Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem Excelsior was published in 1841 and very soon came to be strongly associated with European Alpine mountaineering. Longfellow was influenced by German cultural approaches to mountains, mediated via the literature of the both the Sturm und Drang movement, German Idealism and pan-European Romanticism. The poem briefly recounts the tale of a young man struggling through Alpine peaks and passes to an unspecified fate near the Great St. Bernard Pass. Located by the faithful hounds of the monastery and half buried in snow, he still clutches in his icy hand ‘That banner with a strange device/Excelsior!’ Longfellow constructed his aesthetics of the infinite from Pre-Romantic, Sublime and Gothic elements but the literary topos of Excelsior owes most to German literary and philosophical sensibilities. This reverence for mountain landscapes and their symbolic importance was reinforced in German culture by romantic nationalism and the literature of young Germans’ self-discovery that had romanticized the ‘wild call of the mountains.’ The cult of doomed and evanescent youth is a feature of the Sturm und Drang. Above all, German Idealist thought found in the struggle to climb a mountain and attain a summit the perfect metaphor for the dialectical method and the teleological drive towards the Ideal, exemplified in Goethe’s Faust. The motifs of ascent, absorption into the Absolute and engagement in “aspiration without object” all place this within the domain of philosophical idealism. The phrase “Excelsior!” was adopted by mountaineers in the nineteenth century, Le Club Alpin Français choosing it as the club motto at the club’s foundation in 1874. It attained considerable cultural force amongst German speaking Alpinists experimenting with new forms of Lebensphilosophie that emphasized the cultivation of the will. The phrase lost much of its power through overuse, debasement, parody and ridicule but remains an epiphenomenal presence in literary appropriations of mountaineering.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem Excelsior was published in 1841 and very soon came to be strongly associated with European Alpine mountaineering.  Longfellow was influenced by German cultural approaches to mountains, mediated via the literature of the both the Sturm und Drang movement, German Idealism and pan-European Romanticism.  The poem briefly recounts the tale of a young man struggling through Alpine peaks and passes to an unspecified fate near the Great St. Bernard Pass.  Located by the faithful hounds of the monastery and half buried in snow, he still clutches in his icy hand ‘That banner with a strange device/Excelsior!’  Longfellow constructed his aesthetics of the infinite from Pre-Romantic, Sublime and Gothic elements but the literary topos of Excelsior owes most to German literary and philosophical sensibilities.  This reverence for mountain landscapes and their symbolic importance was reinforced in German culture by romantic nationalism and the literature of young Germans’ self-discovery that had romanticized the ‘wild call of the mountains.’  The cult of doomed and evanescent youth is a feature of the Sturm und Drang.  Above all, German Idealist thought found in the struggle to climb a mountain and attain a summit the perfect metaphor for the dialectical method and the teleological drive towards the Ideal, exemplified in Goethe’s Faust.  The motifs of ascent, absorption into the Absolute and engagement in “aspiration without object” all place this within the domain of philosophical idealism.  The phrase “Excelsior!” was adopted by mountaineers in the nineteenth century, Le Club Alpin Français choosing it as the club motto at the club’s foundation in 1874. It attained considerable cultural force amongst German speaking Alpinists experimenting with new forms of Lebensphilosophie that emphasized the cultivation of the will.  The phrase lost much of its power through overuse, debasement, parody and ridicule but remains an epiphenomenal presence in literary appropriations of mountaineering.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a figurehead in the modernist movement – a case study in how not to write poetry. As one of the most popular poets in the nineteenth century, Longfellow purposely created a list of works that were accessible to both highbrow and mainstream readers using a variety of traditional and simplistic forms. Even so, he lived alongside more experimental writers like Walt Whitman and knew that a new form of poetry would soon take hold. In his last few poems, Longfellow acknowledges this transition. In my paper, I will argue that his sonnet “My Books” refers not to his library collection but his own published works, which he notes are “no longer used.” Only two weeks before his death, Longfellow completed “The Bells of San Blas,” a dark poem which uses negative images like rusted bells and chapels crumbled into dust. In this powerful poem, Longfellow acknowledges a new movement in poetry that will soon supplant that of his generation. “Out of the shadows of night,” he writes, “it is daybreak everywhere.” That daybreak signifies a new age, one that makes him question, “Is, then, the old faith dead?”

