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Oxford World’s Classics
The Masnavi
Rumi, known in Iran and Central Asia as Mowlana Jalaloddin Balkhi,
was born in 1207 in the province of Balkh, now the border region
between Afghanistan and Tajikistan. His family emigrated when he
was still a child, shortly before Genghis Khan and his Mongol army
arrived in Balkh. They settled permanently in Konya, central Anatolia,
which was formerly part of the Eastern Roman Empire (Rum). Rumi
was probably introduced to Sufism originally through his father, Baha
Valad, a popular preacher who also taught Sufi piety to a group of
disciples. However, the turning-point in Rumi’s life came in 1244,
when he met in Konya a mysterious wandering Sufi called
Shamsoddin of Tabriz. Shams, as he is most often referred to by
Rumi, taught him the profoundest levels of Sufism, transforming him
from a pious religious scholar to an ecstatic mystic. Rumi expressed
his new vision of reality in volumes of mystical poetry. His enormous
collection of lyrical poetry is considered one of the best that has ever
been produced, while his poem in rhyming couplets, the Masnavi, is
so revered as the most consummate expression of Sufi mysticism
that it is commonly referred to as ‘the Qur’an in Persian’.

When Rumi died, on 17 December 1273, shortly after having

completed his work on the Masnavi, his passing was deeply mourned
by the citizens of Konya, including the Christian and Jewish
communities. His disciples formed the Mevlevi Sufi order, which was
named after Rumi, whom they referred to as ‘Our Lord’ (Turkish
‘Mevlana’, Persian ‘Mowlana’). They are better known in Europe and
North America as the Whirling Dervishes, because of the distinctive
dance that they now perform as one of their central rituals. Rumi’s
death is commemorated annually in Konya, attracting pilgrims from
all corners of the globe and every religion. The popularity of his
poetry has risen so much in the last couple of decades that the
Christian Science Monitor identified Rumi as the most published poet
in America in 1997. The popularity of Rumi’s poetry in English
translation has spread to Europe more recently, and UNESCO
designated the commemoration of the eight hundredth anniversary
of Rumi’s birth in 2007 as an event of major international
importance.

Jawid Mojaddedi, a native of Afghanistan, is Professor of Religion at

Rutgers University. He was a 2014–15 National Endowment for the
Arts Literature Translation Fellow. Dr Mojaddedi’s translation, The
Masnavi: Book One (Oxford, 2004), was awarded the Lois Roth Prize
by the American Institute of Iranian Studies. His previous books
include Beyond Dogma: Rumi’s Teachings on Friendship with God
and Early Sufi Theories (Oxford, 2012) and The Biographical
Tradition in Sufism (Richmond, 2001).
Oxford World’s Classics
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Oxford World’s Classics

image

Jalal Al-Din Rumi

The Masnavi
Book Four
image

Translated with an Introduction and Notes by

Jawid Mojaddedi

image
 image

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp, United Kingdom

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.

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© Jawid Mojaddedi 2017

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First published as an Oxford World’s Classics paperback 2017

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Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017931341

ISBN 978–0–19–878343–5

ebook ISBN 978–0–19–108617–5

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Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith

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This volume is dedicated to the memory of
Paul E. Weber
(d. 25 February 2016)
Acknowledgements
I should like to express my gratitude to my family, my friends, and
all of the teachers I have studied under. Time spent with Dr Alireza
Nurbakhsh and the late Paul E. Weber served as an inspiring
reminder of the living reality of what Rumi points to in his thirteenth-
century poem. I am indebted to the National Endowment for the
Arts for awarding me a literature translation fellowship in 2014–15,
during which time most of this translation was completed. I alone
am responsible for any flaws.
Contents
Introduction

Note on the Translation

Select Bibliography

A Chronology of Rumi

THE MASNAVI

Book Four

Prose Introduction

Exordium

The union of the lover who was not true

The preacher who prayed for oppressors, unbelievers, and the hard-
hearted

Jesus on the hardest thing to face

The Sufi who found his wife with another man

Why God is called ‘the Hearing One’ and ‘the Seeing One’

The world is a bath-stove, piety the public baths

The tanner who fainted and felt sick due to perfumes

The unbeliever’s challenge to Ali to jump off a building

The Furthest Place of Worship

The unity between the Prophets David and Solomon

Caliph Osman and practising what you preach

The difference between philosophers and mystics

Explanation of ‘My community is like Noah’s ark’

The Queen of Sheba’s gift to Solomon

The miracles of Abdollah Maghrebi

The pharmacist and the clay-eater

The reason why Ebn-e Adham gave up his kingdom

The thirsty man and sama‘

When Halima lost Mohammad

Man’s desire for this world

A poet’s expectations

How a demon sat on Solomon’s throne

How Cain learnt grave-digging

Meditating with your head lowered onto your knee

Knowledge in the hands of the unworthy

‘O you who wrap yourself in your garment’

Silence is itself an answer

The differences between angels, humans, and animals

How God can increase disgrace and erring

The soul and the intellect, Majnun and his she-camel

The turban snatcher’s disappointment

The world’s advice to the worldly

The mystic’s nourishment from the light of God

Why Moses should not have felt fear

The command and prohibition for the false claimant

The praiser’s falseness

The spies of hearts

Bayazid’s prediction of the birth of Kharaqani

Reduction of God’s allowance of food for hearts

Solomon and the wind

Consult the right kind of person!

Why the Prophet Mohammad made a young man commander

Story about Abu Yazid’s saying: ‘Glory be to me! How magnificent

my rank is!’

The wise, the half-wise, and the wretch

Prayers for different stages of ablutions

The captive bird’s advice about regret

The fool’s vow is worthless

Moses, possessor of wisdom, and Pharaoh, possessor of imaginings

The paradoxes of cultivation, concentration, soundness, and
attainment

The senses and their perceptions

How worldly people attack other-worldly people

The potential of Man’s earthly body

Moses and Pharaoh

The door of repentance

‘I was a hidden treasure and I loved to be known.’

Man’s delusion and ignorance about the Unseen

‘Speak to people according to their level of intelligence.’

The Prophet and news about the coming of the time of his death

The king’s falcon and the decrepit crone

How Ali helped a child come down safely from a waterspout

The dispute of Arab leaders with Mohammad

Why someone who knows God’s power wouldn’t ask: ‘Where are
heaven and hell?’

The response to a materialist philosopher

‘We did not create the heavens and the earth and what is between
them other than with reality.’

Why someone was annoyed at another’s intercession on his behalf

Abraham and the Angel Gabriel

The butter in buttermilk and other parables

The king who sought a wife for his ailing crown prince

The ascetic who laughed during a drought

Some of the sons of Ozayr have trouble recognizing him

‘I ask God for forgiveness seventy times every day.’

The particular intellect’s dependency on Prophets and Friends of God

‘You who believe, don’t put yourself before God and His messenger.’

The camel and the mule

The thirsty Egyptian and his Israelite friend

Cuckolding under a pear tree

The stages of the creation of Man

The appeal from people in hell

Zo ’l-Qarnayn asks Mount Qaf about God

Ants see a pen writing

The Prophet Mohammad and the Angel Gabriel

Explanatory Notes

Glossary
Introduction
Rumi and Sufism
Rumi has long been recognized within the Sufi tradition as one of
the most important Sufis to have lived. He not only produced the
finest Sufi poetry in Persian, but was also the master of disciples
who later named their order after him. Moreover, by virtue of the
intense devotion he expressed towards his own master, Shams-e
Tabriz, Rumi has become the archetypal Sufi disciple. From that
perspective, the unprecedented level of interest in Rumi’s poetry
over the last couple of decades in North America and Europe does
not come as a total surprise.

Rumi lived some 300 years after the first writings of Muslim mystics
were produced. A distinct mystical path called ‘Sufism’ became
clearly identifiable in the ninth century and was systematized from
the late tenth and eleventh centuries. The authors of these works,
who were mostly from north-eastern Persia, traced the origins of the
Sufi tradition back to the Prophet Mohammad, while at the same
time acknowledging the existence of comparable forms of mysticism
before his mission. They mapped out a mystical path, by which the
Sufi ascends towards the ultimate goal of union with God and
knowledge of reality. More than two centuries before the time of the
eminent Sufi theosopher Ebn ‘Arabi (d. 1240), Sufis began to
describe their experience of annihilation in God and the realization
that only God truly exists. The illusion of one’s own independent
existence began to be regarded as the main obstacle to achieving
this realization, so that early Sufis like Abu Yazid Bestami (d. 874)
are frequently quoted as belittling the value of the asceticism of
some of their contemporaries on the grounds that it merely
increased attention to themselves. An increasing number of Sufis
began to regard love of God as the means of overcoming the root
problem of one’s own sense of being, rather than piety and
asceticism. The most influential of these men was al-Hallaj, who was
the most prolific Sufi poet of his time and was executed for heresy in
922.1

The Sufi practice discussed the most in the early manuals of Sufism
is that of listening to music (sama‘; see Glossary). Listening, while
immersed in the remembrance of God and unaware of oneself, to
love poetry and the mystical poetry that Sufis themselves had begun
to write, often with musical accompaniment, induced ecstasy in
worshippers. The discussions in Sufi manuals of spontaneous
movements by Sufis in ecstasy while listening to music, and the
efforts made to distinguish this from ordinary dance, suggest that
this practice had already started to cause a great deal of
controversy. Most of the Sufi orders that were eventually formed
developed the practice of surrendering to spontaneous movements
while listening to music, but the whirling ceremony in white
costumes of the followers of Rumi is a unique phenomenon.2
Although it is traditionally traced back to Rumi’s own propensity for
spinning around in ecstasy, the elaborate ceremony in the form in
which it has become famous today was established only centuries
later.

