Sidney Lanier | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Sidney Clopton Lanier (1842-02-03)February 3, 1842 Macon, Georgia, U.S. |
| Died | September 7, 1881(1881-09-07) (aged 39) Lynn, North Carolina, U.S. |
| Resting place | Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, Maryland |
| Occupation |
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| Period | 1867–1881 |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 3 |
| Parent | Robert S. Lanier (father) |
| Military career | |
| Allegiance |  Confederate States |
| Branch | Confederate Signal Corps |
| Rank | Private |
| Conflicts | American Civil War |
Sidney Clopton Lanier[1] (February 3, 1842 – September 7, 1881) was an American musician, poet and author. He served in theConfederate States Army as a private,[2] worked on a blockade-running ship for which he was imprisoned (resulting in his catchingtuberculosis), taught, worked at a hotel where he gave musical performances, was a churchorganist, and worked as a lawyer. As a poet he sometimes useddialects. Many of his poems are written in heightened, but often archaic,American English. He became a flautist and sold poems to publications. He eventually became a professor of literature atJohns Hopkins University inBaltimore, and is known for his adaptation of musical meter to poetry. Many schools, other structures and two lakes are named for him, and he became hailed in the South as the "poet of the Confederacy".[3] A 1972 US postage stamp honored him as an "American poet".
Sidney Clopton Lanier was born February 3, 1842, inMacon,Georgia,[4] to parentsRobert Sampson Lanier and Mary Jane Anderson. On his father's side he was descended of FrenchHuguenots.[5] His middle name, "Clopton", was in honor ofDavid Clopton, a former classmate of his father's.[6] He began playing the flute at an early age, and his love of that musical instrument continued throughout his life. He attendedOglethorpe University, which at the time was nearMilledgeville, Georgia, and he was a member of theSigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. He graduated first in his class shortly before the outbreak of theAmerican Civil War.[7] He returned to Oglethorpe the next year, as a tutor, and befriended Milton Harlow Northrup, a New York native, who was a conductor at the school.[8]
During the war, he served in theConfederate Signal Corps, primarily in thetidewater region ofVirginia. Later, he and his brother Clifford served as pilots aboard Englishblockade runners,[9] and Lanier's ship, theLucy, was captured by theUSSSantiago de Cuba, on November 3, 1864.[10] He was incarcerated in amilitary prison atPoint Lookout inMaryland, where he contractedtuberculosis[11] (generally known as "consumption" at the time).[12] He suffered greatly from this disease, then incurable and usually fatal, for the rest of his life.
Shortly after the war, he taught school briefly,[11] then moved toMontgomery, Alabama, where he worked as a night clerk at theExchange Hotel (a hotel partly owned by his grandfather; his brother Clifford also worked there and became a part owner after the war[13]), and also performed as a musician. He was the regular organist at the First Presbyterian Church in nearbyPrattville. He wrote his only novel,Tiger Lilies (1867), while in Alabama.[14]
This novel was partly autobiographical, describing a stay in 1860 at his grandfather'sMontvale Springs resort hotel nearKnoxville, Tennessee.[15] In 1867, he moved toPrattville, at that time a small town just north ofMontgomery, where he taught at a small school. He married Mary Day of Macon in 1867[11] and moved back to his hometown, where he began working in his father's law office.
After passing the Georgia bar, Lanier practiced as a lawyer for several years.[11] During this period he wrote a number of lesser poems, using the "cracker" and "negro" dialects of his day, about poor white and black farmers in theReconstruction South. He traveled extensively through southern and eastern portions of the United States in search of a cure for his tuberculosis.
While on one such journey inTexas, he rediscovered his native and untutored talent for the flute and decided to travel to the northeast in hopes of finding employment as a musician in an orchestra. Unable to find work in New York City,Philadelphia, orBoston, he signed on to play flute for the Peabody Orchestra inBaltimore, Maryland,[11] shortly after its organization. He taught himselfmusical notation and quickly rose to the position of first flautist. He was famous in his day for his performances of a personal composition for the flute called "Black Birds", which mimics the song of that species.
