certain bishop so bigoted. But Thoreau was not sure of his fact. There was not anything in the great heart of the Galilean to make a man bigoted. We may nevertheless inquire what there was in the character of Hiawatha to secure the Red Man's universal veneration. They certainly paid no respect to a quality under the form of a person, and therefore are we at liberty to infer that it was the person himself, in whom certain great qualities were found.

The versions of the Indian legend which has heretofore been followed come from every quarter of North America, and are marked by all that is puerile, extravagant and ridiculous; yet we have another version which is the peculiar product of the Iroquois mind, and therefore characterized by the same degree of superiority that must be confessed as attending the thoughts of the people of that Confederacy. This version of the story of Hiawatha is free from all that is low, puerile, sensual and absurd, and commands respect by its dignity, consistency and general effect. The style of the narrative is comprehensive, the contents brief, and thus the story is soon told.

From a consideration of the facts of the case, it would seem, therefore, as if there were room for a new Hiawatha. Yet when Hiawatha comes he must not be too historical. He must speak to us a long way off. His voice must come sounding down from distant times. Here, then, might be suggested a substantial improvement on the present Hiawatha, where we have the Jesuits introduced without authority, and where they appear almost as inappropriate as a band of Pilgrim Fathers in one of the Books of Virgil. As Longfellow's Hiawatha is about to ascend to heaven, we read:

From the distant Land of Wabun,

From the farthest realm of morning,

Came the Black-Robe chief the Prophet,

He the Priest of Prayer, the Pale face.

With his guides and his companions.

"And the noble Hiawatha,

With his hands aloft extended.

Held aloft in sign of welcome,

Waited, full of exultation.

Till the birch canoe with paddles

Grated on the shining pebbles,

Stranded on the sandy margin.

Till the Black-Robe chief, the Pale face

With the cross upon his bosom,

Landed on the sandy margin."

This certainly is an anachronism, the flavor being too modern. The statement of Mr. Schoolcraft has been cited where he claims that the legend followed by Mr. Longfellow represents Hiawatha largely as an embodiment of evil. And the Iroquois chief does not escape this taint even in passing through the alembic of the Poet. At the same time his positive religious character is everyway overstated. Hiawatha " fasting " in Longfellow's pages is one thing, and Hiawatha fasting in the legend is quite another. In the one case he is rigidly devout, and in the other he is overflowing with characteristic mischief and fun, stealing jovially away from his secluded praying lodge, to watch his grandmother, who surreptitiously, in his absence from home, entertains a huge black bear. The legend paraphrased in the verses that follow this introduction do not treat of that matter at all.

In the Iroquois legend used in the present case, we look in vain for anything that essentially detracts from his dignity, goodness and worth; and, at the same time, the legend is free from anachronisms. Hiawatha does not enter into the thoughts of the seventeenth century, when the Jesuit roamed the American woods, and bought at any price the privilege of sending an Indian child to heaven with a drop of dew. The date of Hiawatha's death is synchronous with the perfect establishment of the Iroquois League, which had already arrived at the height of its glory, and was the dominant Indian power on the North American continent before the white man encroached upon the soil. The Iroquois tradition, indeed, confounds Hiawatha with the more uncertain Tarenyawago, yet he soon emerges in the narrative with a new name, and appears before the antiquary, as he probably was, bearing a lofty, consistent character, shedding equal luster upon himself and upon the fortunes of his tribe. Such a character hardly deserves to be buried under the debris of ridiculous fable, or stand in the rank with Yennadizze the Idle. The Indian annals show only one such comprehensive and beneficent character, and, therefore, why not let the Red Man enjoy its benefit?

It may indeed be said that the character of Hiawatha, even as given by the Iroquois, is unreal; yet it should be remembered that a thirteenth-century myth could not well found a government, or administer laws. There must have been somewhere a powerful organizing mind — a real personality; for the work done was both permanent and great. All this implies a great worker. And may not that worker have been Hiawatha?

The conception of Hiawatha embodied in the following lines, is therefore offered as more consistent and dignified than that popularly entertained, and which makes the heaven-born Hiawatha appear contemptible, by reducing him, without reason, to all the ordinary straits of the Red Man, and leads him to desire conflicts he cannot support and dangers before which he quails. In the Iroquois version, the character of Hiawatha and the incidents of his life are always invested with unity and dignity. He never appears childish, but always bears himself with the aspect and temper of the sage. Indeed, the character is drawn so true to nature, that we ai*e led to the conclusion that such a person of Hiawatha once lived, and that his course as a public teacher and benefactor in the after times led the Five Nations to invest him with supernatural wisdom and power, and to assign him a fitting end. Thus it was with the Northman's Odin, who, after dying in his bed, like an ordinary mortal, was nevertheless, in course of time, invested with the character and attributes of a god. And it is probable that Hiawatha was no more a myth than Odin, but that both were historical characters; Indian tradition having left the latter elevated high above the common walks of life, as given, beyond the ordinary race of mortals, to wise, heroic and beneficent deeds. Those persons inclined to doubt this, should endeavor to tell us who it was that formed the American Amphictyonic League; who gave the Iroquois legislation and laws; who, by the power of his genius, banded the Five Nations into one; and who, by the force of his example and the purity of his precepts, cemented the great fabric which stood for many generations in the heart of America as a refuge for those people not exactly included within the League, but who, nevertheless, as history declares, found it as refreshing in their day as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow– A Primer

By Thomas Davidson

H. W. Longfellow was an American poet, born on the 27th of February 1807, at Portland, Maine. His ancestor, William Longfellow, had immigrated to Newbury, Massachusetts, in 1676, from Yorkshire, England. His father was Stephen Longfellow, a lawyer and United States congressman, and his mother, Zilpha Wadsworth, a descendant of John Alden and of “Priscilla, the Puritan maiden.”