The characteristics of the Sufi mystic who has completed the path to
enlightenment is one of the most recurrent topics in Sufi writings of
the tenth and eleventh centuries. Students of Sufism at that time
would tend to associate with several such individuals rather than
form an exclusive bond with one master. By the twelfth century,
however, the master–disciple relationship became increasingly
emphasized, as the first Sufi orders began to be formed. It was also
during this century that the relationship between love of God and His
manifestation in creation became a focus of interest, especially
among Sufis of Persian origin, such as Ahmad Ghazali (d. 1126) and
Ruzbehan Baqli (d. 1209), both of whom drew inspiration from the
aforementioned al-Hallaj. The former’s more famous brother Abu
Hamed was responsible for integrating Sufism with mainstream
Sunni Islam, as a practical form of Muslim piety that can provide
irrefutable knowledge of religious truths through direct mystical
experience.3

In this way, by the thirteenth century diverse forms of Sufism had

developed and become increasingly popular. Rumi was introduced to
Sufism by his father, Baha Valad, who followed a more conservative
tradition of Muslim piety, but his life was transformed when he
encountered the profound mystic Shams-e Tabriz. Although many of
the followers of the tradition of his father considered Shams to be
totally unworthy of Rumi’s time and attention, Rumi considered
Shams to be the most complete manifestation of God. He expressed
his complete love and devotion for his master Shams, with whom he
spent only about two years in total, through thousands of ecstatic
lyrical poems. Towards the end of his life he presented the fruit of
his experience of Sufism in the form of the Masnavi, which has been
judged by many commentators, both within the Sufi tradition and
outside it, to be the greatest mystical poem ever written.
Rumi and His Times
The century in which Rumi lived was one of the most tumultous in
the history of the Middle East and Central Asia. When he was about
10 years old the region was invaded by the Mongols, who, under the
leadership of Genghis Khan, left death and destruction in their wake.
Arriving through Central Asia and north-eastern Persia, the Mongols
soon took over almost the entire region, conquering Baghdad in
1258. The collapse of the once glorious Abbasid caliphate, the
symbolic capital of the entire Muslim world, at the hands of an infidel
army was felt throughout the region as a tremendous shock. Soon
afterwards, there was a sign that the map of the region would
continue to change, when the Mongols suffered a major defeat in
Syria, at Ayn Jalut in 1260. Rumi’s life was directly affected by the
military and political developments of the time, beginning with his
family’s emigration from north-eastern Persia just a couple of years
before the Mongols arrived to conquer that region. Although they
eventually relocated to Konya (ancient Iconium) in central Anatolia,
Rumi witnessed the spread of Mongol authority across that region
too when he was still a young man.

In spite of the upheaval and destruction across the region during

this century, there were many outstanding Sufi authors among
Rumi’s contemporaries. The most important Sufi theosopher ever to
have lived, Ebn ‘Arabi (d. 1240), produced his highly influential
works during the first half of the century. His student and foremost
interpreter, Sadroddin Qunyavi (d. 1273), settled in Konya some
fifteen years after his master’s death and became associated with
Rumi. This could have been one channel through which Rumi gained
familiarity with Ebn ‘Arabi’s theosophical system, although his poetry
does not clearly suggest the direct influence of the latter’s works.

The lives of two of the most revered Sufi poets also overlapped with
Rumi’s life: the most celebrated Arab Sufi poet, Ebn al-Fared (d.
1235), whose poetry holds a position of supreme importance
comparable with that of Rumi in the Persian canon; and Faridoddin
‘Attar (d. c.1220), who was Rumi’s direct predecessor in the
composition of Persian mystical masnavis (see below), including the
highly popular work which has been translated as The Conference of
the Birds.4 It is perhaps not surprising that the Sufi poet Jami (d.
1492) should want to link Rumi with ‘Attar directly by claiming that
they met when Rumi’s family migrated from Balkh; ‘Attar is said to
have recognized his future successor in the composition of works in
the mystical masnavi genre during that visit, when Rumi was still a
young boy. Soon afterwards ‘Attar was killed by the Mongols during
their conquest of Nishapur.

As the Mongols advanced westwards, Anatolia became an

increasingly attractive destination for the inhabitants of central parts
of the Middle East who wished to flee. A number of important Sufis
and influential scholars chose this option, including Hajji Bektash (d.
c.1272), the eponym of the Bektashi order which went on to become
one of the most influential Sufi orders in Anatolia in subsequent
centuries, and Najmoddin Razi (d. 1256), whose teacher, Najmoddin
Kobra (d. 1221), the eponym of the Kobravi order, had been killed
during the Mongol invasion of Transoxiana.

Many works have been written about Rumi’s life in Konya, since
shortly after his death, but contradictions in these sources, and the
hagiographic nature of most of the material compiled, mean that a
number of important details remain uncertain. Nonetheless, the
general outline of the life of Rumi seems to be presented relatively
consistently in the sources, and remains helpful for putting the
Masnavi into context.

Rumi was born in September 1207 in the province of Balkh, in what

is now the border region between Afghanistan and Tajikistan. His
father, Baha Valad, was a preacher and religious scholar who also led
a group of Sufi disciples. When Rumi was about 10 years old his
family emigrated to Anatolia, having already relocated a few years
earlier to Samarqand in Transoxiana. This emigration seems to have
been motivated primarily by the approach of Genghis Khan’s Mongol
army, although rivalries between Baha Valad and various religious
scholars in the region may have also played a part. Instead of
directly moving westwards, Rumi’s family first made the pilgrimage
to Mecca, and it was only a few years after arriving in Anatolia that
they decided to settle permanently in Konya. By this time, Rumi had
already married (1224) and seen the birth of his son and eventual
successor in Sufism, SoltanValad (1226).

In Konya, Baha Valad found the opportunity, under the patronage of

the Seljuk ruler Alaoddin Kay Qobad I (r. 1219–36), to continue his
work as a preacher and to teach students in a religious school. He
had been grooming Rumi to be his successor, but died only a couple
of years after settling in Konya, in 1231. Although the original
reasons for his arrival remain unclear, it seems that one of Baha
Valad’s students, called Borhanoddin Mohaqqeq, arrived in Konya
from north-eastern Persia soon afterwards to take over the
management of his school. He also took responsibility for overseeing
the continuation of Rumi’s education and training. Within a few
years, Borhanoddin had sent Rumi to Aleppo and Damascus to
continue his education in the religious sciences. It is possible that
during his stay in Damascus Rumi may have heard the lectures of
Ebn ‘Arabi, who was living there at the time. Rumi returned to Konya
in around 1237 as a highly accomplished young scholar, and took
over leadership of Baha Valad’s school from Borhanoddin.

After his return to Konya, Rumi’s reputation as an authority on

religious matters became firmly established there, and he reached
the peak of his career as a scholar, achieving what his father seems
to have hoped for him. In November 1244, after seven years of
excelling as a religious teacher, Rumi experienced a challenging
encounter that would prove to be the most significant event of his
life. As one would expect, an event as important as this has
generated many competing accounts. However, most versions at
least share the same basic elements. According to one popular and
relatively simple account, Rumi is asked about his books by an
uneducated-looking stranger, and responds by snapping back
dismissively, ‘They are something that you do not understand!’ The
books then suddenly catch fire, so Rumi asks the stranger to explain
what has happened. His reply is: ‘Something you do not understand.’

Rumi was immediately drawn to this mysterious figure, who turned

out to be a wandering mystic called Shamsoddin from Tabriz (known
popularly as Shams, or Shams-e Tabriz) in north-western Persia. The
two began to spend endless hours together in retreat. What was
shared by the pair during this time remains a mystery that can only
be guessed from the volumes of poetry that it inspired.

What is reported consistently about the period of approximately a

year and a half that Rumi spent with Shams is that it provoked
intense jealousy and resentment among his disciples, who also
feared that their highly respected master was risking his reputation
by mixing with someone so unworthy in their eyes. These disciples
eventually drove Shams away, but, on hearing reports of sightings of
him in Syria, Rumi sent his own son, Soltan Valad, to ask him to
come back. Although Shams did return a year later, in 1247, he soon
disappeared forever. According to tradition, Shams was killed by
Rumi’s disciples after they had seen that driving him away had failed
to separate him permanently from their master.

Although he was already a respected religious authority in Konya

and had trained in a tradition of Sufi piety under his father, whom he
succeeded as master, Rumi frequently affirms that he was led by
Shams to a far loftier level of Sufi mysticism. His poetry, for instance,
emphasizes the importance of love in transcending attachments to
the world, and dismisses concerns for worldly reputation, literal-
mindedness, and intellectualism. From dry scholarship and popular
piety, Rumi turned his attention to mystical poetry, and he became
known for his propensity to fall into an ecstatic trance and whirl
around himself in public. The fact that Rumi’s writings are replete
with biting criticisms of religious scholars and intellectuals should be
seen as a sign of his own background which he had turned away
from: he draws upon their kind of scholarship subversively again and
again even as he tears it apart, showing that he had already
mastered it in the past. Rumi innovatively named his own collection
of ghazals, or lyrical poems, as ‘the Collection of Shams’ (Divan-e
Shams) rather than as his own collection, and also included Shams’s
name at the end of many of his individual ghazals, where by
convention the poet would identify himself. This can be seen as
Rumi’s acknowledgement of the all-important inspiration that Shams
had provided for him.

After the final disappearance of Shams, Rumi remained in Konya and

continued to direct his father’s school. However, he chose to appoint
as deputy, with the responsibility to manage many of the affairs of
the school in his place, a goldsmith called Salahoddin. Like Shams,
he was disliked by many of Rumi’s disciples, who considered him
uneducated. A colourful story about the first encounter between the
two describes Rumi as falling into ecstasy and whirling, on hearing
the rhythmic beating of Salahoddin at work in his market stall. After
Salahoddin’s death in 1258, Rumi appointed Hosamoddin Chalabi in
his place. When Hosamoddin became a disciple of Rumi he was
already the head of a local order for the training of young men in
chivalry. He brought with him his own disciples, the wealth of his
order, and the expertise he had acquired in running such an
institution. However, his most important contribution was serving as
Rumi’s scribe and putting the Masnavi into writing as Rumi recited it
aloud. Rumi praises Hosamoddin profusely in the introduction of the
Masnavi, which on occasion he even calls ‘the Hosam book’,
indicating the vital importance of Hosamoddin’s role in this work
(see, for example, the first page of the poem in Book Four).