Regarding Edward Elgar's "The Black Knight" (1893), this Paper takes the history and context of the genre "choral ballad" into consideration. Another aspect is the largely negative attitude towards the libretto: Elgar chose Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's translation of the ballad "Der schwarze Ritter" by Ludwig Uhland. Perhaps it is Uhland, whose poetic and linguistic peculiarities are the real reason for these negative opinions.

This publication renders Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s complete translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy including notes, illustrations, reviews and additional material.

In the past two centuries, Dante Aligheri’s Divine Comedy has been translated into English by over ninety translators— more than in any other language—and many of them have taken the trouble for years—and in the case of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow—sometimes even for decades to translate the Commedia. In view of the quantity of verses (14,233 in total), the degree of difficulty and the complexity of the text, they all deserve to be honored—regardless of the result.

The comparatively big number of complete and partial Commedia translations—this can be observed also in other language regions like German and French—results in the fact that many older translations fall into oblivion despite their quality and re-editions are rather rare. This is definitely not the case with Longfellow’s translation that has re-edited numerous times, topped only by Henry Francis Cary’s translation.

In various reviews, Longfellow’s translation is compared with earlier and contemporary English translations, e.g. from Henry Francis Cary, William Michael Rossetti, Thomas William Parsons, Ichabod Charles Wright, Lord Byron, John A. Carlyle to mark the contrast between them, resulting in judgements ranging from the highest eulogy to the fiercest criticism.

This series of Longfellow’s translation of the Devine Comedy published at www.academia.edu includes the following publications:
- The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Translated and commented by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Text.
- The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Italian and English.
- The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. La Commedia Colorata.
- The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. La Commedia Colorata. Italian and English.

They all prove the literalness and accuracy of Longfellow’s translation.
The goal of this online publication is to make Longfellow’s translation of the Divine Comedy accessible without any commercial interests in mind. This shall allow the interested public to make their own analyses and comparisons.

In this publication, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy is compared with Giorgio Petrocchi’s critical edition (2nd edition 1994, “Edizione Nazionaleˮ) with the amendments by Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi (2nd edition 2001).

The Notes, Illustrations, Reviews and other material have been removed in this edition (see volume 1 of this series for them).

This series of Longfellow’s translation of the Devine Comedy published at www.academia.edu includes the following publications:
- The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Translated and commented by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Text.
- The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Italian and English.
- The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. La Commedia Colorata.
- The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. La Commedia Colorata. Italian and English.

They all prove the literalness and accuracy of Longfellow’s translation.
The goal of this online publication is to make Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s translation of the Divine Comedy accessible without any commercial interests in mind. The direct comparison of the translation with the Italian text shall allow the interested public to make their own analyses.

Now remembered chiefly as the first American to translate the whole Dante’s Commedia, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had a lifelong fascination with Italy that was not incidental to his popularity as a poet and international renown during the nineteenth century. The essay considers Longfellow’s regard for Florence, where he sojourned unhappily as a student and more happily in later life with his family, in relation to other Italian cities. After considering Longfellow’s descriptions of Florence in his travel letters and poetry, focusing in particular on his sonnet, “The Old Bridge at Florence,” it turns to examine a late, unfinished work, a dramatic poem on the life of Michelangelo and the ambivalent feelings they shared toward Florence and Rome.

| Though a major figure in American cultural history, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was relatively neglected by literary scholars until the past twenty years. Recent scholarship emphasizes Longfellow's cosmopolitan and transnational vision, yet a great deal of work remains to be done to understand Longfellow the person, his work, and his work's reception in American culture and the larger world. A particular need is biographical studies, where better understanding of Longfellow and race, sexuality, and gender is needed. Much archival work, particularly on his unpublished journals , remains. Many of his major works have yet to receive the attention from scholars that they deserve. And his reception outside the US is a rich area for future work. However, the key question for the study of Longfellow will be reconciling the transnational vision of the poet with his reception in the US, where he was a key figure in the development of middle-class white culture in the late nineteenth and the twentieth century.

