Henry Johnson

Background

Johnson was born on June 25, 1855, in Gardiner, Maine, of old New England ancestry, the son of Richard Elliott and Louisa Abbie (Reed) Johnson.

Education

After attending local schools and Phillips Andover Academy, Johnson went to Bowdoin College where he was graduated in the class of 1874 at the age of nineteen. At college he had the reputation of being very shy and reserved; he gave but little evidence of future distinction. Determining to devote his life to scholarship, from 1875 to 1877 he studied abroad at Göttingen and Paris; in 1884 he took his degree of Ph. D. at the University of Berlin.

Career

All Johnson's teaching was done at Bowdoin College. There he was instructor in modern languages from 1877 to 1881, and professor from 1881 until his death in 1918, holding the Longfellow Chair after 1882. He was also librarian from 1880 to 1885. As important as his professorship was his work as curator of the art collections of the college. The Walker Art Museum was built when he held this position and under his direction all the collections were placed and catalogued.

As a teacher in a small college, Johnson not only gave the usual courses in the modern languages but also in his later years instruction in the history and appreciation of art. Like Charles Eliot Norton at Harvard, he not only taught the history of art and Dante but gave his students "a correct view of life. " He was all his life interested in textual criticism. As a young man he edited Schiller's Ballads (1888) and A Midsommer Nights Dreame (1888). His Macbeth, a critical text, was published posthumously in 1921. He also published two volumes of selected verse, "Where Beauty Is" (1898) and "The Seer" (1910). His poems, though perhaps at times lacking in clarity, are classical in spirit, full of vivid phrases, and reflect a deeply spiritual nature. It is in his translations, however, that he made his most important contribution to American letters: Les Trophées, José Maria de Heredia (1910), from the French, is remarkable for its lyrical qualities and felicity of phrase; his La Comedia di Dante Alighieri: The Divine Comedy (1915) was almost literally the work of a lifetime. He also translated all the poems in the Vita Nuova.

Johnson died at Brunswick, February 7, 1918, and was buried there.

Achievements

• Johnson is best remembered for his translations of renowned poems, including the Divine Comedy, where he used the medium of blank verse, and although he abandoned the rhyme of the original, he reproduced with remarkable success its music and rhythm. The translation swiftly won recognition as an achievement worthy to stand alongside of Longfellow's and gained warm commendation from European Dante scholars.

Works

More photos

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  • The seer, and other poems

    (This reproduction was printed from a digital file created...)

  • The Divine comedy

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Schiller's Ballads

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • Where Beauty is and Other Poems: -1898

    (Originally published in 1898. This volume from the Cornel...)

Connections

On July 26, 1881, Johnson married Frances M. Robinson, of Thomaston, Maine, by whom he had two daughters.

Father:

Richard Elliott Johnson

Mother:

Louisa Abbie Reed

Spouse:

Frances M. Robinson

References

• General Catalogue of Bowdoin College and the Medical School of Maine, 1794-1912
• The History of Bowdoin College