In addition to Rumi’s poetry, three prose works have also survived:

collections of his letters, sermons, and teaching sessions. These
reveal much about aspects of his life that have been neglected by
most biographers. His letters testify to his influence among the local
political rulers and his efforts to secure positions of importance for
his disciples through letters of recommendation. This contradicts the
popular image of Rumi withdrawing from public life after the
disappearance of Shams. It would be more accurate to say that he
entrusted everyday matters, including the training of disciples, to his
deputies, but he still represented the order in external matters. His
collection of seven sermons attests to the fact that he was highly
esteemed by the local Muslim population. It reveals that he delivered
sermons at the main congregational mosque on important occasions,
and that he used such opportunities to give Sufi teachings, albeit
within the rigid constraints of a formal sermon. Rumi’s most
important prose work, however, is the written record of his teaching
sessions, which was compiled after his death by his students as
seventy-one discourses. This work, called ‘In it is what is in it’—
probably on account of its diverse and unclassified contents—
provides intimate glimpses of Rumi as a Sufi master. The content of
this work is comparable with his didactic poem the Masnavi, in that it
contains many of the same teachings.

Rumi died on 17 December 1273, probably very soon after the

completion of the Masnavi. Tradition tells us that physicians could
not identify the illness from which he was suffering, and that his
death was mourned not only by his disciples but also by the large
and diverse community in Konya, including Christians and Jews, who
converged as his body was carried through the city. Many of the
non-Muslims had not only admired him as outsiders, but had also
attended his teaching sessions. The ‘Green Dome’, where his
mausoleum is found today, was constructed soon after Rumi’s death.
It has become probably the most popular site of pilgrimage in the
world to be visited regularly by members of every major religion.

Hosamoddin Chalabi served as the leader of Rumi’s school for the

first twelve years after Rumi’s death, and was succeeded by Soltan
Valad. Rumi’s disciples named their school ‘the Mevlevi order’ after
him, for they used to refer to him by the title ‘Mevlana’ (in Arabic
‘Mowlana’, meaning ‘Our Lord’). It became widespread and
influential especially under the Ottoman empire and remains an
active Sufi order in Turkey as well as in many other countries across
the world. The Mevlevis are better known in the West as ‘the
Whirling Dervishes’ because of the distinctive dance that they
perform to music as the central ritual of the order.
The Masnavi Form
Rumi chose a plain, descriptive name for his poem, ‘masnavi’ being
the name of the rhyming couplet verse form. Each half-line, or
hemistich, of a masnavi poem follows the same metre, in common
with other forms of classical Persian poetry. The metre of Rumi’s
Masnavi is the ramal metre in apocopated form (– ˘ – – / – ˘ – – / –
˘ –), a highly popular metre which was also used by ‘Attar for his
Conference of the Birds. What distinguishes the masnavi form from
other Persian verse forms is the rhyme, which changes in successive
couplets according to the pattern aa bb cc dd etc. Thus, in contrast
to the other verse forms, which require a restrictive monorhyme, the
masnavi form enables poets to compose long works consisting of
thousands of verses.

The masnavi form satisfied the need felt by Persians to compose

narrative and didactic poems, of which there was already before the
Islamic period a long and rich tradition. By Rumi’s time a number of
Sufis had already made use of the masnavi form to compose
mystical poems, the most celebrated among which are Sana’i’s (d.
1138) Hadiqato’l-haqiqat, or Garden of Truth, and ‘Attar’s Manteqo’t-
tayr, or Conference of the Birds. According to tradition, it was the
popularity of these works amongst Rumi’s disciples that prompted
Hosamoddin, Rumi’s deputy, to ask him to compose his own mystical
masnavi for their benefit.

Hosamoddin served as Rumi’s scribe in a process of text production

that is traditionally described as being similar to the way in which
the Qur’an was produced. However, while tradition tells us that the
Sufi poet Rumi recited the Masnavi orally when he felt inspired to do
so, with Hosamoddin always ready to record those recitations in
writing for him as well as to assist him in revising and editing the
final poem, the illiterate Prophet Mohammad is said to have recited
aloud divine revelation in piecemeal fashion, in exactly the form that
God’s words were revealed to him through the Angel Gabriel. Those
companions of the Prophet who were present on such occasions
would write down the revelations and memorize them, and these
written and mental records eventually formed the basis of the
compilation of the Qur’an many years after the Prophet’s death.

The process of producing the Masnavi was probably started in

around 1262, although tradition relates that Rumi had already
composed the first eighteen couplets by the time Hosamoddin made
his request; we are told that Rumi responded by pulling a sheet of
paper out of his turban with the first part of the prologue of Book
One, ‘The Song of the Reed’, already written on it. References to
their system of production can be found in the text of the Masnavi
itself (e.g. I, v. 2947). They seem to have worked on the Masnavi
during the evenings in particular, and in one instance Rumi begs
forgiveness for having kept Hosamoddin up for an entire night with it
(I, v. 1817). After Hosamoddin had written down Rumi’s recitations,
they were read back to him to be checked and corrected.

Rumi’s Masnavi belongs to the group of works written in this verse

form that do not have a frame narrative. In this way, it contrasts
with the more cohesively structured Conference of the Birds, which
is already well known in translation. It is also much longer; the
Conference is roughly the same length as just one of the six
component books of the Masnavi. Each of the six books consists of
about 4,000 verses and has its own prose introduction and prologue.
There are no epilogues.

The component narratives, homilies, commentaries on citations,

prayers, and lyrical flights which make up the body of each book of
the Masnavi are often demarcated by their own headings. The text
of longer narratives tends to be broken up into sections by further
such headings. Sometimes these headings are positioned
inappropriately, such as in the middle of continuous speech, which
might be interpreted as a sign that they may have been inserted
only after the text had been prepared (e.g. vv. 1528 and 1642 in this
volume). Occasionally the headings are actually longer than the
passage that they represent, and serve to explain and contextualize
what follows. It is as if, on rereading the text, further explanation
was felt necessary in the form of an expanded heading.

The frequency of breaks in the flow of narratives, which is a

distinctive characteristic of the Masnavi, reveals that Rumi has
earned a reputation as an excellent storyteller despite being
primarily concerned with conveying his teachings in homily form as
frequently as possible to his Sufi disciples. The Masnavi leaves the
impression that he was brimming with ideas, images, and intense
feelings which would overflow when prompted by the subtlest of
associations. In this way, free from the constraints of a frame
narrative, Rumi has been able to produce a work that is far richer in
content and more multi-vocal than any other example of the mystical
masnavi genre. That this has been achieved often at the expense of
preserving continuity in the narratives seems to corroborate Rumi’s
opinion on the relative importance of the teachings in his poetry over
its aesthetic value, as reported in his discourses.5 If it were not for
the fact that his digressive ‘overflowings’ are expressed in simple
language and with imagery that was immediately accessible to his
contemporary readers, all the time held together by the consistent
metre and rhyme of the masnavi form, they would have constituted
an undesirable impediment to understanding the poem. Where this
leads Rumi to interweave narratives and to alternate between
different speakers and his own commentaries, the text can still be
difficult to follow, and, for most contemporary readers, the relevance
of citations and allusions to the Qur’an and the traditions of the
Prophet will not be immediately obvious without reference to the
explanatory notes that have been provided in this edition. None the
less, it should be evident, not least from the lengthy sequences of
metaphors that Rumi often provides to reinforce a single point, that
he has striven to communicate his message as effectively as possible
rather than to write obscurely and force the reader to struggle to
understand him.
Rumi made painstaking efforts to convey his teachings as clearly and
effectively as possible, using simple language, the masnavi verse
form, entertaining stories, and the most vivid and accessible imagery
possible. The aim of the present translation is to render Rumi’s
Masnavi into a relatively simple and attractive form which, with the
benefit of metre and rhyme, may enable as many readers as
possible to read the whole book with pleasure and to find it
rewarding.

5Rumi expresses his frustration about having to return to the

narrative after a break also towards the start of Book Two (Rumi,
The Masnavi: Book Two, tr. J. Mojaddedi (Oxford, 2007), vv. 194–
202).
Book Four of the Masnavi
The current volume is a translation of the fourth book of the
Masnavi, and follows Books One, Two, and Three, also published in
Oxford World’s Classics.

As mentioned in the introduction to Book Three, the major

preoccupation of each book of the Masnavi is indicated in its
exordium and prose introduction. For instance, that of Book Three is
pointed out at the very start of the Prose Introduction with which it
begins. Rumi comments: ‘Pieces of wisdom are the armies of God by
which He strengthens the spirits of seekers, and keeps their
knowledge away from the tarnish of ignorance’ (III, p. 3). Book
Three as a whole correspondingly presents Rumi’s epistemology by
classifying different levels of knowledge, from the limited amount
possessed by fools who are controlled by their lusts and the rational
knowledge of the well-educated to the all-consuming mystical
knowledge of the Sufi adept, or ‘Friend of God’ (wali), and it does so
largely by means of teaching-stories that involve nourishment. Book
Two similarly begins with an exordium that stresses the importance
of choosing one’s companions carefully, and then expands on this
teaching through its stories, while Book One, as mentioned earlier,
begins with the famous ‘Song of the Reed’ about the origins of Man
with God and then culminates in the story about Ali ebn Abi Taleb
succeeding in making the return journey to Him.

Book Three is joined with Book Four through its final story, ‘The
Union of the lover who was not true’, which begins in Book Three
and finishes in Book Four, and also shares a common general
preoccupation with epistemology. However, in Book Four, the focus is
the divinely revealed knowledge of the Prophets and Friends of God,
which is compared in its exordium with the light of the sun.
In Book Four, Rumi’s main aim is to highlight the superiority of
divinely revealed knowledge over the highest of other forms of
knowledge, namely the rational knowledge of the philosophers. For
instance, he specifically compares the former favourably with the
knowledge of the most celebrated Islamic philosopher, Avicenna (v.
507), and also includes a whole section on ‘the difference between
philosophers and mystics’. More specifically, he clarifies there that
philosophers say ‘Man is the microcosm’ while mystics say ‘Man is
the macrocosm’, and that this is because the knowledge of
philosophers is restricted to the form of Man, while that of mystics
penetrates to the inner being of Man (vv. 522–38).