Ha a tudat manipulációjára gondolunk, könnyen intenzív agymosási technikák juthatnak eszünkbe önkéntelenül is. Kényszerítés, kínzás, megtörés – minden, amit a 101-es szobából ismerünk Orwell jóvoltából. Ezek a technikák csupa olyan hitet és reakciót ültetnek el bennünk, amelyeket önszántunkból sosem tennénk magunkévá, és amelyeket – ha józan eszünknél vagyunk – nemkívánatosnak tartanánk. Könnyen lehet azonban, hogy már ez az asszociáció is a megtévesztés egy formája. Ha csak így tudunk gondolni a manipulációra, azzal abban a kényelmes hitben ringatjuk magunkat, hogy ha egyszer manipulációnak lennénk kitéve, azt egyrészt észrevennénk, másrészt a forrása rajtunk kívül állna. Ami azonban jóval félelmetesebb: a manipuláció akkor is megtörténhet, ha épp a legnagyobb kényelemben van részünk, ha a manipulátor a lehető legkisebb energiabefektetéssel dolgozik, ha épp csak lehetővé teszi, hogy azt gondoljuk, amit szeretnénk. Sőt: a magunk legnagyobb manipulátorai önmagunk is lehetünk. Az alábbiakban a posztigazság jelensége, a hanta fogalma, valamint szépirodalmi párhuzamok felől járom körbe ezeket a nyugtalanító lehetőségeket.

Harvard’s Dante Collection was the first such collection to be established at an American institution and the one that gave rise directly or indirectly to those that would follow. It sprang up from the roots laid down during the course of the nineteenth century by George Ticknor, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and especially Charles Eliot Norton. Those roots nourished the reading and collecting of works by and about Dante, and brought forth translations, commentaries, and interpretative essays. These activities, in turn, were nurtured through the foundation of the Dante Society, which provided the impetus and the means to form a distinct Dante Collection in the Harvard College Library designed to support the burgeoning American interest in the poet’s works, life, and influence.

Down by the bayou in St Martinville, Louisiana, lies an oak tree which is supposed to mark the meeting place of Emmeline Labiche and Louis Arceneaux: the 'Evangeline' and 'Gabriel' whose legendary love, sundering and reunion is chronicled in Henry Longfellow's epic poem 'Evangeline'. In this paper, in response to the conceptualisation of the mediatisation of romantic love expounded by Storey and McDonald (2013), I use an associative structure to explore a range of 'found' cultural, literary, historical, group analytic and psychosocial associations to this legend and to give an account of my own personal response to it. I locate the idealised story of Evangeline and Gabriel and their unconsummated pairing at the heart of the Romantic movement and its links to both contemporary and late-modern colonial discourses and I place this in the context of a wider commentary on the alienation of emotional states of being in consumerist societies.

Il saggio propone una lettura a tutto tondo del dantismo del più noto poeta americano nel corso di tutto il diciannovesimo secolo, soprattutto attraverso un gruppo lectures, ancora inedite, che egli tenne a Harvard tra il 1838 e il 1852. L’accusa di un’eccessiva dipendenza dalle muse europee e dalla cultura del Vecchio Mondo in genere, che i critici gli mossero all’inizio del ’900 e che tuttora perdura, non rende giustizia dell’identità autenticamente americana della sua poesia e del suo dantismo, incomprensibile dunque al di fuori della tradizione culturale autoctona. Il critico dovrà seguire il ritmo alternato dettato dall’insegnamento accademico a Harvard e dalla scrittura poetica, riconoscendo nel primo il profondo legame di Longfellow con l’Europa e nella seconda il suo tentativo di percorrere le strade aperte dal romanticismo su suolo americano. Il più importante dei suoi modelli poetici, Dante Alighieri, è posto sotto la lente di entrambi gli strumenti di analisi che Longfellow fece suoi, accademico da una parte e creativo dall’altra, come testimoniano, oltre alle lectures, la prima traduzione americana dell’intero poema nel 1867 e i coevi sei sonetti intitolati la Divina Commedia.

Published anonymously in the July 1851 issue of 'The North American Review' was a long, carefully-argued review essay titled 'The Anglo-Saxon Race'. The author of this essay took pointed issue with attempts being made by a Southern scholar, Lewis F. Klipstein, to subsume Anglo-Saxon studies into racist ideologies favored by the pro-slavery party in the United States. Instead, the author celebrates the literary, constitutional, and religious achievements of the people of early medieval England as foundational elements of an enlightened Anglo-American civilization. The author of this anti-racist essay, I argue, was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the celebrated Massachusetts poet and man of letters.

