Tag: poetry

A Selection of Verse: Bewitched and Belabored

by Riane Bayne, MFA student in the Department of English and RBSC student worker

For this year’s Halloween post, a trio of 19th century works has been conjured, all haunting and haggard in their settings.

We begin our venture with a quintessentially Gothic poet, Edgar Allan Poe, and his 1839 poem, “The Haunted Palace,” plucked from the second volume of The works of the late Edgar Allan Poe: with notices of his life and genius (1850). Initially written six years prior to his more famous supernatural jaunt, “The Raven” (1845), Poe’s palace utilizes the image of splendor lost to time and decay to depict the effects of a discordant mind:

“But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
    Assailed the monarch’s high estate.
(Ah, let us mourn !—for never morrow
    Shall dawn upon him desolate !)
And round about his home the glory
    that blushed and bloomed,
Is but a dim-remembered story
    Of the old time entombed.” (29-30)

Sailing in from the south wind is The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and initially published in The Lyrical Ballads (1798), this nautical-gothic poem was featured in the genre-defining work compiled in collaboration with fellow Romantic poet, William Wordsworth. 

The poem opens with the mariner telling the story of this fateful journey through the waters of the Antarctic told to a young man before his wedding.

Initially, all things seemed to be at ease with only an albatross flying overhead for countless days, its presence carrying a particular sign of good luck for their voyage. This peace is eventually extinguished when the then disillusioned mariner needlessly kills the bird, acting as the catalyst for a ghostly presence to descend upon the ship.

In the 1889 edition pictured above, Gustave Doré’s accompanying illustrations present the two spectres, Death and “The Nightmare LIFE-IN-DEATH” playing for the lives of the entire crew, and with the roll of the dice, the Nightmare announces:

“The game is done! I’ve won, I’ve won!”
   Quoth she, and whistles thrice.” (197-198)

And so, the crew is sentenced to death with the ancient mariner left to venture home alone; taking this time to soak in the beauty of the pulsing sea after the curse is seemingly lifted.

Still haunted by this event, the mariner continues to recount the day:

“And till my ghastly tale is told,
  This heart within me burns.
  I pass, like night, from land to land;
  I have strange power of speech;
  That moment that his face I see,
  I know the man that must hear me:
  To him my tale I teach.” (584 – 590)

And like the mariner by the end of his rhyme, Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market (1862) emerges from the wild wood with a fanciful tale of temptation. Depicting a pair of sisters, Laura and Lizzie, wrestling with the allure and devastating effects of supernatural fruits touted by troops of Goblin men bustling about the glen. Pictured here with the 1893 edition, illustrated by Laurence Housmen, the Goblins curl and twist around one another, intermeshed and nearly hidden within the surrounding pastoral scene. 

“Morning and evening
  Maids heard the goblins cry:
  ‘Come buy our orchard fruits,
  Come buy, come buy…’ ” (1)

To close with an echo of the words of Rossetti’s Goblin men, come by, come by…to our haunted archive!

Happy Halloween to you and yours
from all of us in Notre Dame’s Special Collections!

Halloween 2025: A Closer Look at the Gorey-est of Vampires
Halloween 2024: An Irish Story Produces a Halloween Icon
Halloween 2023: Demon Horses and How to Tame Them
Halloween 2022: A Halloween Tale: “John Reardon and the Sister Ghosts”
Halloween 2021: A Welsh Witch in the Woods
Halloween 2020: Headless Horsemen in American and Irish Legend
Halloween 2019: A Halloween trip to Mexico
Halloween 2018: A story for Halloween: “Johnson and Emily; or, The Faithful Ghost“
Halloween 2017: A spooky story for Halloween: The Goblin Spider
Halloween 2016: Ghosts in the Stacks

“America, ungrateful land!” A Black Veteran and Poet Rebukes American Racism

by Rachel Bohlmann, American History Librarian and Curator

To commemorate Memorial Day, RBSC honors the African American poet Charles Frederick White, who, over a century ago, wrote a sharply-worded poem that condemned racial discrimination against African American veterans.

Charles Frederick White (1876-1955) was a combat veteran of the Spanish-American War. He published his most famous poem, “Plea of the Negro Soldier,” in 1907 in the Springfield (MA) Republican; it appeared the next year in his only published collection of poems, Plea of the Negro Soldier and a Hundred Other Poems.

In “Plea of the Negro Soldier,” White expresses outrage at his and other African American veterans’ treatment after honorably serving their country. He places their reception into a larger historical context of white racism and violence, and seeks justice for Black veterans and all African Americans. 

America, ungrateful land!
Whose treacherous soil my blood has dyed,
 . . . 
who has denied
Me right to live, to vote, to learn,
Whose laws protect me not from wrong,
Who will permit me not to earn
An honest living, who in song
Doth boast a land of freedom, but
Whose flag waves o’er a land of crime, 

Born in Tennessee to parents who had been enslaved, White’s earliest interests focused on attaining an education and discovering African American history. After working a series of low-paid jobs, he enlisted in the army. His hopes for economic and social mobility were dashed, however, when he realized that white Americans held his service in no regard. 

But I, alas! have given all
In answer to thy urgent call,
Exposed my life to sword and ball,
And now, as o’er me creeps the fall
Of life, I find no recompense
But base discharge, with no defense

Determined to achieve an education, White entered Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire where he could maintain himself by combining work and study. Although his tenure there was cut short by southern students who insisted on White’s expulsion, he found a more satisfactory academic experience at Williston Seminary in western Massachusetts, from which White graduated in 1909. 

While at Williston White published Plea of the Negro Solider at his own expense, even typesetting the pages on the press of the local Easthampton (MA) Enterprise newspaper. 

White eventually settled in Philadelphia, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and had a long career in real estate and politics.  

Although White published no more serious poetry after Plea of the Negro Soldier, his work is an important expression of American ideals denied and a demand for justice. 

Republic cannot long endure
When autocrat can feel secure
To heap injustice on the poor

Source:

Roger J. Bresnahan, “Charles Fred White: A Forgotten Black Poet,” Negro History Bulletin, Vol. 40, no. 1 (1977): 659-661.

Seamus Heaney’s translation of Henryson’s “The Testament of Cresseid”

by Anne Elise Crafton, Ph.D. Candidate, Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute

In addition to his original works, the Irish poet Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) is also known for his adaptations of ancient and medieval literature. The most famous of these is his translation of the Old English epic Beowulf, but he also adapted a lesser-known medieval poem, The Testament of Cresseid.

The Testament of Cresseid was composed by the 15th-century Scottish poet, Sir Robert Henryson. He was a part of a group of writers dubbed “The Scottish Chaucerians,” for their love of Geoffrey Chaucer (d. 1400), the author of The Canterbury Tales, a poem in Middle English. The Testament of Cresseid was Henryson’s direct response to Chaucer; in fact, it was meant to be a sequel to Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, one of the first poems to use rhyme. This epic poem tells of the tragic love story of two Trojan youths during the Trojan War. Despite their love, Criseyde is given to the Greeks as a prisoner of war and takes another lover, the Greek warrior Diomedes. While Chaucer’s account ends here, Henryson adds a cruel fate for Criseyde: Diomedes abandons the beautiful Cresseid. The Trojan maiden cries out to the goddess of love, Venus, about her poor luck in love, but the goddess vengefully strikes her with leprosy and blindness. Cresseid goes to live among the beggars by the city gate, where the noble Troilus passes by; however, due to her blindness she cannot see him, and due to her deformity, he does not recognize her. Eventually when they do recognize each other, Cresseid regrets her treatment of Troilus and gives a mournful soliloquy then dies shortly afterwards.

Henryson’s poem was written in Middle Scots. This language, confusingly known as Inglis (English), is not the same as Middle English. Middle Scots was informed heavily by Irisch (i.e., Scots Gaelic not Irish) and maintains unique spellings such as substituting quh- for wh-, and ane for one, an, or a. For example:

Henryson’s Middle Scots (15th c.)

Ane doolie sessoun to ane cairfull dyte Suld correspond and be equivalent: Richt sa it was quhen I began to wryte This tragedie…

Heaney’s Modern English (21st c.)

A gloomy time, a poem full of hurt Should correspond and be equivalent. Just so it was when I began my work On this retelling…

Seamus Heaney cites three motives for his translation which distinguish it from others: the “advocacy for the work in question,” a “refreshment from a different speech and culture,” and “the pleasure of writing by proxy.” However, Heaney also admits in the preface that when he went to translate the poem, despite these grandiose motives, he found himself already stumped by the opening scenes. Both the complexity of Middle Scots and the phonetic power of Henryson’s verse were difficult to render into modern English, especially if Heaney wanted to retain the essence and feel of the original. However, the Middle Scots reminded Heaney of the Ulster-dialect of his family and as he continued his translation, he found himself “entirely at home” with Henryson’s poetry.