Rumi argues that divinely revealed knowledge is also actually the

source of the intellect’s knowledge with the example about how
burying corpses was learnt by Cain after observing a crow which had
received knowledge about burial by inspiration from God (elham; v.
1308). Moreover, divinely revealed knowledge sees for certain the
outcomes ahead rather than only what is immediately perceptible in
the material world (vv. 1619–20). Regarding such matters the
intellect must rely on mere conjecture (vv. 3221–42). Rumi’s
universal tendency can be seen in his implication that the potential
for mystical perception is inside humans like forgotten butter in
buttermilk, and can be rediscovered through being shaken by a
Prophet or mystic (vv. 3031–51). With such knowledge, the Unseen
world can be discovered and translated through the material world
(vv. 3052–73). The latter is in fact a representation of the former,
which comes prior in the causal chain (vv. 3678–97).

The main theme can also be detected in Rumi’s choice of stories. It

should be no surprise that Solomon features prominently in this
book, and that the story of Moses and Pharaoh contrasts Moses’
prophetic knowledge with the intellect of Pharaoh and his vizier
Haman. This book also includes two of the longest stories about
Rumi’s favourite early Sufi, Bayazid Bastami, whom he mentions
much more frequently in his oeuvre than any other. The first of
these concerns his knowledge about the future, which Rumi
compares with that of the Prophet Mohammad, even going as far as
to say that Bayazid’s knowledge comes from the same source as that
of Mohammad, the Preserved Tablet in heaven (v. 1852; see ‘Tablet’
in the Glossary). Ebrahim ebn-e Adham, the second most frequently
mentioned Sufi in the Masnavi, is also the subject of a story here
(vv. 727 ff.). It discusses the Sufi practice of sama‘, a recurrent topic
in this book, with a stress on the conviction that music is a powerful
medium for divine communication.

It has been common to identify the story about the old harpist in
Book One as one that may be autobiographical, because of Rumi’s
undeniable sensitivity to music. However, it should not be forgotten
that he was an accomplished religious scholar before his
transformation into an uncompromising mystic, which is reflected
even in the stories about his life-changing first conversation with
Shams-e Tabrizi. This important point may help explain why even in
Book One it is the story about the limitations of intellectual
knowledge (‘The Bedouin and his wife’) which is by far the longest,
while in Book Four Rumi devotes more than 3,800 verses to his
central preoccupation about the overwhelming superiority of divinely
revealed knowledge over the intellectual knowledge he had once
prized so much.
1 Translations of representative samples of the key texts of early
Sufism are available in M. Sells, Early Islamic Mysticism (Mahwah,
1996).
2
Concerning the contrast between the Mevlevi sama‘ and other
forms of Sufi sama‘, see J. During, ‘What is Sufi Music?’, in L.
Lewisohn, ed., The Legacy of Medieval Persian Sufism (London,
1992), 277–87.
3 The chapter of Abu Hamed Ghazali’s autobiography which

describes his experience on the Sufi path is available in translation in

N. Calder, J. Mojaddedi, and A. Rippin, eds. and trs., Classical Islam:
A Sourcebook of Religious Literature (London, 2012), 299–302.
4See e.g. F. Attar, The Conference of the Birds, ed. and tr. A.
Darbandi and D. Davis (Harmondsworth, 1983).
Note on the Translation
Rumi put his teachings into the masnavi verse form in order that,
with the benefit of metre and rhyme, his disciples might enjoy
reading them. I have therefore decided to translate Rumi’s Masnavi
into verse, in accordance with the aim of the original work. I have
chosen to use rhyming iambic pentameters, since this is the closest
corresponding form of English verse to the Persian masnavi form of
rhyming couplets. These are numbered and referred to as verses in
the Explanatory Notes and Introduction.

Book Four of the Masnavi consists of over 3,800 couplets, the

continuity of which is broken up only by section headings. For the
sake of clarity, in this translation further breaks have been added to
those created by the section headings. In order for the Contents
pages to fulfil their function effectively, alternative headings have
been employed there, albeit at corresponding points to the major
section headings in the text, which refer in many instances to merely
the first few subsequent verses rather than representing the section
as a whole.

Although the Masnavi is a Persian poem, it contains a substantial

amount of Arabic text. This invariably takes the form of citations
from Arabic sources and common religious formulae, but the sources
for some of these passages are either unknown or oral. Italics have
been used to indicate Arabic text, except in the section headings,
which are fully italicized. Many Arabic terms and religious formulae
have become part of the Persian language, and have therefore not
been highlighted in this way. Capitalization has been used when
reference is made to God. This includes, in addition to the pronouns
and titles commonly used in English, the ninety-nine names of God
of the Islamic tradition, as well as certain philosophical terms.
Most of the sources of the Masnavi are not widely available in
English, if at all, and so references have been provided in the notes
only for citations of the Qur’an. Verse numbering varies in the most
widely available translations of the Qur’an, some of which do not in
fact number individual verses, but since this variation is very slight (a
maximum of a few verses) the reader should still be able to find the
relevant passages without difficulty. The notes also identify those
passages in the translation which represent the sayings and deeds of
the Prophet Mohammad (hadith) when this is not already self-
evident in the text (e.g. by ‘the Prophet said’). It should be pointed
out that citations in the original Masnavi are very often variants of
the original sources, including the Qur’an, rather than exact
renderings, due to the constraints of the metre that is used. The
same applies in this verse translation.

This translation corresponds exactly to the text of the fourth volume

of the edition prepared by Mohammad Estelami (6 vols. and index,
Tehran, 2nd edn., 1990). This is by far the best critical edition that
has been prepared, since it offers a complete apparatus criticus,
indicating the variant readings in all the early manuscripts more
comprehensively and transparently than any other edition. Although
R. A. Nicholson’s edition of the Persian text is more widely available,
due to the fact that it is published in Europe, its shortcomings for
today are widely recognized and outweigh the advantage of having
his exactly corresponding prose translation and commentary to refer
to.