Isolati e perseguitati in patria prima che esiliati nel Nuovo Mondo, i puritani inglesi predilessero una lettura di Dante politica e antipapale, incline storicamente a porre l’accento sul tema dell’esilio, reale o figurale, che rimarrà motivo di interesse nella letteratura di ispirazione dantesca in area anglosassone. Questo Dante moderno, antistorico ma di grande forza morale, arrivò in America a bordo del Mayflower, portato dai padri pellegrini insieme alla Bibbia, e da quel momento avrebbe contribuito alla costruzione della cultura americana. Nella madrepatria, all’inizio dell’Ottocento, altri espatriati, di nazionalità italiana, tra cui  Ugo Foscolo che nel decennio 1817-1827 poneva le basi della nascente e più consapevole critica dantesca, si confrontavano con l’acceso impegno politico di Dante. Era in gioco non solo la fortuna poetica del poeta oltremanica, ma tutto ciò che il nome del grande italiano rappresentava in un’interpretazione ideologico-morale in grado di legare simbolicamente le idee e gli sforzi di esuli e oppositori. Per questa ragione Foscolo e Byron insistevano su una lettura politica della vita e dell’opera di Dante, esempio guida della lotta risorgimentale, contro le accuse mosse da Friedrich Schlegel alla sua eccessiva “durezza ghibellina”. Ma fu soprattutto Byron, esule anch’egli, sebbene per scelta, a sfruttare il tema dell’esilio dantesco in Childe Harold e in The Prophecy of Dante, ispirando, tra gli altri, il primo filosofo americano, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Per arrivare fino a Ezra Pound, volontario esule in Italia, che trovò in Dante congeniale ispirazione per il suo moderno poema epico, i Cantos, e che negli anni del suo soggiorno nella penisola preferì le città in cui il poeta fiorentino visse in esilio a quelle che l’avevano esiliato. E a Robert Lowell, che nel suo Exile’s Return prende in prestito le parole di Dante per cantare, da una prospettiva rovesciata, il dolente ritorno dell’americano alla sua antica patria d’origine, l’Europa postbellica.

During the 1930s and ’40s, Longfellow’s grandson and namesake, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, and J. Chesley Mathews, a professor of English, jointly combed Longfellow’s journals, correspondence, and other sources to uncover the evidence that other scholars have drawn upon since.

Travelling to Italy was of crucial importance for many Americans in the 19th century. When they came to Italy, however, they did not simply visit the country but read it through the eyes of earlier travellers and poets who had already contributes to the aesthetization of the Italian experience. The poet and anthologist Henry Wadsw orth Longfellow, the novelist and travel writer James Fenimore Cooper and the novelist Nathanel Hawthorne exemplify different ways of engaging both with the reality of travelling in Italy as well as its poetic images. Intertextual relations shape the perce ption of Italy by
American writers; and increasingly ambivalent attitudes emerge that lead to culture criticism and philosophic reflection.
https://www.revista-eon.eu/

A talk presented on 27 February 2021 via Zoom and Facebook Live on the occasion of the 214th anniversary of Longfellow’s birth, co-sponsored by the Friends of Mt. Auburn Cemetery and Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, with programming support provided in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

"As we celebrate the birth of America’s most famous poet, we also remember the legacy of Italy’s for the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s death. Christian Dupont, Secretary-Librarian of the Dante Society of America, will discuss Longfellow’s travels in Florence. Although disillusioned by his first visit to Florence in his early twenties, the city of Dante’s birth nevertheless held a lifelong fascination for Longfellow, who became the first American to translate the entire Divine Comedy. Florentine scenes, such as the Ponte Vecchio, inspired some of his own poetry and his identification with Michelangelo, Florence’s famous sculptor."

The term ‘rediscovery’ takes on special relevance in relation to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a poet who represented the romantic spirit in American literature as well as any writer. Longfellow rests in a twilight zone of historical reputation, too large and continuously present to forget, yet remembered only through the lens of literary stereotype. US society no longer names primary schools after Longfellow, but there are many schools named three generations ago that still bear the poet’s name.

Edited version of talk presented for a conference on Dante in the Nineteenth Century organized by Stephen Prickett. Also included here are the accompanying slides as well as an expanded version of the text that includes several sections that it was not possible to include in the presented version due to time limitations.

