his plans in a letter to George W. Greene, a
future member of The Dante Club:
I have broken ground in a new field; namely,
ballads; beginning with the ‘‘Wreck of the
Schooner Hesperus’’ on the reef of Norman’s
Woe, in the great storm of a fortnight ago. I
shall send it to some newspaper. I think I shall
write more. Thenational balladis a virgin soil
here in New England; and there are great mate-
rials. Besides, I have a great notion of working
upon thepeople’sfeelings. I am going to have it
printed on a sheet, with a coarse picture on it. I
desire a new sensation and a new set of critics.
(Samuel Longfellow I: 353–54)
Although his works were never published
broadside style, Longfellow’s unprecedented
popularity was firmly bound with his consistent
realization of the intention to reach the widest
possible audience. Thus, the modest revival of
critical interest in the poet over the past decade
or so has centered on his nation-building role, on
his ability to imagine ‘‘poetry as a language that
everyone could understand without knowing
how to read’’ (Jackson 495)....
To the December 1864 issue of TheAtlantic
Monthly, the beloved national bard contributed
two sonnets that had nothing to do with Amer-
ican issues of the time, no matter how burning
they had become. The poems were written while
Longfellow was working on the translation of
Divina Commedia, a project he embarked upon
early in 1862.
... Ever since his first journey to Europe,
Longfellow had loved Dante, including a sonnet
entitled ‘‘Dante’’ inThe Belfry of Bruges and
Other Poems(1845). The postgraduate Euro-
pean journey also left him with an interest in
Roman Catholicism, its ritual, its mystery, and
its ecclesiastical architecture. In 1827, writing to
his sister Elizabeth, he described the church at El
Escorial in a manner that is hard not to compare
with his later vision ofDivina Commediaas a
cathedral:
The church is magnificently grand. I could not
help lingering among its gloomy arches, indulg-
ing in that pleasant kind of melancholy which
such scenes are apt to inspire. I heard Mass said
in the twilight of its aisles; and as the chant of
the priests reached my ear at intervals, with the
peal of the organ echoing amid the arches and
dying away in indistinct murmurs along the
roof, the effect was most powerful. (Samuel
Longfellow I: 115)
But, most importantly, he had early identi-
fied poetry with spiritual aspiration and Dante’s
great poem perfectly fitted the conception, espe-
cially when his experience of it was intensified
by personal tragedy. The American Inferno
appeared in print with the two sonnets from the
December 1864 issue ofThe Atlanticplaced on
the volume’s flyleaves. Later, they opened a
sequence of six sonnets entitled ‘‘Divina Com-
media’’ published inThe Atlantic Monthlyin
1866 and, in the same year, inFlower-de-Luce.
When the completed translation ofDivine Com-
edyappeared in 1867, each of the poem’s three
parts was preceded by two successive sonnets
from the sequence.
The cycle, however, is not ‘‘on the subject of
Dante, but rather ‘On Translating Dante’—on
Longfellow’s own process’’ (Pearl xiii) in which,
one may add, the American poet communes with
the ideal:
I enter, and I see thee in the gloom
Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine!
And strive to make my steps keep pace with
thine.
The air is filled with some unknown perfume;
The congregation of the dead make room
For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine;
Like rooks that haunt Ravenna’s groves of
pine
The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb.
From the confessionals I hear arise
Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies,
And lamentations from the crypts below;
And then a voice celestial that begins
With the pathetic words, ‘‘Although your sins
As scarlet be,’’ and ends with ‘‘as the snow.’’
Since the directly personal ‘‘Mezzo Camin’’
and ‘‘The Cross of Snow’’ were never printed in
the poet’s lifetime, the ‘‘Divina Commedia’’ son-
nets appear as Longfellow’s most intimate
published verse. Dante—a suffering, homelessIT WAS IN HIM RATHER THAN IN WALT
WHITMAN THAT THE PUBLIC SAW THE LONG
AWAITED INCARNATION OF THE NATIVE BARD WHO
AT LAST GAVE AMERICA THE SENSE AND MEASURE
OF HER LITERARY POTENTIAL AND GLORY.’’The Wreck of the Hesperus