As far as possible, the English equivalents of technical terms have

been provided, in preference to giving the original in transliteration
and relying on explanatory notes. Where it is provided, the
transliteration of names and terms has been simplified to such a
degree that diacritics are rarely used. It is designed simply to help
the reader use Persian pronunciation, especially where this would
affect the metre and rhyme.
Select Bibliography
General Background
J. T. P. De Bruijn, Persian Sufi Poetry: An Introduction to the Mystical
Use of Classical Poems (Richmond, 1997).
C. W. Ernst, The Shambhala Guide to Sufism (Boston, 1997).
L. Lewisohn, ed., Classical Persian Sufism: From its Origins to Rumi
(London, 1993).
J. W. Morris, ‘Situating Islamic Mysticism: Between Written Traditions
and Popular Spirituality’, in R. Herrera, ed., Mystics of the Book:
Themes, Topics and Typologies (New York, 1993), 293–334.
J. Nurbakhsh, The Path: Sufi Practices (London, 2002; 2nd printing,
with revisions, New York, 2006).
O. Safi, ‘On the Path of Love towards the Divine: A Journey with
Muslim Mystics’, Sufi, 78 (2009–10), 24–7.
Reference
Encyclopaedia Iranica, ed. E. Yarshater (New York, 1985– ); also
available online at www.iranicaonline.com.
Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. H. A. R. Gibb et al., 12 vols. (Leiden,
1960–2003).
J. Nurbakhsh, Sufi Symbolism, 16 vols. (London and New York,
1980–2003).
On Rumi
W. C. Chittick, ed., The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of
Rumi (Albany, NY, 1983).
F. Keshavarz, Reading Mystical Lyric: The Case of Jalal al-Din Rumi
(Columbia, SC, 1998).
F. D. Lewis, Rumi, Past and Present, East and West: The Life,
Teachings and Poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi (Oxford, 2000).
J. Mojaddedi, Beyond Dogma: Rumi’s Teachings on Friendship with
God and Early Sufi Theories (Oxford, 2012).
Rumi, Mystical Poems of Rumi, 1 and 2, tr. A. J. Arberry (New York,
1979).
Rumi, Signs of the Unseen: The Discourses of Jalaluddin Rumi, tr. W.
M. Thackston, Jr. (Boston, 1994).
N. Virani, ‘ “I am the nightingale of the Merciful”: Rumi’s Use of the
Qur’an and Hadith’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and
the Middle East, 22/2 (2002), 100–11.
Editions of the Masnavi
Masnavi, ed. M. Estelami, 7 vols. (2nd edn., Tehran, 1990). Vols. i–vi
each contain the editor’s commentary in the form of endnotes; vol.
vii is the Index.
Masnavi, ed. T. Sobhani (Tehran, 1994).
Masnavi-ye ma‘navi, ed. A.-K. Sorush, 2 vols. (Tehran, 1996).
The Mathnawi of Jalalu’ddin Rumi, ed. and tr. R. A. Nicholson, E. J.
W. Gibb. Memorial, ns, 8 vols. (London, 1925–40). This set consists
of the Persian text (vols. i–iii), a full translation in prose (vols. iv–vi),
and commentary on Books One to Six (vols. vii–viii).
Interpretation of the Masnavi
W. C. Chittick, ‘Rumi and wahdat al-wujud’, in A. Banani, R.
Hovannisian, and G. Sabagh, eds., Poetry and Mysticism in Islam:
The Heritage of Rumi (Cambridge, 1994), 70–111.
H. Dabashi, ‘Rumi and the Problems of Theodicy: Moral Imagination
and Narrative Discourse in a Story of the Masnavi’, in A. Banani, R.
Hovannisian, and G. Sabagh, eds., Poetry and Mysticism in Islam:
The Heritage of Rumi (Cambridge, 1994), 112–35.
R. Davis, ‘Narrative and Doctrine in the First Story of Rumi’s
Mathnawi’, in G. R. Hawting, J. A. Mojaddedi, and A. Samely, eds.,
Studies in Islamic and Middle Eastern Texts and Traditions in Memory
of Norman Calder (Oxford, 2000), 93–104.
A. Karamustafa, ‘Speaker, Voice and Audience in the Koran and the
Mathnawi’, Sufi, 79 (2010), 36–45.
M. Mills, ‘Folk Tradition in the Masnavi and the Masnavi in Folk
Tradition’, in A. Banani, R. Hovannisian, and G. Sabagh, eds., Poetry
and Mysticism in Islam: The Heritage of Rumi (Cambridge, 1994),
136–77.
J. Mojaddedi, ‘Rumi’, in A. Rippin and J. Mojaddedi, eds., The Wiley
Blackwell Companion to the Qur’an (2nd Edition, Oxford, 2017),
362–72.
J. Mojaddedi, ‘The Ebb and Flow of “the Ocean Inside a Jug”: The
Structure of Ru¯mı¯’s Mathnawı¯ Reconsidered’, Journal of Sufi
Studies, 3/2 (2014), 105–31.
J. R. Perry, ‘Monty Python and the Mathnavi: The Parrot in Indian,
Persian and English Humor’, Iranian Studies, 36/1 (2003), 63–73.
J. Renard, All the King’s Falcons: Rumi on Prophets and Revelation
(Albany, NY, 1994).
O. Safi, ‘Did the Two Oceans Meet? Historical Connections and
Disconnections between Ibn ‘Arabi and Rumi’, Journal of Muhyiddin
Ibn ‘Arabi Society, 26 (1999), 55–88.
Further Reading in Oxford
World’s Classics
The Masnavi, Book One, tr. and ed. Jawid Mojaddedi.
The Masnavi, Book Two, tr. and ed. Jawid Mojaddedi.
The Masnavi, Book Three, tr. and ed. Jawid Mojaddedi.
The Qur’an, tr. M. A. S. Abdel Haleem.
A Chronology of Rumi
1207 Rumi’s birth in Balkh, north-eastern Persia
c.1216 Rumi’s family emigrate from Persia to Anatolia
1219 Alaoddin Kay Qobad ascends Seljuk throne in Anatolia
1220 Death of Faridoddin ‘Attar
1221 The Mongol army conquers Balkh
c.1222 Rumi’s family settle temporarily in Karaman, Anatolia
1224 Rumi marries Gowhar Khatun
1226 Birth of Soltan Valad, Rumi’s son and eventual successor
c.1229 Rumi’s family relocate to Konya, Anatolia
1231 Death of Baha Valad, Rumi’s father
1232 Borhanoddin Termezi arrives in Konya
c.1233 Rumi begins his studies in Syria
1235 Death of Ebn al-Farez in Egypt
Rumi returns to Konya as leader of Baha Valad’s School
1237 Ghiyasoddin Kay Khosrow II ascends Seljuk throne in
Anatolia
1240 Death of Ebn ‘Arabi in Damascus
1243 The Mongols extend their empire to Anatolia
1244 Rumi meets Shams-e Tabriz in Konya for the first time
1246 Shams leaves Konya
1247 Shams returns to Konya
c.1247– Shams disappearsSalahoddin the Goldsmith begins tenure
8 as Rumi’s deputy
Death of SalahoddinHosamoddin Chalabi begins tenure as
1258 Rumi’s deputyThe Mongols conquer Baghdad, the Abbasid
capital
1260 The Mongols are defeated in Syria by the Mamluks
c.1262 The Masnavi is started
The Masnavi is resumed after a pause on account of the
c.1264
death of Hosamoddin’s wife
1273 (17 December) Death of Rumi in Konya
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq.,’ ‘How to write a Blackwood Article’
and its sequel, ‘A Predicament,’ satires all on the ways of editors and
men of letters, are examples of Poe’s manner as a humorist. The
rattling monologue and dry, hard, uncontagious laughter of a music-hall
comedian is the nearest parallel. The effect is wholly disproportionate
to the bewildering activity of the performer.
In farces like ‘The Spectacles,’ ‘Loss of Breath,’ and ‘The Man that
was Used up,’ the motives would be revolting were not the characters
manifestly constructed of wood or papier-maché. The figures are
neither more nor less than marionettes. If Madame Stephanie Lalande
(aged eighty-one) dashes her wig on the ground with a yell and dances
a fandango upon it, ‘in an absolute ecstasy and agony of rage,’ it is
what may be expected in a pantomime. Whoever wishes to laugh at the
hero of the Bugaboo and Kickapoo campaign, when he is discovered
sans scalp, sans palate, sans arm, leg, and shoulders, is at liberty to do
so, but he must laugh as do children when Punch beats his wife.
There is no question of the vivacity displayed in these pieces. ‘Bon-
Bon,’ ‘The Duc de l’Omelette,’ ‘Lionizing,’ ‘Never bet the Devil your
Head,’ ‘X-ing a Paragrab,’ ‘Diddling Considered as one of the Exact
Sciences,’ ‘The Business Man,’ and ‘The Angel of the Odd’ are
sprightly with an uncanny sprightliness. It must always be a matter for
astonishment that Poe could have written them. The mystery of their
being read is explained by the taste of the times.
On the other hand, ‘The Devil in the Belfry’ is genuinely amusing.
The description of the peaceful estate of the pleasant Dutch toy village
of Vondervotteimitiss, where the very pigs wore repeaters tied to their
tails with ribbons, and the sad story of the destruction of all order and
regularity by the advent of the foreign-looking young man in black
kerseymere knee-breeches, are most agreeably set forth. This
extravaganza is not only the best of Poe’s humorous sketches, but
ranks with the work of men who were better equipped and more gifted
in such work than was Poe.

V
 THE CRITIC
Poe brought into American criticism a pungency which it had hitherto
lacked. He was entirely independent, and had urbanity companioned
independence the value of his critical work would have been greatly
augmented. He could praise with warmth and condemn with asperity;
he could not maintain an even temper. Swayed by his likes and his
dislikes, he was but too apt to grow extravagantly commendatory or
else spiteful. ‘He had the judicial mind but was rarely in the judicial
27
state of mind.’ He was not unwilling to give pain, and easily
persuaded himself that he did so in a just cause. There was a
pleasurable sense of power in the consciousness of being feared. Yet
the pleasure thus derived can never be other than ignoble. A man of
Poe’s genius can ill afford to waste his time in attacking other men of
genius whose conceptions of literary art differ from his own. Still less
can he afford to assail the swarm of petty authors whose works will
perish the sooner for being let alone. Of all harmless creatures authors
are the most harmless and should be allowed to live their innocent little
lives. But Poe took literature hard, and authors had a disquieting effect
on him.
Accused of ‘mangling by wholesale,’ Poe denied the charge,
declaring that among the many critiques he had written during a given
period of ten years not one was ‘wholly fault-finding or wholly in
approbation.’ And he maintained that to every opinion expressed he
had attempted to give weight ‘by something that bore the semblance of
a reason.’ Is there another writer in the land who ‘can of his own
criticisms conscientiously say the same’? Poe prided himself on an
honesty of motive such as animated Wilson and Macaulay. He denied
that his course was unpopular, pointing to the fact that during his
editorship of the ‘Messenger’ and ‘Graham’s’ the circulation of the one
had risen from seven hundred to five thousand, and of the other ‘from
five to fifty-two thousand subscribers.’ ‘Even the manifest injustice of a
Gifford is, I grieve to say, an exceedingly popular thing.’28
Poe’s critical writings take the form of reviews of books
(‘Longfellow’s Ballads,’ ‘Moore’s “Alciphron,”’ ‘Horne’s “Orion,”’ ‘Miss
Barrett’s “A Drama of Exile,”’ ‘Hawthorne’s Tales,’ etc.), polemical
writings (‘A Reply to “Outis”’), essays on the theory of literary art (‘The
Poetic Principle,’ ‘The Rationale of Verse’), brief notes (‘Marginalia’),
and short and snappy articles on contemporary writers (‘The Literati’).
His theory of literary art may be studied in the lecture entitled ‘The
Poetic Principle,’ where he maintains that there is no such thing as a
long poem, the very phrase being ‘a contradiction of terms.’ A poem
deserves its title ‘only inasmuch as it excites by elevating the soul.’ This
excitement is transient. When it ceases, that which is written ceases to
be poetical. Poe even sets the precise limit of the excitement—‘half an
hour at the very utmost.’
He then attacks ‘the heresy of The Didactic,’ protesting against the
doctrine that every poem should contain a moral and the poetical merit
estimated by the moral. ‘The incitements of Passion, or the precepts of
Duty, or even the lessons of Truth, may be introduced into a poem with
advantage, but the true artist will always contrive to tone them down in
proper subjection to that Beauty which is the atmosphere and the real
essence of the poem.’
Poe then proceeds to his definition of the ‘poetry of words,’ which
is, he says, ‘The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty.’ Its sole arbiter is
Taste. ‘With the Intellect, or with the Conscience, it has only collateral
relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with
Duty or with Truth.’
In his concrete criticism Poe never hesitated to prophesy. ‘I most
heartily congratulate you upon having accomplished a work which will
live,’ he wrote to Mrs. E. A. Lewis. Of some poem of Longfellow’s he
said that it would ‘not live.’ Possibly he was right in both cases, but how
could he know? Here is shown the weakness of Poe’s critical temper.
He affirmed positively that which cannot positively be affirmed.
He was a monomaniac on plagiarism, forever raising the cry of
‘Stop thief.’ Yet Poe, like Molière, whom he resembled in no other
particular, ‘took his own’ whenever it pleased him to do so, and he was
not over solicitous to advertise his sources. He was in the right. If poets
advertised their sources, what would be left for the commentators to
do? Poe hinted that Hawthorne appropriated his ideas, and he flatly
accused Longfellow of so doing. He was punished grotesquely, for
Chivers, the author of Eonchs of Ruby, accused Poe (after the latter’s
death, when it was quite safe to do so) of getting many of his best ideas
from Chivers.