The Hesburgh Library owns the 2004 de luxe edition of The Testament of Cresseid signed by Heaney and illustrator Hugh O’Donoghue. Hugh O’Donoghue is an English artist known for exploring the universality of the human experience – a theme fitting for a poem so interested in love, loss, and fate. The deluxe edition does not include the Middle Scots text next to Heaney’s translation, unlike other editions. This situates Heaney as the sole access to the medieval past.

O’Donoghue’s paintings give the harsh poem an unexpectedly ethereal quality. The reader can revel in Cresseid’s legendary beauty, brought to life by O’Donoghue, and shudder at what she becomes in the end. By pairing O’Donoghue’s compelling art with Heaney’s translation, the edition fundamentally changes the experience of the poem. Altogether, the project expands beyond translation and continues a cycle of storytelling that transcends multiple languages, nationalities, and poetic traditions: Chaucer’s 14th-century English imagination of a mythic Mediterranean past, Henryson’s 15th-century Scottish response, and a 21st-century exploration of art, poetry, and memory by an Irish poet and English artist.

Happy Holidays from Special Collections!

Rare Books and Special Collections is open through this Wednesday (December 22, 2021). After that, we will be closed for the Christmas and New Year’s Break (December 23, 2021 through January 4, 2022). Special Collections will reopen on Tuesday, January 5, 2022.

This is the last blog post for 2021.
Happy holidays to you and yours from
Notre Dame’s Rare Books and Special Collections!

Cover
Title page
Beginning of text
Colophon

The Night Before Christmas by Clement C. Moore, with illustrations by Philip Hagreen
(London: Selwyn & Blount, 1923).
Special Collections, Rare Books Small PS 2429 .M5 N5 1923

Color Our Collections: End of the School Year Stress-Relief

Today’s coloring sheet features an illustration by Florence Harrison from Poems by Christina Rossetti (London, Glasgow & Bombay: Blackie and Son, Ltd., 1910). The image comes at the end of the poem ‘Summer’ — something most of us are looking forward to at this point!

If you’d like to see more of this item, make an appointment to visit us and ask to see the book in person — the call number is on the coloring page.

Good luck with the end of the semester, everyone!

Dante and Women Authors in Sixteenth Century Italy

by Tracy Bergstrom, Curator, Zahm Dante and Early Italian Imprints Collection

Notre Dame’s Rare Books and Special Collections holds one of the largest collections relating to the works of Dante Alighieri in print and, as such, supports research into the utilization of the Divina commedia at various times for a variety of political purposes. One of the rarities of our collection is the small, ephemeral pamphlet printed in 1575 titled Declamatione delle gentildonne di Cesena intorno alle pompe (Declamation of the Gentlewomen of the City of Cesena against Sumptuary Fines…). Eponymously written by a group of ‘Gentildonne’ to push back against recent strict sumptuary laws, the authors utilize quotations from Dante, Petrarch and a panoply of classical authors to argue for the necessity of ornamental clothing as it provides a means of communicating women’s identity.

Title page, Declamatione delle gentildonne di Cesena intorno alle pompe… , printed in Bologna by Alessandro Benacci in 1575.

Mid-16th century Italy saw a flourishing of publications authored by women. The collection of lyric poetry authored by the courtesan Tullia d’Aragona, first printed in Venice in 1547, is a fine example of this phenomenon. The volume includes poems by d’Aragona herself as well as sonnets addressed to her by her male contemporaries. 

Title page, Rime della signora Tullia di Aragona; et di diversi a lei, printed in Venice by Gabriel Giolito in 1547.

The period between 1560-1580, however, marks a time of decline in works published by women in Italy. As vernacular poetry declined in popularity and more academic discourse gained readership, this shift was not particularly conducive to women’s contributions. Thus, if the Declamatione delle gentildonne… was authored by women, as the title and content suggest, it is a rare example of a female polemical prose writing. As such, it is one of many examples within Special Collections’ extraordinary collection of Dante-related holdings with significant research potential for students and scholars alike. 

