National poetry

“ And we may start at once by drawing attention to a characteristic which is common alike to the genuine national poetry of all peoples and in every period of past history, namely, that the historical and formal aspect of that poetry is entirely national, that is to say, it retains nothing incongruous to the people for whom it is composed. ”

“ The result is a volume which is not only equal in quality to that of the finest folk-song and poetry which any European nation possesses, and with a peculiar and original flavor of its own, revealing strong and original national characteristics, but, one is tempted to say, with more of the sublimated and naked essence of poetry than can be found in any work of modern civilized poets. ”

“ But from whatever cause the tendency of the native genius was created, its existence was obvious, and from the very earliest time, since song began to be preserved in written words, the quality and quantity of Scotch folk-poetry and folk-music have been remarkable. The native faculty and the inherited tendency were all present when the spark of an inspiration, involving all the elements of patriotism, daring adventure, personal devotion, despair, and lamentation, gave fire to the genius of national poetry. ”

“ It varies therefore, according to region, in mental temperament, tastes and emotions or modes of thought.
So because it is part of life and a living influence, literature has always consolidated the nation-forming power of language. Poetry, especially, is often an intensified reflection of national thought and life. In the words of Irving, “Poets always breathe the feeling of a nation.” The cultivation of literature serves national ends. ”

“ OUR national lyric just as our national epic carries you away by the power of its simplicity and the directness of its art. By small means it attains ends which even a most profound poetry seldom attains. ”

“ Poetry may be rooted in the soil, be an indigenous product, depict native customs or a provincial life; it may depict certain types of heroes, and glory in the country of its birth, and describe its richness, but all these features are incidentals. Human nature is much the same the world over. Feeling is universal, though it may be colored by national traits, though one nation may feel more keenly, or indulge a certain emotion more frequently than others. ”

“ As the two nations intermingled their habits and social customs, as the languages blended the strength of the one with the grace of the other for three centuries, the people were prepared in mind and heart, in thought and sentiment, to appreciate a national poet, and after nine centuries without a poet or a language out of which poetry could be woven, they found themselves suddenly possessed with a poet of highest order and a language melodious in its every accent. ”

“ He is, as all good poets must be, at once original and in the stream of national tradition, and in no respect more traditional than in his affection for and knowledge of the English landscape which has breathed its fragrance into so much of our great poetry in all ages. ”

“ This is not singular, for the folk-songs of almost every nation have this pervading element to a greater or less degree, characterized by shades of temperament and national and historical influences, and showing that the minds of primitive peoples were most deeply affected by the woes of life rather than its joys, and the disappointments rather than the successes of passion, which express themselves in poetry. ”

“ All the people of a state are interested in the founder of their state. All states that have harmonized into a common form of society, are interested in their respective founders. All men are interested in their ancestors. All men love to look back into the days that are past. In these circumstances traditional national poetry is reconstructed and brought like chaos into order and form. ”

“ Out of the intensity of national life have come those high inspirations that have given to us all [7] that is best of literature, poetry, painting, sculpture, music, and however deeply the artist has felt the influence of the world outside, his ultimate power lies in the spirit which has entered into him from his native state and the race of which he sprang. ”

“ The collection and study of folk-song is being pursued with a vigor and a scholarly diligence which promises to leave no corner of the world unransacked, and no people, however simple and savage, neglected, and very valuable treasures of poetry have been and are being collected, which speak to the heart with the native eloquence of unsophisticated feeling and thought, and which give a more accurate knowledge of national temperament and of the stages of the development of the human intellect than any material remains or any historical records. ”

“ The storm and stress of youth have been upon us, and the nation has not lacked its lyric cry.... One who underrates the significance [Pg 8] of our literature, prose or verse, as both the expression and the stimulant of national feeling, as of import in the past and to the future of America, is deficient in that critical insight which can judge even of its own day unwarped by personal taste or deference to public impression. ”

“ The long chronicles of the Cid, and the ballad narratives of the exploits of the heroes of the great struggles for the expulsion of the Moors, form in themselves a rich body of national poetry, but they are supplemented by an immense number of episodical ballads relating to events in national history, and lyrical poems and songs expressing the strong feeling and intellectual energy of the people. ”

“ Let the national mind be elevated in its character, and it will naturally become pure in its conceptions; let it be simple in its desires, and it will be beautiful in its ideas; let it be modest in feeling, and it will not be insolent in stone. ”

“ Hardly any country in Europe has a more valuable collection of popular poetry in the times of its military and intellectual greatness, or which more thoroughly illustrates its history or the characteristics of its national temperament. ”

“ It is the want of nationality, the absence of generous and expanded feelings, which are crushed by the vulgar inordinate desire after money, and the little love which our upper classes in general bear to the institutions of our country, which are the cause of our poets singing the praise of the lark and the nightingale, with whose melodious strains they are only acquainted through the medium of some English annual. What is there in our country to inspire poetic sentiments, if it be not the love of liberty and of nature, the great sources of all poetry? ”

“ Literature gives life to a nation, or rather it is the reflection of a nation's life and thought, in a mirror, which cheers, strengthens and ennobles those who look into it, and study what is there displayed. Literature must grow with our nation, and, when growing, it will aid the latter's progress in no small degree.
Pedantic critics may find fault with my modest productions, and perhaps justly, in regard to grammatical construction, and mechanical arrangement, but I shall be satisfied, if the public discern a vein of true poetry glittering here and there through what I have just written. ”

