{"id":10761,"date":"2015-07-23T11:02:05","date_gmt":"2015-07-23T15:02:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=10761"},"modified":"2021-04-02T10:09:23","modified_gmt":"2021-04-02T14:09:23","slug":"from-the-editor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/from-the-editor\/","title":{"rendered":"From the Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"

July\/August 2015
\n\"colin_2015\"<\/a>Colin W. Sargent, Editor & Publisher<\/strong><\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, during a casual search of the Boston-based Skinner Auctioneers site, I bumped into a list of rare documents headed for the block. Many items were the usual ephemera\u2013transactions, clipped autographs, but then I flicked to Lot 49 of Auction 2819T and recognized the words first, made more personal by the author\u2019s scratches, cross-outs, and changes:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Midway upon the journey of our life \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0I found myself within a forest dark, \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 For the straightforward pathway had been lost.<\/em><\/p>\n

It was Longfellow\u2019s haunting opening lines to his famous translation of Dante\u2019s Inferno! More precisely, it was the first 27 lines of Canto I of Longfellow\u2019s handwritten manuscript draft (with emendations). Stunned to eavesdrop on his choices as he searched for just the right word, I felt close to Longfellow\u2019s shoulder just as he entered the \u201cforest dark\u201d of the underworld.<\/p>\n

Then my next surprise. The pre-auction estimate was $800 to $1,200. How could a single sheet of paper this desirable still exist outside of a museum? \u201cIt\u2019s still considered one of the better translations as I understand it,\u201d says Nick Noyes, librarian at Maine Historical Society. \u201cLongfellow went to Europe to polish up his language skills before he went to Bowdoin. Then he went back a couple of other times to prepare for teaching at Harvard.\u201d Longfellow enthusiasts are aware he loved all things Italian (and The Inferno<\/em> is the first major European work rendered in Italian instead of Latin), but this has to be The Bearded One\u2019s supreme achievement as a Professor of Romance Languages.<\/p>\n

Suspense is everything. So who had the highest bid at auction? Hammer price was $10,455, according to Skinner. The buyer was Harvard University\u2019s Houghton Library, which prizes rare documents in its Longfellow collection. To a Longfellow fan (and his stock is rising\u2014Donna Tartt\u2019s novel title The Secret History<\/em> is lifted from Longfellow), this is the Holy Grail. \u201cWe were excited to bid on it, because it\u2019s a page that\u2019s been missing from the manuscript we\u2019ve had here for some time,\u201d says Houghton Library\u2019s Leslie Morris. \u201cIt was apparently given away as a souvenir by one of Longfellow\u2019s sons. It was very exciting for us to reunite it with the manuscript.\u201d<\/p>\n

The following link magnifies the text for a closer look: http:\/\/www.skinnerinc.com\/auctions\/2819T\/lots\/49<\/p>\n

Please click here to comment on this story<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

July\/August 2015
\nA few weeks ago, during a casual search of the Boston-based Skinner Auctioneers site, I bumped into a list of rare documents headed for the block. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10828,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[94],"class_list":["post-10761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editor","tag-julyaugust-2015"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10761"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20155,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10761\/revisions\/20155"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}