Reviews for Evangeline

The average rating for Evangeline based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-12-05 00:00:00 Wayne Brownell I have somewhat jumbled thoughts about this lovely prose poem that tells the story of a fictional young woman named Evangeline Bellefontaine, who began her life in Acadia, what is now Nova Scotia. I had no idea of the history of this area. This is from the introduction: At the close of what is known as Queen Anne's war, in 1713, France ceded Acadia to the English, and it has since remained in their possession. Some thirty-five years passed before an English settlement was made at Halifax, the Acadians in the meantime remaining in undisturbed possession of the country. Soon after the settlement of Halifax trouble began between the rival colonists. Whatever the reasons were for their decision (and the details seem to be debated even today) the British rounded up all the French Acadians and forced them into exile, burning their village to boot. Our Evangeline was newly betrothed to Gabriel Lajeunesse, but because the tide went out during the evacuation she had to stay on the beach with her father while Gabriel and his father were put on a ship. So the lovers were separated, and the rest of the poem follows the wanderings of Evangeline while she searches for Gabriel, whom she has never forgotten and will always love. Here is where my jumbled thoughts really start. On the surface, Evangeline is a loyal young woman, who wants only to be reunited with her true love Gabriel. So she goes off searching for him, and we think she will find him a time or two, but he is always a week or so ahead of her. She is impulsive, rushing off to the north country when she hears a rumor that he has a hunter's lodge in Michigan, instead of waiting longer at the mission where she had already spent over a year in hopes he would return. But of course when she arrives the lodge is empty and she continues her wanderings. It was not until I finished reading that I realized the other layer involved here. Our loyal Evangeline represents all of the exiles, and her search for Gabriel is really an exile's longing for their former home. When a person is forced away from a place, that place becomes sacred to them. Looking at Evangeline herself as simply a woman, I was mad at her for spending her entire life running obsessively after a ghost of a memory. But looking at her as the symbol of the French Acadian people who were torn from their homes and thrown out into the cruel world to sink or swim however they could, I was able to understand that obsessed desire to reclaim the past. I still do not necessarily admire it, however. It is not possible or healthy to go back in time, to recreate what once was. Remember the magic, yes. Become obsessed over it, no. I dawdled a bit while reading, as usual with poetry, because I kept savoring the prelude, which begins with these noble lines: This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest. I had avoided Longfellow since school days, remembering the torture of being forced to read him when I was interested in so many other things. But I was pleasantly surprised at the loveliness of this poem, and how easy it was to read. I certainly will be reading more of his work, and hopefully more about the history of Nova Scotia and Canada as well.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-03-14 00:00:00 Sizo Deeaz It is amazing that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow could put so much into a 52 page poem. There is the love story, of course, and the themes of devotion and persistence, but there is also faith, forgiveness, the cruelties of war, injustice, extreme loss, strength of character, and reclamation. The descriptive quality of his poetry is mesmerizing. I felt I could see the Acadian village, the Louisiana bayou and the western mountains. Does this not describe the spread of an epidemic perfectly: And, as the tides of the sea arise in the month of September, Flooding some silver stream, till it spreads to a lake in the meadow, So death flooded life, and, o'erflowing its natural margin, Spread to a brackish lake, the silver stream of existence. You can both feel the spreading of the disease and in an eerie way, see it. I read this once, long ago, when I was a girl. Then it was just the love story that I came away with. It was like reading Romeo and Juliet as a teenager. This time, I left the poem with so much more!