VI
THE POET
Poe’s claim to mastership in verse rests on a handful of lyrics
distinguished for exquisite melody and a haunting beauty of phrase.
That part of the public which estimates a poet by such pieces as find
their way into anthologies regards Poe primarily as the author of ‘The
Bells’ and ‘The Raven.’ If popularity were the final test of merit, these
strikingly original performances would indeed crown his work. After
sixty years, neither has lost in appreciable degree the magical charm it
exerted when first the weird melody fell upon the ear. Each is
hackneyed beyond description; each has been parodied unmercifully,
murdered by raw elocutionists, and worse than murdered by
generations of school-children droning from their readers, about the
‘midnight dreary’ and the ‘Runic rhyme.’ But it is yet possible to restore
in a measure the feeling of astonished delight with which lovers of
poetry greeted the advent of these studies in the musical power of
words.
The practical and earnest soul will find little to comfort him in the
poetry of Poe. It teaches nothing, emphasizes no moral, never inspires
to action. The strange unearthly melodies must be enjoyed for the
reason that they are strange and unearthly and melodious. The genius
of the poet has travelled

By a route obscure and lonely,

Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named Night,
On a black throne reigns upright,

and we can well believe that it comes

 From an ultimate dim Thule,—
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of Space—out of Time.

Wholly out of space and time was he who wrote ‘Dreamland,’ ‘The
City in the Sea,’ ‘The Haunted Palace,’ ‘Israfel,’ ‘The Sleeper,’ and
‘Ulalume.’ It is idle to ask of these poems something they do not
pretend to give, and it can hardly be other than uncritical to describe
them as ‘very superficial.’ They are strange exotic flowers blooming
under conditions the most adverse, a fresh proof that genius is
independent of place and time.

* * * * *
In Poe’s work as a whole there is unquestionably too much of
brooding over death, the grave, mere physical horrors. Since his genius
lay that way, he must be accepted as he was. But it is permitted to
regret, if not the thing in itself (the domain of art being wide), at least
the excess. Poe speaks of certain themes which are ‘too entirely
horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction. These the mere
romanticist must eschew, if he do not wish to offend or to disgust.’ And
having laid down this doctrine, Poe goes on to relate the story of ‘The
Premature Burial.’ It turns out a vision. But the narrator affirms that he
was cured by the experience, that he read no more ‘bugaboo tales—
such as this. In short I became a new man and lived a man’s life.’
Without assuming that Poe spoke wholly from the autobiographical
point of view, we may believe the passage to contain a measure of his
actual thought.
We may claim for him a more important place in our literature than
do his radical admirers whose fervent eulogy too often takes the form of
the contention that Poe was greater than this or that American man of
letters. His strong, sombre genius saved the literature from any danger
of uniformity, relieved it at once and forever from the possible charge of
colorlessness. That strangeness of flavor which a late distinguished
critic notes as a mark of genius is imparted by Poe’s work to our literary
product as a whole. Here indeed was ‘the blossoming of the aloe.’
 FOOTNOTES:
25
‘... There is one thing I am anxious to caution you against, &
which has been a great enemy to our family, I hope, however, in
yr case, it may prove unnecessary, “A too free use of the Bottle”
...’ William Poe to E. A. Poe, 15th June, 1843. Harrison’s Poe,
vol. ii, p. 143.
26
G. E. Woodberry.
27
E. C. Stedman.
28
‘Reply to “Outis.”’
 VIII
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

REFERENCES:

Samuel Longfellow: Life of Henry Wadsworth

Longfellow, second edition, 1886, and Final
Memorials of ... Longfellow, 1887.
W. D. Howells: Literary Friends and Acquaintance,
1900.
G. R. Carpenter: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
‘Beacon Biographies,’ 1901.
T. W. Higginson: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
‘American Men of Letters,’ 1902.

I
HIS LIFE

The Longfellows are descendants of William Longfellow of Horsforth in

Yorkshire, who came to New England ‘about 1676,’ settled in Newbury,
and married Anne Sewall, a sister of Samuel Sewall, the first chief-
justice of Massachusetts. ‘Well educated but a little wild’ is one of
several illuminating phrases used to describe this young Yorkshireman.
He joined the expedition against Quebec under Sir William Phipps
(1690) and perished in a wreck on the coast of Anticosti. One of his
sons, Stephen, a blacksmith, had a son who was graduated at Harvard,
became a schoolmaster in Falmouth (Portland), and held important
offices in the town government. His son, the third Stephen, grandfather
of the poet, was judge of the court of common pleas, and
representative of his town in the legislature.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born at Portland, in the District of
Maine, on February 27, 1807. He was the second son of Stephen
Longfellow, a prominent lawyer, conspicuous in political life, a member
of the Massachusetts legislature, and afterwards, when Maine acquired
statehood, a representative for his state in Congress. The mother of the
poet, Zilpah (Wadsworth) Longfellow, was a daughter of General Peleg
Wadsworth, whose adventures during the Revolution bordered on the
romantic. Through the Wadsworths the poet was a descendant of John
Alden and Priscilla Mullens.
At the age of thirteen Longfellow printed in the Portland ‘Gazette’
his boyish rhymes on ‘The Battle of Lovell’s Pond.’ He studied at
private schools and at the Portland Academy, entered Bowdoin
College, Brunswick, Maine, in the Sophomore year, and was graduated
in 1825, the fourth in a class of thirty-eight. That he stood so high
seemed to him ‘rather a mystery.’ Before leaving college he had begun
contributing to the ‘United States Literary Gazette,’ a new bi-monthly,
published in Boston and edited by Theophilus Parsons. In one year
seventeen of his poems appeared in the ‘Gazette,’ for which payment
was made at the rate of two dollars a column. Five of these early
poems were reprinted in Voices of the Night.
At the Commencement of 1825 the trustees of Bowdoin had
determined to establish a professorship of modern languages. The
chair was promised Longfellow when he should have fitted himself for it
by study abroad. He sailed from New York in May, 1826, provided by
George Ticknor with letters of introduction to Irving, Eichhorn, and
Southey. He travelled in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany, mastered
the Romance languages, planned certain prose volumes, and
announced to his sister Elizabeth that his poetic career was finished. In
August, 1829, he was back in America.
His appointment being confirmed and the stipend fixed at eight
hundred dollars (together with another hundred for services as college
librarian), Longfellow entered on his duties. During the next five and a
half years he corrected bad French and Italian exercises, heard worse
viva voce translations, in brief, was a pedagogue in all homely and
trying senses of the word. With any one save a born drill-master the
class-room soon loses novelty. In spite of the knowledge that he was
useful in a chosen field of work, more than happy in his home-life (he
had married, in 1831, Miss Mary Storer Potter of Portland), Longfellow
felt the narrowness of his surroundings. Bowdoin was a little college
and Brunswick a village. The young professor was ambitious. In his
own phrase, he wanted a stage on which he could ‘take longer strides
and speak to a larger audience.’ At one time he thought of buying the
Round Hill School, and visited Northampton to look over the ground.
Fortune had something better in store for him. Ticknor was about to
resign the chair of modern languages at Harvard, and proposed as his
successor Longfellow, whose translation of the Coplas of Manrique
(1833) had attracted his notice. The position was formally offered and
accepted; it was understood that Longfellow was to spend a year and a
half in Europe before taking up his work.
Accompanied by his young wife, Longfellow crossed the ocean in
April, 1835, and passed the summer in Stockholm and Copenhagen,
studying the Scandinavian languages. In the autumn he was in
Holland. Mrs. Longfellow died the last of November. Longfellow went to
Heidelberg for the winter, and to Switzerland and the Tyrol for the
spring and summer, and in December (1836) was at Cambridge
preparing his college lectures.
He lodged at the famous colonial mansion in Brattle Street known
as Craigie House, in a room that had once been Washington’s. When
Longfellow first applied, old Mrs. Craigie, deceived by his youthful
appearance, told him that she had ‘resolved to take no more students
into the house.’ Craigie House passed into the possession of
Worcester, the lexicographer. Worcester sold it to Nathan Appleton,
whose daughter Longfellow married in 1843. It then became the
property of Mrs. Longfellow.
At Harvard the exactions of work were not like those in the smaller
college, strictly pedagogical. Longfellow had time for literature and for
society. The years were richly productive, as the following
bibliographical lists show.
 Outre-Mer, A Pilgrimage beyond the Sea, 1835; Hyperion, a
Romance, 1839; Voices of the Night, 1839; Ballads and Other Poems,
1842; Poems on Slavery, 1842; The Spanish Student, 1843; The Waif,
a Collection of Poems, 1845 (edited); The Poets and Poetry of Europe,
1845 (edited); The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems, 1846; The
Estray, a Collection of Poems, 1847 (edited); Evangeline, a Tale of
Acadie, 1847; Kavanagh, a Tale, 1849; The Seaside and the Fireside,
1850; The Golden Legend, 1851; The Song of Hiawatha, 1855.
After eighteen years of service at Harvard, Longfellow, in 1855,
resigned his professorship, handing over its responsibilities to a worthy
successor, James Russell Lowell. Released from academic duties, he
was able to give himself unreservedly to literary work. Even in these
new conditions he enjoyed less freedom than would be supposed.
Longfellow had become a world-famous poet and was compelled to
pay in full measure the penalties of fame. The demands on his time
were enormous. As his reputation increased there was a proportionate
increase in the army of visitors which besieged his door. The uniform
kindness of their reception encouraged hundreds more to come.
The beautiful serenity of Longfellow’s domestic life was broken in
upon by a frightful tragedy. One July morning in 1861 Mrs. Longfellow’s
dress caught fire from a lighted match. It was impossible to save her,
and she died the following day. The poet never recovered from the
shock of her death. How crushing the blow was may be faintly
conceived from that poem, ‘The Cross of Snow,’ found among his
papers after his death.
During the last quarter century of his life Longfellow published the
following books: The Courtship of Miles Standish, 1858; Tales of a
Wayside Inn, 1863; Flower-de-Luce, 1867; The New England
29
Tragedies, 1868; Dante’s Divine Comedy, a Translation, 1867–70;
30
The Divine Tragedy, 1871; Christus, a Mystery, 1872; Three Books of
Song, 1872; Aftermath, 1873; The Masque of Pandora, and Other
Poems, 1875; Poems of Places, 1876–79 (edited); Kéramos and Other
Poems, 1878; Ultima Thule, 1880. The posthumous volumes were In
the Harbor, 1882, and Michael Angelo, 1884.
All the customary honors with which literary achievement may be
recognized were bestowed on Longfellow. Some were formal and
academic, scholastic tributes to scholastic achievement. Others were
spontaneous and popular, an expression of the heart. Two illustrations
will suffice to show the range of the poet’s influence. In 1869, during
Longfellow’s last journey in Europe, the degree of D. C. L. was
conferred on him by the University of Oxford. In 1879, when the tree
which overhung ‘the village smithy’ was felled, an armchair was made
of the wood, and given to the poet by the school-children of Cambridge.
Both these tributes were necessary. Each is the complement of the
other. Taken together, they symbolize the characteristics of the man
and the artist.
Of all American poets Longfellow reached the widest audience.
And it was with a feeling of personal bereavement that every member
of that vast audience heard the news of his death at Cambridge, on
March 24, 1882.