In terms of the dictionary the German word "Wanderer' and the English word 'wanderer' are rarely semantic equivalents. Even so Henry Wadsworth Longfellow translated the title of Goethe's most celebrated accomplishment in the domain of short lyrics 'Wandrers Nachtlied' as 'Wanderer's Night-Songs.' Goethe himself translated the word 'traveller' in Macpherson's OSSIAN as ''Wanderer' and inserted the relevant passage in DIE LEIDEN DES JUNGEN WERTHERS. Scholarship has shown that Goethe's early poetic dramatic monologue entitles 'Der Wanderer' reflected his readings in the works of Oliver Goldsmith that included the poetic travelogue entitled 'The Traveller.' William Taylor of Norwich translated 'Der Wandrer' into English rendering the title as ''The Wanderer' and his translation exerted a demonstrable strong influence on the poetry of William Wordsworth. Why did neither William Taylor nor Longfellow return to the word 'traveller' or choose any other word that would normally serve as the most apt equivalent of the German 'Wanderer' in English?

L'article pose la question du sauvagisme noir chez Emilio Salgari, une trajectoire imaginaire particulièrement sensible dans l'économie thématique et actancielle des récits que l'écrivain véronais a consacrés à l'Amérindien et/ou à l'Ouest des États-Unis. On y montre comment Salgari, romancier accueillant à tous les imaginaires du dérèglement violent, a été amené à rencontrer la tradition de l'Indian-hater, personnage récurrent du folklore et de la littérature des guerres indiennes et figure fondatrice d'un « gothique à l'américaine ». Dans l'esprit et le sillage de travaux déjà entamés sur l'imagination de l'Ouest américain chez Emilio Salgari 1 , on voudrait ici s'intéresser à un aspect prégnant de la configuration salgarienne du Peau-Rouge : l'enfièvrement sauvage ou le sauvagisme noir, émanation esthétique d'une haine rituelle couvée dans les vastitudes. Les thèmes de la fureur ou de la vengeance violente, on le sait, ne sont pas l'apanage des seuls Amérindiens, mais constituent plutôt une isotopie générale dans l'oeuvre du Véronais, applicable à un grand nombre de pirates, de vengeurs tragiques et d'indigènes révoltés de ses romans. Pour autant, prendre la peine d'étudier spécifiquement, sinon la

Charla dictada por mí en El Café con Notas do Ateneo Mar de Arousa, el día 4 de octubre, como parte de un grupo de apreciación musical, donde quise mostrar el uso inicial que hizo Walt Disney del cine sonoro, que había inaugurado en 1927, "El Cantante de Jazz" ¿Se deben hacer los dibujos animados antes que la música o visceversa? Enigma que se queda sin contestar; pero, podemos disfrutar de la belleza de estos pequeños cortometrajes.

Er(r)go… ,
… ekologia, ekokrytyka, ekofilozofia, ekologia polityczna, etyka ekologiczna, pamięć o Ziemi, siostry i bracia mniejsi i jeszcze mniejsi. A więc, nie całkiem kolejno: odchodzący w przeszłość voyeurystyczny, odcieleśniony podmiot, Ja nieświadome swego ciała, panujące percepcyjnie nad zewnętrzem – w zamian podmiot nieuchronnie „skażony” zewnętrznością natury i technologii. Anulowanie dychotomii natura-kultura. Katastrofy ekologiczne a panika moralna, reglamentowanie poczucia sprawstwa, dekonstrukcja dyskursów cywilizacji technicznej, ryzyko świadomości ekologicznej a narracje winy i odpowiedzialności. Błędy natury i doświadczenie dziwności, kiedy to natura zbacza ze ścieżki, kontrolowana transgresja, umysł upadły, szlifowanie intelektu, potworności i metodologiczny reżim, osobliwości jako narzędzie metody i Bacona odnowa filozofii naturalnej. Literaturoznawczy darwiniści i nowy pozytywizm, kultura zdeterminowana biologicznie, kultura pozbawiona autonomii przez zjawiska przyrodnicze. Literatura jako środek adaptacji i przetrwania, konstruktywizm kulturowy a psychologia ewolucyjna jako pomost między kulturą i naturą, Iliada jako dramat nagich małp, umysł czy mózg, ordynarny redukcjonizm i stek banałów. Ekopoezja i ekopoetyka, natura i przeznaczenie, wściekłość i wrzask cywilizacji, utożsamienie z naturą, eschatologia cywilizacyjnej zagłady. Indianin jako Człowiek przed upadkiem, ślady stóp wodza i prawa etyczne, wygnanie z raju i pojednanie w Mieście Braterskiej Miłości. Ziemia jako beneficjent postmodernizmu, zapominanie przyrody a stworzenie świata, antropocentryzm religii i równość wszelkiego stworzenia, cisza i Logos, poetycka fenomenologia, śpiew ptaka i stwórca ukryty w stworzeniu. Ja jako rzecz między innymi rzeczami, materia języka i materia świata, przeźroczyste oko i oko rentgenowskie. Polityka natury jako oksymoron. Zwierzę jako tworzywo sztuki i jako osoba, awangarda moralna artysty, komunikacja transgatunkowa, uśmiercanie obiektów.

