Sentimental Longfellow

Longfellow: Sentimental Mode

Doing any kind of research on the the internet for Longfellow will inevitably reveal that often his works were thought of as belonging to the realm of "sentimentalism". Merriam Webster's dictionary defines sentimental as:

1 a : marked or governed by feeling, sensibility, or emotional idealism b : resulting from feeling rather than reason or
thought
2 : having an excess of sentiment or sensibility

From what we have studied of the Romantics, it is evident that while a emotional response is quickly generated by their works, "thought" is prompted as well. However, perhaps "feeling rather than reason" may be taken to mean a response against Englightenment values.

Mary Louise Kate suggests, "The poetics of sentimentality is best revealed by attention to quotidian verse that celebrates not the sublime, the individual, and the possibility of dissent, but the domestic, the familial, and the possibility of
consent (3)." This is interesting because it denies the sublime, which has been brought up repeatedly in this group blog in relation to other American ROmantics. Also, it shifts away from individualism and refocuses on the domestic and familial.

The following quote looks at sentimentalism and how it fits in with American Romanticism:
"...the sentimental mode can be seen as the functional aspect of the American Romantic movement, the aspect that enables the widespread diffusion of Romantic sensibilities through a culture invested in imagining itself as a cohesive, integral whole. Imagine, for a moment, the exclusion of Wordsworth's Lucy poems from considerations of the British Romantic period because of their focus on the ordinary, the domestic, or on loss, and you have imagined the nature of the gap that currently exists in conventional studies of American Romanticism (3)".

I believe that among his works, the poems "Children" and "Maidenhood" are two which focus on the "ordinary" and the "domestic".

Maidenhood begins with the glimpse at a young maiden, and associates imagery of the brook and river meeting as the coincidental point at which womanhood and childhood meet.


Oh, thou child of many prayers!
Life hath quicksands, Life hath snares!
Care and age come unawares!

Like the swell of some sweet tune
Morning rises into noon,
May glides onward into June
[source]

This excerpt from the poem indicates the transition stage between childhood to womanhood and seems almost cautionary in tone. Although the speaker addresses a specific maiden, she is made to represent all maidens. The seasons change from spring, to winter, to spring again, completing a full cycle. Winter seems to bring with it life's hardships, while the return of spring is associated with the return of blooming flowers which conjures images of childbirth or the renewal of the family.

Here are excerpts from the poem "Children":


Ah! what would the world be to us
If the children were no more?
We should dread the desert behind us
Worse than the dark before.

What the leaves are to the forest,
With light and air for food,
Ere their sweet and tender juices
Have been hardened into wood,--

That to the world are children;
Through them it feels the glow
Of a brighter and sunnier climate
Than reaches the trunks below.

Come to me, O ye children!
And whisper in my ear
What the birds and the winds are singing
In your sunny atmosphere.

Ye are better than all the ballads
That ever were sung or said;
For ye are living poems,
And all the rest are dead.

Children are the basis and the connective tissue in a family unit, here they are exalted as the main key to happiness in a domestic sphere. They are strongly associated with nature, by providing spritual fulfillment they bring the speaker closer to the divine. Like Wordsworth's Frost at Midight, there is the presence of childhood power but instead of mourning the loss of childhood the speaker here is able to live through the children. What frightens the speaker is not the possibility of lost youth, but the loss of the children themselves. In this poem the celebration of children is not just a celebration of the self but a celebration of the family. The first line opens up the poem to indicate a broader aim other than just the self.
For the speaker, the glory and beauty of children does not just impact "me" or "I", but "the world be to us".


Works Cited:

Kate, Mary Louise. Sentimental Collaborations. Duke University Press, 1999.