II
LONGFELLOW’S CHARACTER
As a young man Longfellow was pretty much like other young men,
fond of society and fond of dress. At Cambridge the sober-minded were
a little disturbed by the brilliancy of his waistcoats. In the Thirties it was
permitted men, if they would, to array themselves like birds of paradise.
Longfellow appears in some degree to have availed himself of the
privilege. After a visit to Dickens in London in 1842 the novelist wrote
Longfellow that boot-maker, hosier, trousers-maker, and coat-cutter had
all been at the point of death. ‘The medical gentlemen agreed that it
was exhaustion occasioned by early rising—to wait upon you at those
unholy hours!’ An English visitor who saw Longfellow in 1850 thought
him too fashionably dressed with his ‘blue frock-coat of Parisian cut, a
handsome waistcoat, faultless pantaloons, and primrose colored “kids.”’
In middle age his social instinct was as strong as ever, but he cared
less for ‘society.’ He restricted himself to the companionship of his
friends, holding always in reserve time for his dependants, of whom he
had more than a fair share.
 Longfellow was large-hearted. He liked people if they were likable
and sympathized with them if they were unattractive or unfortunate. He
was open-handed, a liberal giver. Adventurers preyed upon him. He
endured them with patient strength. When their exactions became
outrageous, he made an effort to be rid of them. If unsuccessful, he
laughed at his own want of skill and resigned himself to be imposed on
a little longer. A weaker man would have sent these bores and
parasites about their business at once.
Incapable of giving pain to any living creature, he could not
understand the temper which prompts another to do so. Fortunately the
violence or malignity of criticism had little effect on him. He could even
be amused by it. Of Margaret Fuller’s ‘furious onslaught’ on him in the
‘New York Tribune,’ Longfellow said, ‘It is what ‘might be called a bilious
attack.’
He disliked publicity whether in the form of newspaper chronicle of
his doings or recognition in public places. He thought it absurd that
because Fechter had dined with him this unimportant item must be
telegraphed to Chicago and printed in the morning journals. Fond as he
was of the theatre, he sometimes hesitated to go because of the
interest his presence excited. It was thought extraordinary that he was
willing to read his poem ‘Morituri Salutamus’ at the fiftieth anniversary
of his class at Bowdoin. He was delighted when he found he was to
stand behind the old-fashioned high pulpit; ‘Let me cover myself as
much as possible. I wish it might be entirely.’
One trait of Longfellow’s character has been over-emphasized—his
gentleness. He was indeed gentle; but continual harping on that string
has created the impression that he was gentle rather than anything
else. In consequence we have a legendary Longfellow in whom all
other traits of character are subordinated to the one. His amiability, his
sense of justice, his entire freedom from selfishness and vanity, and his
genuine modesty, which led him even when he was right and his
neighbor wrong to avoid giving needless pain by intimating to the
neighbor how wrong he was—all contributed to hide the more forceful
and emphatic qualities. But the qualities were there.
Nothing is easier than to multiply illustrations of this poet’s gracious
traits of character. Holmes epitomized all eulogy when he said of
Longfellow: ‘His life was so exceptionally sweet and musical that any
voice of praise sounds almost like a discord after it.’

III
THE POET
Americans sometimes disturb themselves needlessly over the
question whether Longfellow was a great poet. It is absolutely of no
importance whether he was or was not. Of one thing they may be sure,
—he was a poet. Song was his natural vehicle of expression. He had a
masterly command of technical difficulties of his art. Language became
pliant under his touch. Taking into account the range of his metres, the
uniform precision with which he handled words, and the purity of his
style, Longfellow is eminent among American poetical masters.
His sonnets are exquisite. His ballads, like ‘The Skeleton in Armor,’
have no little of the fresh unstudied character which charms us in old
English ballad literature, a something not to be traced to the spirit alone
but to the technique as well. The twenty-two poems of ‘The Saga of
King Olaf’ show an almost extraordinary metrical power.
It must also be remembered that Longfellow popularized for
modern readers the so-called English hexameter. Evangeline was a
metrical triumph, considering it wholly aside from the innate beauty of
the story or the artistic handling of the incidents. The poet did not
foresee his success. In fact, as early as 1841, in the preface to his
translation of Tegnér’s Children of the Lord’s Supper, Longfellow
speaks of the ‘inexorable hexameter, in which, it must be confessed,
the motions of the English muse are not unlike those of a prisoner
dancing to the music of his chains.’ But here he was hampered by his
theory of translation, by his anxiety to render as literally as he could the
text of the original. When he took the matter into his own hands and
moulded the verse according to his own artistic sense, it became
another thing. Wholly aside from the pleasure Evangeline has given
countless readers, it is something to have broken down prejudice
against the hexameter to the extent of drawing out an indirect
compliment from Matthew Arnold, whose self-restraint in the matter of
31
giving praise was notorious. Scholars have by no means withdrawn
their opposition to the English hexameter. That a more liberal temper
prevails is largely due to Longfellow.
Evangeline had a stimulating effect on one English poet of rare
genius, Arthur Hugh Clough. A reading of the Tale of Acadie
immediately after a reperusal of the Iliad led to the composition of The
32
Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich.
Another of Longfellow’s triumphs was so great as to make it difficult
for any one to follow him. Hiawatha succeeded both because of the
metre and in spite of it. Any one can master this self-writing jingle. ’Tis
as easy as lying. One hardly knows how facile newspaper parodists
amused themselves before they got Hiawatha. Holmes explained the
ease of the measure on physiological grounds. We do not lisp in
numbers, but breathe in them. Did we but know it, we pass our lives in
exhaling four-foot rhymeless trochaics.33 To write a poem in the metre
of the Kalevala still remains, with all its specious fluency, an impossible
performance for any one not a poet. Thus Longfellow’s success had a
negative and restraining effect. He opened the field to whoever cared to
experiment with the hexameter, but closed it, for the present at least, to
any rhythmical inventions calculated however remotely to suggest the
metre of his Indian edda.

IV
OUTRE-MER, HYPERION, KAVANAGH
The most popular of American poets first challenged public attention as
a writer of prose. Outre-Mer is a group of pieces after the manner of
Irving. Hyperion is a romance ‘in the old style,’ and shows the influence
of Jean Paul Richter. Kavanagh, published ten years after Hyperion, is
a novel.
Neither of the first two books is marked by a buoyant Americanism.
Outre-Mer does not, for example, suggest A Tramp Abroad, and
certainly Paul Flemming is no kinsman of ‘Harris.’ In other words,
Europe was as yet too remote to be made the subject of easy jest. Men
did not ‘run over’ to the Continent. The trip cost them dear in time and
money, and was not without the element of anticipated danger.
Travelling America was unsophisticated and viewed the Old World with
childlike curiosity. Foreign lands were transfigured in the romantic haze
through which they were seen.
The chapters of Outre-Mer were written by a man too intoxicated
with the charm of European life to be annoyed by the petty irritations
that worry hardened tourists. Rouen, Paris, Auteuil, Madrid, El Pardillo,
Rome in midsummer, afford the Pilgrim only delight. As in all books of
the kind there are interpolated stones, and in this book interpolated
literary essays. Every page betrays the student and the lover of
literature, who quotes Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne at Père la
Chaise, James Howell at Venice, and Shakespeare everywhere.
Hyperion is steeped in sentiment—almost in sentimentality. Such a
book could only have been written when the heart was young. It is a
mistake, however, to read the volume as an autobiography; the author
objected to its being so read. More important than the love story are the
romantic descriptions of the Rhine and the Swiss Alps and the golden
atmosphere enveloping it all. Both these books have a common object,
namely, to interpret the Old World to the New.
When Outre-Mer was published an admirer said that the author of
The Sketch Book must look to his laurels. The praise implied was
extravagant, but not groundless. Longfellow’s prose has a measure of
the sweetness and urbanity which we associate with Irving. Both writers
are classic in their serenity, and if highly artificial at times never
absurdly stilted. They often appear in old-fashioned dress, but they
wear the costume easily and it becomes them. The modern reader, with
a taste dulled by high seasoning, marvels how the grandparents could
find pleasure in Hyperion. It would be to the modern reader’s
advantage to forswear sack for a while and get himself into a condition
to enjoy what so greatly delighted the grandparents.
Besides a group of literary essays (published in his collected works
under the title of ‘Driftwood’) Longfellow wrote a novel of New England
life, Kavanagh, which suffered by coming too soon after Evangeline. It
seems colorless when placed beside the romantic tale of Acadie. Yet
one can well afford to take time to learn of Mr. Pendexter’s griefs, and
incidentally to become acquainted with Billy Wilmerdings, who was
turned out of school for playing truant, and ‘promised his mother, if she
would not whip him, he would experience religion.’ Hawthorne was
enthusiastic over Kavanagh; he, however, disclosed the secret of its
unpopularity when he said to Longfellow: ‘Nobody but yourself would
dare to write so quiet a book.’

