Admirers Celebrate Longfellow’s 200th

Were former Harvard professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow alive today, he would have 200 candles to blow out on his very large birthday cake.

Even before the famous poet earned worldwide acclaim for his romantic verses, he taught foreign languages at Harvard and schmoozed with the Cambridge literati of the day. Thus his birthday is garnering special attention on campus, as well as across the city and the nation.



A LONG LEGACY

Succeeding George Ticknor, Longfellow became the second Smith professor of modern languages in 1836 and laid much of the foundation for comparative language study at Harvard. He often battled with the administration to do so, according to Matthew Pearl ’97, author of “The Dante Club,” a murder mystery novel that includes Longfellow and his literary cadre as characters.

In an interview with The Crimson, Pearl said Longfellow served as “an ambassador for fine literature” at Harvard. Even though the poet was not a professor of literature, he “transformed the educational culture that surrounded foreign subjects” and cut a path for the study of texts within the context of other cultures.

Longfellow resided at the famous Craigie House, which had been used as headquarters by George Washington during the Revolutionary War.

The house was the meeting place of the Saturday Club, a literary salon including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Class of 1821, James Russell Lowell, Class of 1838, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Class of 1829. Some of Longfellow’s visitors included Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, President Ulysses S. Grant, and Oscar Wilde.

Nowadays the house at 105 Brattle St. is a Longfellow National Historic Site showcasing the poet’s collections of art, historic furnishings, and books, as well as archives and manuscript collections.

Longfellow resigned from his post in 1854 to devote more time to writing.

“Teaching at Harvard if anything probably interrupted his poetry,” Pearl said, noting it was one of the reasons Longfellow left.



CELEBRATE

As part of Harvard’s commemoration of the poet’s birthday, Houghton Library is presenting an exhibition entitled, “Public Poet, Private Man: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at 200.” The exhibition, which runs from Jan. 16 to April 24, presents Longfellow “as a consummate literary professional,” according to a posting at the exhibit.

The exhibit is only one of many commemorations. Last Saturday, some 35 fans laid wreaths on the poet’s plot in Mount Auburn Cemetery and read several of his poems, according to Boston University’s student paper The Daily Free Press.

A national campaign called “Longfellow Across America” has been launched to push Americans to remember and revive Longfellow’s memory.

According to their Web site, the effort has sent Longfellow “Activity Kits” for classroom and library use to all interested schools in the U.S. named after Longfellow, contacted regional and national weathermen with quotes from Longfellow’s poetry appropriate for all types of weather forecasts, and ensured the production and distribution of a first class stamp honoring the poet, which will debut in March 2007.