| American poet and translator Date of Birth: 27.02.1807 Country: USA |
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and translator. He was born on February 27, 1807, in Portland, Maine, USA, to a family of lawyers. He passed away on March 24, 1882, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Longfellow graduated from college in Massachusetts and extensively traveled throughout Europe. He was a professor at Harvard University and was known for his friendship with Charles Dickens. Longfellow was considered the second most prominent English-language poet after Tennyson.
Longfellow's poems encompassed various genres, including epic poems, ballads, and lyrics. His poetry often had a didactic and sentimental tone, blending folk traditions with literary influences. He explored topics such as the heroic past of the United States, medieval legends, Christian themes, and criticized slavery and religious intolerance.
Some of his notable collections include "Seaside and Fireside" (1849) and "The Song of Hiawatha" (1855), which was based on indigenous American folklore. Longfellow also translated Dante's "Divine Comedy" into English (Volumes 1-3, 1867). He also wrote novels and essays.
Longfellow's name first appeared in Russia in 1835 when his travel notes, known as "Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea," were published in the United States. In the early 1860s, his poems were translated into Russian, although earlier attempts at translating his works into prose had been made. His most famous work, "The Song of Hiawatha," was translated by D.L. Mikhaylovsky in 1866 (partially) and 1868 (more fully), but it did not attract significant attention from Russian literary critics at that time. It was only when I.A. Bunin translated the poem in 1896 that it became a notable event in Russian literary life and was awarded the Pushkin Prize by the Academy of Sciences in 1903.