A History of American Literature

204 Inventing Americas: 1800–1865

As the blood of all nations is mingled with our own, so will their thoughts and feelings

finally mingle in our literature. We shall draw from the Germans, tenderness; from the

Spaniards, passion; from the French, vivacity – to mingle more and more with our

solid English sense.

As this characteristically didactic and generalizing passage suggests, Longfellow’s

strategy was to assume that, since the European forms had been good enough for the

European poets, they were good enough for American poets too. Even if the

American poet, as he should, wrote about the American scene, he could and should

also borrow from the European tradition, so as to give a sense of authority and

universality to his verse. That was what Longfellow tried to do in his longer epic

poems. It was, too, what he tried to do in a short piece like “My Lost Youth” (1858).

The poem is about a deeply personal topic, Longfellow’s youth in Portland, Maine.

But its tone is somehow impersonal, the result mostly of the quotations from and

allusions to earlier poems with which the lines are packed. Even the famous refrain,

it turns out, is derivative, as Longfellow’s use of quotation marks to surround it

alerts us: “ ‘A boy’s will is the wind’s will, / And the thoughts of youth are long, long

thoughts.’ ” Like the rest of the poem, it recalls other, earlier poems: in this case, a

German translation of a Lapland song.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this kind of adaptation, of course, as the

work of T. S. Eliot or Ezra Pound indicates. It is just that, whereas in a poem like

The Waste Land the echoes and allusions are employed for their associative effects, to

add to a situation directly apprehended, Longfellow, more often than not, seems to be

looking at the subject in and through the associations. That is, he tends to look at life

through books – at best, to identify his experiences or those of his typical Americans

with something he has read already and, at worst, to reduce character and event to

literary stereotype. The kinds of values Longfellow derives from books and then

applies in his poetry are equally symptomatic. There is a peculiar sense of self- assurance

in most of his poetry: a feeling that everything that really matters, and has been found

by earlier writers to matter, occurs within the compass of the respectable fireside. So,

in a poem like “Nature” (1875), the wilderness that awed Herman Melville and

mystified Emily Dickinson is characterized as “a fond mother,” whose every aspect can

be attributed to a pervasive concern for human welfare. And in “The Village Blacksmith”

(1842), a figure actually outside the sphere of Longfellow’s society and sympathy is

made acceptable – to the narrator of the poem, that is, and the genteel reader – by

being transformed into a rustic gentleman. There are, certainly, more poised and

subtler pieces than these. “The Jewish Cemetery at Newport” (1852) uses the setting

announced in the title for a mature, sympathetic meditation on the ancient Jewish

experience of suffering and exile; “Aftermath” (1873) is a quiet reflection on the mixed

“harvesting” of old age, and “Chaucer” (1873) an exemplary reminder of how old age

can be made “beautiful with song.” But the tendency toward sermonizing remains

even in these poems, as do the simply sweet idioms and rhythms and the deference to

older, European forms. And there is the inclination, even here, to assume that the poet,

the European past, and the American present form one domestic circle.

GGray_c02.indd 204ray_c 02 .indd 204 8 8/1/2011 7:54:43 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 43 AM