亨利·沃兹沃思·朗费罗

亨利·沃兹沃思·朗费罗（英语：Henry Wadsworth Longfellow，1807年2月27日—1882年3月24日），美国诗人、翻译家。炉边诗人之一。

生平

亨利的父亲斯蒂芬·朗费罗是个律师，母亲吉尔帕尤爱诵读诗歌。他们养育了四男四女，亨利排行第二，其性格秉承父母的气质。

在家庭气氛熏陶下，亨利自小喜爱诗歌和语言，后来入缅因州鲍登学院攻读语言和文学（纳撒尼尔·霍桑是其同班同学），并两度赴欧学习法、意、德、丹麦、瑞典和荷兰等语言，28岁即任哈佛大学现代语言教授。

世界上第一首译为中文的英语诗是朗费罗的《人生颂》。时任大清国总理各国事务衙门全权大臣的董恂曾将《人生颂》书于扇面，并转交给远在波士顿的朗费罗，此扇现存于朗费罗故居。

代表作

《夜吟》

《奴役篇》

《伊凡吉林》

《海华沙之歌》

《基督》

《路畔旅舍故事》

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include the poems "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was the first American to completely translate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and was one of the fireside poets from New England.

Longfellow was born in Portland, District of Maine, Massachusetts (now Portland, Maine). He graduated from Bowdoin College and became a professor there and, later, at Harvard College after studying in Europe. His first major poetry collections were Voices of the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems (1841). He retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on his writing, and he lived the remainder of his life in the Revolutionary War headquarters of George Washington in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Longfellow's first wife, Mary Potter, died in 1835 after a miscarriage. His second wife, Frances Appleton, died in 1861 after sustaining burns when her dress caught fire. After her death, he had difficulty writing poetry for a time and focused on translating works from foreign languages. Longfellow died in 1882.

Longfellow wrote many lyric poems known for their musicality and often presenting stories of mythology and legend. He became the most popular American poet of his day and had success overseas. After his death, his poetry declined in popularity and came to be criticized as too sentimental and too derivative of European poetic styles.

Life and work

Early life and education

Longfellow was born on February 27, 1807, to Stephen Longfellow and Zilpah (Wadsworth) Longfellow in Portland, Maine, then a district of Massachusetts. Although he was born at the now-demolished 159–161 Fore Street, he grew up in what is now known as the Wadsworth-Longfellow House on Congress Street. His father was a lawyer, and his maternal grandfather was Peleg Wadsworth, a general in the American Revolutionary War and a Member of Congress. His mother was descended from Richard Warren, a passenger on the Mayflower. He was named after his mother's brother Henry Wadsworth, a Navy lieutenant who had died three years earlier at the Battle of Tripoli. He was the second of eight children.

Longfellow was descended from English colonists who settled in New England in the early 1600s. They included Mayflower Pilgrims Richard Warren, William Brewster, and John and Priscilla Alden through their daughter Elizabeth Pabodie, the first child born in Plymouth Colony.

Longfellow attended a dame school at the age of three and was enrolled by age six at the private Portland Academy. In his years there, he earned a reputation as being very studious and became fluent in Latin. His mother encouraged his enthusiasm for reading and learning, introducing him to Robinson Crusoe and Don Quixote. He published his first poem at age 13 in the Portland Gazette on November 17, 1820, a patriotic and historical four-stanza poem called "The Battle of Lovell's Pond". He studied at the Portland Academy until age 14. He spent much of his summers as a child at his grandfather Peleg's farm in Hiram, Maine.

In the fall of 1822, 15-year-old Longfellow enrolled at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, along with his brother Stephen. His grandfather was a founder of the college and his father was a trustee. There Longfellow met Nathaniel Hawthorne who became his lifelong friend. He boarded with a clergyman for a time before rooming on the third floor in 1823 of what is now known as Winthrop Hall. He joined the Peucinian Society, a group of students with Federalist leanings. In his senior year, Longfellow wrote to his father about his aspirations:

I will not disguise it in the least...the fact is, I most eagerly aspire after future eminence in literature, my whole soul burns most ardently after it, and every earthly thought centres in it...I am almost confident in believing, that if I can ever rise in the world it must be by the exercise of my talents in the wide field of literature.