Ból zwierząt.

Ten numer Er(r)go powstał pod troskliwą merytoryczną opieką Marzeny Kubisz oraz Anny Chromik, którym w imieniu redakcji składam koleżeńskie podziękowania.

Wojciech Kalaga


Er(r)go… ,
… ecology, ecocriticism, ecophilosophy, political ecology, ecological ethics, the memory of the Earth, non-human or rather more-than-human sisters and brothers. Thus, not in the exact order: fading now away into the past, the voyeuristic, disembodied subject, the Self unconscious of its body, but holding the exterior under its perceptual control; instead, a subject inevitably “contaminated” with the exteriority of nature and technology. The abolition of the nature-culture dichotomy. Ecological disasters and the moral panic, the rationing of blame, deconstruction of the technological, the hazards of ecological awareness and the narrations of guilt and responsibility. The freaks of nature and the experience of the curiosity when nature strays from its path; controlled transgression, the fallen mind, the sharpening of intellect, monstrosities and methodological regime, curiosities as methodological tools and Bacon’s rejuvenation of natural philosophy. Literary Darwinists and new positivism, biologically determined culture; culture stripped of its autonomy by natural phenomena. Literature as a means of adaptation and survival; cultural constructivism and evolutionary psychology as a bridge between culture and nature; The Iliad as a tragedy of naked apes; mind or brain, vulgar reductionism and a procession of banalities. Ecopoetry and ecopoetics, nature and destiny, the sound and the fury of civilization, identification with nature, the eschatology of civilizational calamity. The Indian as the Man before the Fall, the footprints of the chieftain and the laws of ethics, the exile from Paradise and the reconciliation in the City of Brotherly Love. The Earth as the beneficiary of postmodernism, the forgetting of nature and the creation of the world, the anthropocentrism of religion and the equality of all creation, silence and Logos, poetic phenomenology, the bird song and the creator concealed in creation. The Self as an entity among other entities, the substance of language and the substance of the world, the transparent eye and the eye of Roentgen. The politics of nature as an oxymoron. The animal as the substance of art and as person, the moral avant-garde of an artist, transspecies communication, the killing of objects.

The suffering of animals.

The present issue of Er(r)go was prepared under the caring supervision of Marzena Kubisz and Anna Chromik, to whom, on behalf of the Editorial board, I extend our expression of gratitude.

Wojciech Kalaga

Longfellow's Poems on Slavery received mixed criticism at his time. Whereas some demanded to see Longfellow as a congressman due to the efficacy of the poems, some were appalled with their ‘sickly sentimentality’. In the following pages, this bewildering variety in the reception of Poems on Slavery will be scrutinized with regard to the time of their publication and the stance of the critics. In addition, this study will look at the patterns of the poems’ reception and the respective rationale behind it. In doing so, Longfellow and his popularity; his affiliation with politics; the abolitionist movement, and other antislavery individuals will be touched upon along the trajectory.

Paul Revere has been immortalized in American history—from midnight rider, to artist and renowned silversmith, merely uttering the name tends to spark thoughts of the ideal “Revolutionary Patriot.” This is not to say he did not play a significant role in the colonies’ fight for independence from Britain, but it is important to note that in some cases, Revere’s “accomplishments” were not truly his own. In fact, the true stories, at least in my eyes, are a whole lot more interesting than the mythology.