“Revenge! Remember Limerick” — The Fighting Irish at Fontenoy

by Aedín Ní Bhróithe Clements, Irish Studies Librarian

Fontenoy. “Revenge! Remember Limerick. – Dash down the Sassenagh.” Colored lithograph. J. D. Reigh. Dublin: Printed by Tomsohn & Wogan. Supplement to the Christmas number of the Shamrock, 1886.

The above illustration depicts the oft-described reversal in the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745, from the French Army’s almost inevitable defeat to a decisive win. At a point when the battle between the French and the Allied coalition of English, French and Hanoverian troops was almost over for the French, a line of Irish regiments advanced.

Accounts of the battle claim that the Irish Colonel Lally shouted “Cuimhnidh ar Luimneach agus ar feall na Sasanach!” And that this cry was repeated down the ranks. “Remember Limerick and the treachery of the English” is a reference to the Treaty of Limerick of 1691, broken by the English not long after it was made.

This print, new to our collection, is by Irish artist and cartoonist John Dooley Reigh (1851-1914) who contributed illustrations to periodicals such asThe United Irishman, Shamrock, Zoz, and others. As we add this print to our collection, we note that it is not our only illustration celebrating that battle, and indeed, were we to explore our collections, we would find many accounts and references to the Irish Brigade at the Battle of Fontenoy.

We select two examples to display here, an American print and a broadside ballad.

The print shown below, also from the 1880s, was produced by Kurz and Allison of Chicago. In this illustration the military leaders are less prominent than the fighting men, and the tattered green flag with the Irish harp emblem is prominent.

Battle of Fontenoy. Chicago: Kurz and Allison, circa 1886.

Elsewhere, we have an example of the Battle of Fontenoy as recounted in nineteenth-century Ireland in our the Broadside Ballads collection. “Fontenoy” by Thomas Davis introduces the Irishmen’s advance with a summary of the wrongs inflicted by the English:

… How fierce the look these exiles wear, who’re wont to be so gay,
The treasured wrongs of fifty years are in their hearts to-day—
The treaty broken, ere the ink wherewith ’twas writ could dry,
Their plundered homes, their ruined shrines, their women’s parting cry,
Their priesthood hunted down like wolves, their country overthrown—
Each looks as if revenge for all were staked on him alone
On Fontenoy, on Fontenoy, nor ever yet elsewhere,
Rushed on to fight a nobler band than these proud exiles were. …

“Fontenoy”. Irish Broadside Ballads collection, BPP 1001-110

African American History Month

We join The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to celebrate African American History Month.

Paul Laurence Dunbar’s New Literary Tradition Packaged to Sell

by Rachel Bohlmann, American History Librarian and Curator

Poet and writer Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) was interested in creating an African American literary tradition based on oral sources. In both works of poetry shown here, Candle Lightin’ Time and Li’l’ Gal, Dunbar used dialect, a choice he made for some of his work. Unlike most contemporary white writers, who used dialect in openly racist ways, Dunbar appropriated dialect as a way to represent fully African American expression.

Beginning of “The Plantation Child’s Lullaby” from Li’l’ Gal (1904).

The books’ appearance—the detailed and beautiful bindings, illustrations, and page designs—point to Dunbar’s publisher’s confidence in their profitability. Dodd & Mead of New York produced a string of the writer’s works, a partnership that helped propel Dunbar’s popularity. Margaret Armstrong (1867-1944), one of the most successful book designers working in this period, created the bindings. Her art nouveau style featured plant motifs and gold-stamping.

The photographs for Candle Lightin’ Time were taken by the mostly white members of the Hampton Institute Camera Club, an amateur group of photographers affiliated with the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (now Hampton University) in Virginia. The illustrations in Li’l’ Gal were taken by Leigh Richmond Minor (1864-1935), an art teacher at the institute and a trained photographer. Although the pictures were staged, their subjects are presented fully as individuals, another way in which Dunbar’s books overturned contemporary, racist depictions of African Americans.

First illustration of “Dinah Kneading Dough” from Candle Lightin’ Time (1901).
First illustration of “A Negro Love Song” from Li’l’ Gal (1904).

Born in Dayton, Ohio in 1872 to parents who were formerly enslaved, Dunbar showed early literary talent. He edited his high school newspaper, served as president of the school’s Philomathean Literary Society, and edited a newspaper for Dayton’s African American community for a short time. Financial hardship kept him from pursuing a college education and he found work as an elevator operator, although he continued to write.

