Trends in Poetry of the 1850's by Krasimira Dimitrova

In the history of any century there is a transitional period, a certain moment in time when new ideas are being forged, changes are begining to develop and yet traces of the preceding century, the silhouette of the past is still present. This is the struggle between new and old, between progressive and transitional, which is so typical and symptomatic for the middle part of the century.

In this way the fifties of the 19th century can be regarded as a period of change not only in the domain of literature but in every cultural, political etc. aspect of the country.

Basically the poets represnting the periodswere struggling with form, style, they were introducing new ideas and which very important they were rebellious towards the influence of the " mother-country."

Yet some of them would stick to what had been inherited by their Colonial predecessors.

Most of the writing in early America was prose: sermons, spiritual journals, tracts, letters- in the 17th c.; in the 18th c. the religious focus was changed by a political one. The influence of the poetry of the mother-country proved itself to be extremely strong. It manifested itself mainly in Pope's and Swift's neoclassicism, Thomson's and Gray's pastoralism, the hymnology of Watts. During the Colonial Period the influence of England over every aspect of American cultural and political life was overwhelming, and most colonial writers modelled themselves after English writers.

Nineteenth century, however showed new vistas to American literature. The middle of the period is marked by the writings of the Transcendentalists, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and other minor names who mark the " real watershed" of American poetry.

The name of Emerson in particular is especially important for our "research" because it is to be closely connected with the major representative in the domain of 1850 American Poetry, Walt Whitman (1819-92). Not only his verse, his writing techniques were influenced by Emerson's " call for organic form" but also his striking, revolutionary attitude towards the self originates in Emerson's " call for an American seer-prophet."

Another "explosion" of the fifties of the 18th century was the brilliant, elegant, sharp-witted verse that came under the pen of Emily Dickinson.

Dickinson grew up in the Connecticut River valley as the daughter of a prominent Amherst lawyer and public servant. She was the only family member not to join the church. Instead she comitted herself to another vocation: " recording with unwavering attention the interior drama of consciousness."

The purpose of Dickinson's poetry was " identifying" and " defining" the Self." Her language was sparing of words, it made all of her utterance tend towards the epigrammatic".

Dlckinson was " a woman who created her own avenues of thought, refusing those offered by the church, society and existing language. She provides a striking example of an alternative sensibility,a dissenting imagination, a re-creating mind."

Major concerns of Dickinson's poetry were " truth", "vitality", "hope." She devoted poems to the mind and the heart, the conflict between the two. She contemplated on the nature of reality and that of the consciousness. The exploration of the existential self was the focus of her best poetry.

A minor representative of the period was Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (1821-73). He was yet another example of a man of letters influenced by the ideas of Emerson. What the American literary "treasure-house" inherited from him were five series of sonnets, " notable for experimenting with that tight form and for focusing feeling in a sharply observed image".

The sonnet was the form preferred by yet another Massachusetts recluse, Jones Very(1813-80). In his verse we will witness again the strong impact that Emerson had on his fellows contemporaries and his followers.

The Massachusetts poets, also known as the "Household Poets" did not leave deep traces in American poetry. They are not to be remembered for any important innovations and contributions to the genre as it comes to form and content. They preferred traditional forms and they focused more on moralizing sentiment, which used to be a feature to the 18th century poetry rather than to any of 19th century trends.

Among the noteworthiest and most conspicuous names of the period was that of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82). As a Harvard professor he popularized German literature, translated Dante. His favourite poetic device was choosing domestic legends and casting them in classical forms. His most famous narrative poems are Evangeline(1847); The Song Of Hiawatha(1855);The Courtship Of Miles Standish(1858).

"Evangeline" is a tragic, sentimental epic love poem written in unrhimed hexameter lines modelled on the Greek and Latin lines of Homer and Virgil.

As with " The Song of Hiwatha", "Evangeline" and "The Courtship of Miles Standish" are "poems rooted in a scolar's understanding of poetic history and form."

It is interesting to note Longfellow's interest in the writings of Dante.

Unquestionable Dantean echoes appear in fourteen poems-the sonnet on Dante, the six sonnets on translating the "Divina Commedia", and seven other poems. All of those were written after the publication of " Voices of the Night"(1839), which volume contains five pieces of translation from the "Purgatorio."

Greenleaf Whittier, influenced by Robert Burns, added to the pallette of 1850ies poetic themes his pastoral and nostalgic moods. He also versified his Quaker piety and his Abolitionist opposition to slavery.

In general, the writers of the early nineteenth century were interested in defining and asserting the "self"," being deeply affected by the revolutionary impulses of Romanticism, with its emphasis on openness to nature and to feeling, its idea of grand individual selves set free."