“ Still more important is a country's folk-lore, as showing the higher mental faculties of the race, in those legends and snatches of song, and fragments of popular poetry, which speak the popular feeling, and which not only contain its past history, but foreshadow the future literature of a country; in those proverbs, too, which tell the life and employment of a nation; and those superstitions which give us such an insight into its moral state. ”

“ It is the exterior expression of the national life, the recital,—from the lips of an individual animated and transported with the popular spirit—of the mysteries of his country's existence, and the desires, aspirations and convictions of his countrymen. The poet is the interpreter of the moral character of his country to other nations, and his works are the highest embodiment of the manners and habits of life in his country and his time. ”

“ The national literature reveals the myriad shades and hues of private and public feeling, and the more truthful this literary record, the more delicate and noble become the harmonies of local and national thought or emotion with the universal instincts and passions of mankind. ”

“ It is the province of literature, especially poetry, which deals with the sentiments common to humanity, to obliterate the geographical and political boundaries of nations, and make them one in feeling. The beautiful tribute of Englishmen to an American poet, giving him a place in their proudest mausoleum, by the side of their bravest, best, noblest, greatest, is a proof of friendship and esteem so genuine that it overleaps all the barriers of nationality. ”

“ Such poetry, then, mirrors the ideals of the group or the nation. It is shaped and colored by the religious beliefs of the people or by vague questionings and vaguer answers as to the nature and meaning of things. By the kind of persons it sets in action, by the deeds they do and the passions they feel, this poetry becomes the projection and expression of life at its best as the whole people conceives it to be. It is the nation's interpretation of itself. ”

“ But of all kinds of ambition—what from the refinement of the times, from different systems of criticism, and from the divisions of party—that which pursues poetical fame is the wildest.
Poetry makes a principal amusement among unpolished nations; but in a country verging to the extremes of refinement, Painting and Music come in for a share. ”

“ In passing an opinion on my literary venture, of course the youthful state of our country will be taken into consideration, for it is a state which necessarily tinges all of our productions, literary or otherwise, with a certain amount of crudity. Consequently, reasonable men will not expect that felicity of expression, and that ripeness and happiness of thought, which would be expected in the productions of an older country, although they may be aware that true poetry is not the result of education, or even the refinements of a nation long civilized. ”

“ It would be part of the philosopher's work to examine the art of a nation as well as its poetry.
You consider that art speaks a language and tells a tale which no written document can effect?—Yes, and far more precious; the whole soul of a nation generally goes with its art. It may be urged by an ambitious king to become a warrior nation. ”

“ One great objection to the introduction of a tortured and affected style into verse-writing is the sacrifice which has to be made of that dignity and sweetness, that suave elevation, which marks all successful masterpieces. Perhaps as difficult a quality to attain as any which the poetry of the future will be called upon to study is stateliness, what the French call ‘la vraie hauteur’. This elevation of style, this dignity, is foreign to democracies, and it is hard to sustain it in the rude air of modern life. ”

“ We can find nothing whose influence upon the mind is more inspiring and ennobling than nature, and nowhere is its meaning better interpreted than in poetry.
Beside having this power of awakening the soul to an appreciation of nature, poetry serves to quicken patriotism, to increase the mutual sympathies of man to man, and to teach wisdom. ”

“ But we may be sure that the movement is toward greater freedom of spirit and form, and a more enlightened recognition of the international scope, the cosmopolitanism, of the great art of poetry, of which the English language, proud as its record is, offers but a single phase. As part of such a movement, even the most extravagant experiments, the most radical innovations, are valuable, for the moment at least, as an assault against prejudice. And some of the radicals of to-day will be, no doubt, the masters of to-morrow—a phenomenon common in the history of the arts. ”

“ As has been said, the chief value of folk-song is in its genuineness, in the accuracy with which it reflects not only the emotions, but the habits and customs of the people, so that their peculiar life becomes visible before our eyes. There is an indefinable charm, not only in the impression of reality, but in the very rudeness and imperfection of the speech, which gives an effect beyond literary art, when deep emotion or domestic pathos are seen through it. ”

“ In statesmen, or those who have excelled in political writing, the ambition to write history, the desire to illustrate and record national events, is not only a natural, but an auspicious feeling; and so it is in educated poets in whom the sentiment of patriotism or the narrative art gives scope and glow to such an enterprise. ”

“ Nations, illustrious in peace and war, heroic in character and action, founders of stable and flourishing republics and empires, have set on the front of their renown the fame of having produced this or that other glorious poem. What wonder, since the poet, in forms given by imagination, embodies the profoundest, the loftiest, the tenderest, the innermost acts and movements of that soul which lives in every human bosom? What wonder if each of us loves the poet, when in his work, as in a celestial mirror, each of us beholds himself naturally and truly pictured, and yet ennobled? ”

“ Songs in praise of heroes, real or mythical, always exist among rude peoples—the sagas which nations unwillingly let die. They are the repository of national history, the inspiration of an aspiring and progressive race, the embodiment of its hopes, the treasury of its traditions. ”