Re: Literary durability

> 2b. Re: Literary durability
>     Posted by: "joseph harris" [email protected] joe9438
>
> [snip]
> Hiawatha is great poetry, whether you approve of it at this
> moment or not.   The point is whether it endures, not whether
> anyone likes it at a particular moment.


Spoken like a true educational perennialist. But _has_ "The Song of  
Hiawatha" endured, in any meaningful sense? Certainly copies of it  
still _exist,_ and people have heard _of_ it and write _about_ it,  
but that is true of many books that are of interest only to  
specialists and likely to remain so.

Has _Aurora Leigh_ "endured?"

As I write this, my local public library does not have a copy.  
(Candor compels me to add, "of the entire work." The Children's  
department does have a copy of an illustrated copy of _selections_  
from it).

The biggest-selling editions listed on Amazon appear to be:

Dover Thrift Edition, Amazon.com Sales Rank: #355,202 in Books
Book Jungle edition, Amazon.com Sales Rank: #604,647 in Books
BiblioBazaar edition, Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,548,369 in Books

As a measure of what such a sales rank means, I can tell you that a  
book that that I know to have sold less than fifty copies is  
currently showing a sales rank of #168,142. Another book of roughly  
the same era, "Moby-Dick," sports an sales rank of #5,181 for one of  
its many paperback edition.

Again, does Longfellow's poem endure? I challenge any reader of this  
list to tell me, _without checking:_

1) What's the opening line?

2) What does the poem say in regard to Hiawatha's mittens?

3) What event convinces Hiawatha that it time for him to bid a sad  
final farewell to his tribe and to old Nokomis, and depart forever  
"to the portals of the Sunset?"




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