In an effort to support Mary and their three sons, he also wrote poetry for magazines. His most famous poems were "Corn" (1875), "The Symphony" (1875), "Centennial Meditation" (1876), "The Song of the Chattahoochee" (1877),[11] "The Marshes of Glynn", (1878)[11] "A Sunrise Song" (1881), and "Evening Song" (1884).[16] These poems are generally considered his greatest works, and have been set to music by many composers, includingCharles Tomlinson Griffes andGrace W. Root.[16] "The Marshes of Glynn" and "A Sunrise Song" are part of an unfinished set of lyrical nature poems known as the "Hymns of the Marshes", which describe the vast, opensalt marshes ofGlynn County on the coast of Georgia. (Thelongest bridge in Georgia is in Glynn County and is named for Lanier.)
Later in his short 39-year life, he became a student, lecturer, and, finally, a faculty member at theJohns Hopkins University in Baltimore, specializing in the works of the English novelists,[11]Shakespeare, theElizabethansonneteers,Chaucer, and theOld English poets. He published a book entitledThe Science of English Verse (1880) in which he developed a novel theory exploring the connections between musical notation and meter in poetry. In 1883, a posthumous collection of lectures, entitledThe English Novel and Its Principle of Development was published.
Lanier finally succumbed to complications caused by his tuberculosis[11] on September 7, 1881, while convalescing with his family nearLynn, North Carolina. He was 39. He is buried inGreen Mount Cemetery in Baltimore.
A poet who connected musical notation with poetic meter, he was described by C.K. Williams as "a deft metrical technician".[17] He developed a unique style of poetry written inlogaoedic dactyls, which was heavily influenced by the works of Anglo-Saxon poets. He wrote several of his greatest poems in this meter, including "Revenge of Hamish" (1878), "The Marshes of Glynn" and "Sunrise". In Lanier's hands, the logaoedic dactylic meter led to a free-form, almost prose-like style of poetry that was greatly admired byHenry Wadsworth Longfellow,Bayard Taylor,Charlotte Cushman, and other poets and critics of the day. The "sprung verse" metrical system developed byGerard Manley Hopkins at about the same time superficially resembles Lanier's practice but shows no influence (and there is no evidence that they knew each other or that either had read any of the other's works).
Lanier also published essays on literary and musical topics. He edited a notable series of fourabridgements, published byCharles Scribner's Sons, of literary works aboutknightly combat andchivalry in modernized language more appealing to the boys of his day:
He also wrote two travelogues that were widely read at the time, entitledFlorida: Its Scenery, Climate and History (1875) andSketches ofIndia (1876) (although he never visited India).
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TheSidney Lanier Cottage inMacon, Georgia, is listed on theNational Register of Historic Places. The square stoneFour Southern Poets Monument, located between 7th and 8th Streets in Augusta, lists Lanier as one of Georgia's four great poets, all of whom were in the Confederate military.[22] The southeastern side bears this inscription: "To Sidney Lanier 1842–1880. The Catholic man who hath mightily won God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain and sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain." The other poets on the monument areJames Ryder Randall, Fr.Abram Ryan, andPaul Hayne.
Baltimore honored Lanier with a large and elaborate bronze and granite sculptural monument, created byHans K. Schuler and located on the campus of theJohns Hopkins University. In addition to the monument at Johns Hopkins, Lanier was also later memorialized on the campus ofDuke University inDurham, North Carolina. Upon the construction of the iconicDuke Chapel between 1930 and 1935 on the university's West Campus, a statue of Lanier was included alongside two fellow prominent Southerners,Thomas Jefferson andRobert E. Lee.[23] This statue, which appears to show a Lanier older than the 39 years he actually lived, is situated on the right side of the portico leading into the chapel narthex. It is prominently featured on the cover of the 2010 autobiographical memoirHannah's Child, byStanley Hauerwas, a Methodist theologian teaching atDuke Divinity School.[24]
The United Daughters of the Confederacy worked successfully to enhance Lanier's legacy.[25]
Lanier's poem "The Marshes of Glynn" is the inspiration for acantata by the same name that was created by the modern English composerAndrew Downes to celebrate the Royal Opening of theAdrian Boult Hall in Birmingham, England, in 1986.
Piers Anthony used Lanier, his life, and his poetry in his science-fiction novelMacroscope (1969). He quotes from "The Marshes of Glynn" and other references appear throughout the novel.
In 1980, Yugoslav rock bandLutajuća Srca recorded the song "Večernja pesma", featuring lyrics from Lanier's "An Evening Poem" inSerbo-Croatian, the song becoming a minor hit for the band.[26]
Several entities have been named for Sidney Lanier. Among them are:
