Song of Hiawatha. Генри Уодсуорт Лонгфелло

31

      He beheld a maiden 32

      The fierce Kabibonokka 33

      Heaped the snow 34

      Shawondasee 36

      The sad Nokomis 40

      Ishkoodah, the comet 42

      The moonrise 43

      The red deer 44

      The little hunter 45

      The mighty Mudjekeewis 50

      The ruler of the West-Wind 52

      The battle 53

      The arrow-maker and his daughter 55

      Hiawatha's cry 58

      The friend of man, Mondamin 60

      The heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah 62

      Driving away the ravens 66

      Chibiabos, the musician 70

      Lazy Kwasind 73

      Canoe building 76

      Kagh, the Hedgehog 78

      The Birch Canoe 79

      Safe passage 81

      Hiawatha and the sturgeon 86

      The lifeless Nahma 89

      Hiawatha and Megissogwon 98

      The woodpecker, Mama 100

      The Falls of Minnehaha 104

      Hiawatha and Minnehaha 109

      Messengers 113

      The merry Pau-Puk-Keewis 116

      The Red Swan 122

      Osseo and Oweenee 124

      Her staff became a feather 128

      Osseo's birds 131

      Song 133

      Harvest 136

      Hiawatha and the ravens 139

      Hiawatha's writing 145

      Wonderful and mystic figures 146

      Hunting all alone 151

      Medicine men 153

      Hiawatha's healing 155

      The lodge of Pau-Puk-Keewis 160

      The game 163

      Pau-Puk-Keewis and attendant 165

      Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens 166

      Pau-Puk-Keewis 167

      The beaver 170

      Imploring the tempest 178

      Kwasind on the river 185

      Winter 188

      Two women entered 189

      Bringing fire-wood 191

      The departed 193

      The cruel winter 197

      Still and speechless 200

      Spring 203

      Iagoo, the great traveller 207

      Hiawatha and the black-robe 213

      Hiawatha's farewell 217

      Into the sunset 219

       PUBLISHER'S FOREWORD

      "Art is long and time is fleeting," Longfellow's Song of Life affirms. It's a safe assumption that Longfellow's own poetic art, in The Song of Hiawatha, will live for a long time, and that Herbert Meyer's unusual and memorable illustrations will help to perpetuate Longfellow's timeless creation.

      The late Herbert Meyer's Hiawatha illustrations are unique in their relationship to the woodblock prints of the great Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). When the 23-year-old Meyer first saw Hokusai's Views of Mount Fuji, they changed his outlook, opening a "new and enchanting world" to him. He not only admitted his debt to the Japanese genre artist, but was proud of it. "What I learned from Hokusai," he wrote, "I employed in my Hiawatha pictures." Years later, the noted American artist-illustrator considered Hokusai, with Cézanne, the artist who had "played the most powerful part" in his development.

      Meyer's approach to the American Indian theme was similarly enthusiastic; he did extensive research into Indian lore for the Hiawatha illustrations. His work is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan and Whitney museums in New York City, and in other museums throughout the country.

      The publisher is proud to present this new edition of an old American favorite, authentically and unforgettably illustrated by a distinguished American artist.

       FOREWORD

      by Teiji Chizawa

       Chief Curator

       Tokyo National Museum

      Hokusai's Views of Mount Fuji deeply influenced Herbert Meyer. "I saw life through art—very differently," he wrote, recalling his discovery of the woodblock print series by one of the leading Japanese artists of the 19th century.

      Something in the Hokusai prints must have attracted this sensitive young American artist. Certainly the treatment of color, brush line, and composition in the Japanese genre (ukiyoe) print, as represented by the work of Hokusai, differs markedly from that in the European tradition of woodblock art. But the Japanese influence is shown differently in Meyer's work than in the paintings of European artists such as Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. Rather than direct quotation, we find Meyer's own appreciation and understanding of ukiyoe.

      Suggestions of Hokusai can easily be detected in Meyer's techniques; the exaggeration of certain sections, heightening the effect or increasing attention by unusual, dynamic composition; the method of painting creases in mountain ranges with fragmentary, short horizontal and vertical lines; the pointillist (tembyo) touches in the depiction of falling snow. In Meyer's art, as in Hokusai's, one finds surfaces divided with heavy black outlines emphasizing shape and rhythm, or flowers and leaves printed in soft tones with a wide expanse of the same color enhancing the sense of freshness and charm. Meyer also responds to Hokusai in adapting the traditional Chinese perspective, dividing the composition into three horizontal sections to represent near, middle, and far distances; he shows interest in the vertical rectangular compositions known as hashira-e, or narrow, pillar-like designs; he does not use the Western method to indicate clouds, but experiments persistently in depicting them through stylized description.

      These methods and treatments are not limited to Hokusai alone; they are the property of all Japanese woodblock artists and,