With the support of local backers, he published Oak and Ivy in 1893, a collection of poems in both standard English and dialect. By 1895 his work was praised and championed by Frederick Douglass and by literary critic William Dean Howells. Although Howells and other white critics focused heavily on Dunbar’s use of dialect (much to the writer’s dismay) and placed his work in a tradition of white writing about plantation slavery, the breadth and variety of Dunbar’s literary work transcended the racist limitations of most dialect writing of the time.

In addition to poetry, Dunbar wrote novels, short stories, and at least one play. He gained national and international recognition at the turn of the twentieth century, one of the first African American writers to do so. He was an important literary precursor for writers of the Harlem Renaissance, two decades later.

In Rare Books and Special Collections, Dunbar’s works are part of growing collection of African American literature and historical works published before 1920 and the start of the Harlem Renaissance. Other writers include Benjamin Brawley, Maud Cuney Hare, Helen S. Woodruff, Walter E. Todd, Leila Amos Pendleton, and Oscar Micheaux.

Poetry, Art, and Plastic: The Imprints of Ediciones Arroyo

by Erika Hosselkus, Curator, Latin American Collections

Over the past two years, Rare Books and Special Collections has acquired a series of unique chapbooks produced by Ediciones Arroyo, a small and specialized press located in the town of Arroyo Leyes, Argentina. An exciting addition to our collections, each “book” is small and lightweight, bound in black recycled plastic, and features the work of a contemporary poet from Argentina or elsewhere in South America. 

Ediciones Arroyo is the brainchild of Alejandra Bosch, founder and owner of the press and a writer in her own right. A proponent of a thriving literary community and an advocate for recycling, Alejandra pursues these dual interests in the creation of her books. Each one includes between two and ten poems by a single poet. A short biography and whimsical illustrations, often by Julián Bosch, Alejandra’s son and collaborator, accompany the text. 

The book covers are aesthetically bold, each bearing the name of its poet in bright, colorful letters. The black plastic that once packaged milk – something that might otherwise be considered garbage – is cleaned, cut and sewn by Bosch, to create artistic editions of a roughly uniform size.  

Inside, readers find new, previously unpublished pieces, often by young, up-and-coming poets of diverse backgrounds. These imprints, coupled with literary festivals that Alejandra sponsors and organizes, offer support and a creative space for writers. 

RBSC’s collection of Ediciones Arroyo imprints currently includes more than 100 editions and is growing. We are proud to be the first North American institution to collect Ediciones Arroyo and to serve as a repository for the poetry of a dynamic group of South American writers. 

I recently asked Alejandra what it means to her to see her work, and the work of so many contemporary Argentine poets, here at Notre Dame. She expressed pride and also enthusiasm for the idea that young people here in the U.S., linguistically and culturally distant from Argentina, are now able to read these poems as they learn Spanish. “For me as a writer, it is fabulous, also, that these poets are in the university, when we trained by reading and translating the great North American poets. It is beautiful,” she said. Julián, a tattoo artist and poet as well as illustrator for Ediciones Arroyo, is also motivated by the idea that others are reading the poetry that he and others have worked so hard to create and disseminate. This contact with Notre Dame, “makes me want to forge ahead, beyond this pandemic year and all of the negative,” he states.   

Ediciones Arroyo began in 2016, with 9 poets. Today, the press’s catalog includes more than 80 poets, “and they’ve all traveled to Indiana!,” Alejandra notes. Alejandra and Julián have recently begun working on bilingual editions with a number of Brazilian authors. They both aspire to bring their work, and the contemporary poetry of South America, to other university libraries in the near future. 

Recent Acquisitions: Rare Life of a 16th-Century Female Poet

by Alan Krieger, Theology and Philosophy Librarian

Hesburgh Libraries has just acquired a rare and interesting biographical first edition, Luis Munoz’s Vida y virtudes de la venerable virgen dona Luisa de Carvaial y Mendoca (Madrid, 1632). Mendoza (1566-1614), a Spaniard, is an unusual figure in the history of the English Recusant period: a Jesuit-educated female who travelled to England in 1605 to preach and teach with the aim of bringing Anglicans back to the Catholic Church. She also became known for her charitable works in London, taking care of the poor and helping those engaged in prostitution. Mendoza was also an accomplished religious poet, in the mystical tradition of great Spanish literary figures such as St. John of the Cross; the last section of the book includes her spiritual poetry.

We have located only two other North American library holdings of this edition.