V
VOICES OF THE NIGHT, BALLADS, SPANISH
STUDENT, BELFRY OF BRUGES, THE
SEASIDE AND THE FIRESIDE
Longfellow served the cause of his art in two ways: first, he was an
original poet, having a genius which, if not profound, or brilliant, or
massive, or bewilderingly fresh and new, was eminently poetical and
eminently attractive; second, he was an enthusiastic interpreter of the
poetry of other lands through the medium of trustworthy and graceful
translations.
In Voices of the Night, his earliest volume of verse, the translations,
from Manrique, Lope de Vega, Dante, Charles d’Orléans, Klopstock,
and Uhland, outnumber the original pieces almost two to one. Their
characteristic is fidelity in spirit and letter. They illustrate the genius of a
poet who found pleasure in giving wider audience to the work of men
he loved, and who did his utmost to preserve the singular qualities of
these men.
Longfellow’s second volume, Ballads and Other Poems, contains
only four translations, but one of them is Tegnér’s Children of the Lord’s
Supper, in three hundred and fifty hexameter verses. The Belfry of
Bruges contains a handful of translations from the German, including a
lyric of Heine’s done in a way to cause regret that Longfellow did not
put more of the Buch der Lieder into English. In The Seaside and the
Fireside is given entire ‘The Blind Girl of Castèl Cuillè’ by the barber-
poet Jasmin.
 The translations bulk so large and are so plainly a labor of love that
it would seem as if Longfellow regarded such work an important part of
his poetic mission. At the present time there is no need to urge the
translator to ‘aggrandize his office.’ He does so cheerfully. Sometimes it
is done for him. Are we not told that Fitzgerald was a greater poet than
Omar Khayyám? In 1840 the office had not grown so great.
This interpretative work by no means ended when Longfellow’s
fame as a creative poet was at its height and there was every incentive
to build for himself. When compiling (with Felton’s aid) the Poets and
Poetry of Europe he translated many pieces for the volume. He gave
years to reproducing in English the majesty of Dante’s verse, counting
himself fortunate if his transcript, made in all reverence and love,
approached its great original. This disinterestedness in the exercise of
his art is so greatly to his honor that praise becomes impertinent.
Catholic in his attitude toward workers in the field of poesy, Longfellow
recognized the truth of the line
Many the songs, but song is one.
Longfellow’s early verse had all the requisites for popularity; it is
clear, melodious, simple in its lessons, tinged with sentiment and
melancholy, dashed with romantic color, and abounding in phrases
which catch the ear and pulsate in the brain. The poet voices the
longings, regrets, fears, aspirations, the restlessness, or the faith,
which go to make up the warp and woof of everyday life. An allegory, a
moralized legend, a song, a meditation, a ballad,—these are what we
find in turning the leaves of Voices of the Night or the Ballads. Here is a
certain popular quality not to be attained by taking thought. ‘A Psalm of
Life,’ ‘Flowers,’ ‘The Beleaguered City,’ ‘The Village Blacksmith,’ ‘The
Rainy Day,’ ‘Maidenhood,’ ‘Excelsior,’ ‘The Bridge,’ ‘The Day is Done,’
‘Resignation,’ ‘The Builders,’ are a few among many illustrations of the
type of verse which carried Longfellow’s name into every home where
poetry is read. The range of emotions expressed is of the simplest.
There is feeling, but no thinking. The robust reader who perchance has
battened of late on sturdy diet, like Fifine at the Fair, hardly knows what
to make of these poems, so little resistance do they offer to the mind.
The meaning lies on the surface. But it is no less true that their essence
is poetical. The one thing never lacking is the note of distinction. The
human quality to be found in such a poem as the ‘Footsteps of Angels’
almost overpowers the poetic element. Nevertheless the poetry is
there, and by virtue of this Longfellow’s early work lives.
Other poems show his scholar’s love for the past. They express the
natural longing felt by an inhabitant of a crude new land for countries
where romance lies thick because history is ancient. ‘The Belfry of
Bruges’ and ‘Nuremberg’ are examples. Moreover Longfellow’s ballads
have genuine quality. ‘The Skeleton in Armor’ illustrates his study of
Scandinavian literature. ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’ is based on an
actual incident which came under his notice. The criticism reflecting on
this ballad because the poet had never seen the reef of Norman’s Woe,
is superfine. Longfellow was born and reared almost within a stone’s
throw of the Atlantic. His knowledge of the ocean began with his first
lessons in life. His sea poems are distinctive. ‘The Building of the Ship,’
‘The Fire of Driftwood,’ ‘Sir Humphrey Gilbert,’ ‘The Secret of the Sea,’
‘The Lighthouse,’ ‘Chrysaor,’ and ‘Seaweed,’ whether or not they
deserve the praise Henley gives them, will always be accounted among
Longfellow’s characteristic pieces.
Two other works may be noted in this section: the Poems on
Slavery and a play, The Spanish Student. The first of these, though
academic, shows how early Longfellow took his rank with the unpopular
minority. The Spanish Student, a play based on La Gitanilla of
Cervantes, was written con amore, and ‘with a celerity of which I did not
think myself capable.’ Longfellow had great hopes of its success,
though he seems not to have been ambitious for a dramatic
presentation. The success was to come through the reader. The
Spanish Student shows that Longfellow could have written good acting
plays had he chosen to submit to the irritations and rebuffs which are
the inevitable preliminary to dramatic good fortune.

VI
EVANGELINE, HIAWATHA, MILES STANDISH,
TALES OF A WAYSIDE INN
Evangeline and Hiawatha mark the climax of Longfellow’s
contemporary popularity and may be regarded as the principal
bulwarks of his fame. There is an anecdote to the effect that
Hawthorne, to whom the subject of Evangeline was proposed, was not
attracted by it, while Longfellow seized on it eagerly. Such was the
divergence of their genius. Longfellow’s mind always sought the fair
uplands of thought, checkered with alternate sunshine and shadow; it
did not willingly traverse deep ravines, gloomy and mysterious, or
haunted groves such as those about which Hawthorne’s spirit loved to
keep. The instinct which led the one poet to reject the narrative was as
infallible as that which led the other to appropriate it.
The tale of Acadie is engrossing in its very nature, and whether told
in prose or verse must always invite, even chain, the attention. It is
dramatic without being melodramatic. The characters are not mere
‘persons’ of the drama, they are types. Evangeline will always stand for
something more than the figure of an unhappy Acadian girl bereft of her
lover. As Longfellow has painted her, she is the incarnation of beauty,
devotion, maidenly pride, self-abnegation. So too of the other
characters, Gabriel, old Basil, Benedict; each has that added strength
which a character conceived dramatically is bound to have if it shall
prove typical as well.
Longfellow gave himself little anxiety about the historic difficulties of
the Acadian question. It was enough for him that these unhappy people
were carried away from their homes and that much misery ensued. He
painted the French Neutrals as a romancer must. Father Felician was
not sketched from the Abbé Le Loutre, nor was life in the actual Grand
Pré altogether idyllic.
Evangeline aroused interest in French-American history. For
example, Whewell wrote to Bancroft to say that he feared Longfellow
had some historical basis for the story and to ask for information.
In the Plymouth idyl of the choleric little captain who believed that
the way to get a thing well done was to do it one’s self, and who
exemplified his theory by having his secretary make a proposal of
marriage for him, Longfellow made one of his most fortunate strokes.
The Courtship of Miles Standish showed the poetic possibilities in the
harsh, dry annals of early colonial life. The wonder is that so few
adventurers have cared to follow the path indicated.
 Bound up with the story of Priscilla and John Alden is a handful of
poems to which Longfellow gave the collective title of ‘Birds of
Passage.’ Here are several fine examples of his art: ‘The Warden of the
Cinque-Ports,’ ‘Haunted Houses,’ ‘The Jewish Cemetery at Newport,’
‘Oliver Basselin,’ ‘Victor Galbraith,’ ‘My Lost Youth,’ ‘The Discoverer of
the North Cape,’ and ‘Sandalphon.’ It is a question whether in these
eight poems we have not a small but well-nigh perfect Longfellow
anthology. Certainly no selection of his writings can pretend to be
characteristic which does not contain them.
Hiawatha was not intended for a poetic commentary on the
manners and customs of the North American Indians, though that
impression sometimes obtains. It is a free handling of Ojibway legends
drawn from Schoolcraft’s Algic Researches and supplemented by other
accounts of Indian life. The grossness of the red man’s character, his
cruelty, his primitive views of cleanliness, are wisely kept in the
background, and his noble and picturesque qualities brought to the
front. The psychology is extremely simple. This Indian edda must be
enjoyed for its atmosphere of the forest, its childlike spirit, and its
humor. Hiawatha was a friend of animals (when he was not their
enemy), and understood them even better than writers of modern
nature-books. One does not need to be young again to enjoy the
account of Hiawatha’s fishing in company with his friend the squirrel.
The sturgeon swallows them both, and the squirrel helps Hiawatha get
the canoe crossways in the fish, a timely service in recognition of which
(after both have been rescued) he receives the honorable name of Tail-
in-air. In fact, the poem abounds in observations of animal life which as
yet await the sanction of John Burroughs.
Taking a series of poems on the half-real, half-mythical King Olaf,
adding thereto a group of contrasting tales from Spanish, Italian,
Jewish, and American sources, assigning each narrative to an
appropriate character, binding the whole together with an Introduction,
Interludes, and a Conclusion, Longfellow produced the genial Tales of a
Wayside Inn. The device of the poem is old, but it can always be given
a new turn. Adapted to prose as well as verse, it may be used ‘in little,’
as Hardy has done in A Few Crusted Characters, or in larger form, as
in A Group of Noble Dames.