Longfellow's external life presents little that is of stirring interest. It is the life of a modest, deep-hearted gentleman, whose highest ambition was to be a perfect man, and, through sympathy and love, to help others to be the same. His boyhood was spent mostly in his native town, which he never ceased to love, and whose beautiful surroundings and quiet, pure life he has described in his poem “My Lost Youth.” Here he grew up in the midst of majestic peace, which was but once broken, and that by an event which made a deep impression on him — the War of 1812. He never forgot

“the sea-fight far away,

How it thundered o'er the tide,

And the dead captains as they lay

In their graves o'erlooking the tranquil bay,

Where they in battle died.”

The “tranquil bay” is Casco Bay, one of the most beautiful in the world, studded with bold, green islands, well fitted to be the Hesperides of a poet's boyish dreams. At the age of fifteen Longfellow entered Bowdoin College at Brunswick, a town situated near the romantic falls of the Androscoggin river, about 25 m. from Portland, and in a region full of Indian scenery and legend. Here he had among his classfellows Nathaniel Hawthorne, George B. Cheever and J. S. C. Abbott. During the latter years of his college life he contributed to the United States Literary Gazette some half-dozen poems, which are interesting for two reasons — (1) as showing the poet's early, book-mediated sympathy with nature and legendary heroisms, and (2) as being almost entirely free from that supernatural view of nature which his subsequent residence in Europe imparted to him. He graduated in 1825, at the age of eighteen, with honours, among others that of writing the “class poem” — taking the fourth place in a class of thirty-eight. He then entered his father's law office, without intending, however, it would appear, to devote himself to the study of the law. For this profession he was, both by capacity and tastes, utterly unfitted, and it was fortunate that, shortly after his graduation, he received an offer of a professorship of modern languages at Bowdoin College. In order the better to qualify himself for this appointment, he went to Europe (May 15th, 1826) and spent three years and a half travelling in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Holland and England, learning languages, for which he had unusual talent, and drinking in the spirit of the history and life of these countries. The effect of Longfellow's visit was twofold. On the one hand, it widened his sympathies, gave him confidence in himself and supplied him with many poetical themes; on the other, it traditionalized his mind, coloured for him the pure light of nature and rendered him in some measure unfit to feel or express the spirit of American nature and life. His sojourn in Europe fell exactly in the time when, in England, the reaction against the sentimental atheism of Shelley, the pagan sensitivity of Keats, and the sublime, Satanic outcastness of Byron was at its height; when, in the Catholic countries, the negative exaggerations of the French Revolution were inducing a counter current of positive faith, which threw men into the arms of a half-sentimental, half-aesthetic medievalism; and when, in Germany, the aristocratic paganism of Goethe was being swept aside by that tide of dutiful, romantic patriotism which flooded the country, as soon as it began to feel that it still existed after being run over by Napoleon's war-chariot. He returned to America in 1829, and remained six years at Bowdoin College (1829-1835), during which he published various text-books for the study of modern languages. In his twenty-fourth year (1831) he married Miss Mary Story Potter, one of his “early loves.” In 1833 he made a series of translations from the Spanish, with an essay on the moral and devotional poetry of Spain, and these were incorporated in 1835 in Outre-mer: a Pilgrimage beyond the Sea.

In 1835 Longfellow was chosen to succeed George Ticknor as professor of modern languages and belles-lettres in Harvard. On receiving this appointment, he paid a second visit of some fifteen months to Europe, this time devoting special attention to the Scandinavian countries and Switzerland. During this visit he lost his wife, who died at Rotterdam, on the 29th of November 1835.

On his return to America in December 1836, Longfellow took up his residence in Cambridge, and began to lecture at Harvard and to write. In his new home he found himself amid surroundings entirely congenial to him. Its spaciousness and free rural aspect, its old graveyards and towering elms, its great university, its cultivated society and its vicinity to humane, substantial, busy Boston, were all attractions for such a man. In 1837-1838 several essays of Longfellow's appeared in the North American Review, and in 1839 he published Hyperion: a Romance, and his first volume of original poetry, entitled Voices of the Night. Hyperion, a poetical account of his travels, had, at the time of its publication, an immense popularity, due mainly to its sentimental romanticism. At present few persons beyond their teens would care to read it through, so unnatural and stilted is its language, so thin its material and so consciously mediated its sentiment. Nevertheless it has a certain historical importance, for two reasons — (1) because it marks that period in Longfellow's career when, though he had left nature, he had not yet found art, and (2) because it opened the sluices through which the flood of German sentimental poetry flowed into the United States. The Voices of the Night contains some of his best minor poems, e.g. “The Psalm of Life” and “Footsteps of Angels.” In 1842 Longfellow published a small volume of Ballads and other Poems, containing some of his most popular pieces, e.g. “The Skeleton in Armour,” “The Wreck of the Hesperus,” “The Village Blacksmith,” “To a Child,” “The Bridge,” “Excelsior.” In the same year he paid a third brief visit to Europe, spending the summer on the Rhine. During his return-passage across the Atlantic he wrote his Poems on Slavery (1842), with a dedication to Channing. These poems went far to wake in the youth of New England a sense of the great national wrong, and to prepare them for that bitter struggle in which it was wiped out at the expense of the lives of so many of them. In 1843 he married again, his wife being Miss Frances Elizabeth Appleton of Boston, a daughter of Hon. Nathan Appleton, one of the founders of Lowell, and a sister of Thomas G. Appleton, himself no mean poet.