Sidney Lanier

Sidney Lanier (February 3, 1842 – September 7, 1881) was an American musician and poet.

Early life and war

Sidney Clopton Lanier was born February 3, 1842, in Macon, Georgia to parents Robert Sampson Lanier and Mary Jane Anderson Lanier. He began playing the flute at an early age, and his love of that musical instrument continued throughout his life. He attended Oglethorpe University near Milledgeville, Georgia, graduating first in his class shortly before the outbreak of the American Civil War.

He fought in the Civil War, primarily in the tidewater region of Virginia, where he served in the Confederate signal corps. Later, he and his brother Clifford served as pilots aboard English blockade runners. On one of these voyages, his ship was boarded. Refusing to take the advice of the British officers on board to don one of their uniforms and pretend to be one of them, he was captured. He was incarcerated in a military prison in Maryland, where he contracted tuberculosis (generally known as "consumption" at the time). He suffered greatly from this affliction for the rest of his life.

Shortly after the war, he finished writing his only novel, Tiger Lilies (1867), and married Mary Day. They took up residence in his hometown of Macon, and he began working in his father's law office. After taking and passing the Georgia bar, he practiced as a lawyer for several years. During this period he wrote a number of poems in the "cracker" and "negro" dialects of his day about poor white and black farmers in the Reconstruction South. He traveled extensively through southern and eastern portions of the United States in search of a cure for his tuberculosis.

Musician

While on one such journey in Texas, he rediscovered his native and untutored talent for the flute and decided to travel to the northeast in hopes of finding employment as a musician in an orchestra. Unable to find work in New York, Philadelphia or Boston, he signed on to play flute for the Peabody Orchestra in Baltimore, Maryland shortly after its organization. He taught himself musical notation and quickly rose to the position of first flutist. He was famous in his day for his performances of a personal composition for the flute called "Black Birds," which mimics the song of that species.

Poet and scholar

In an effort to support Mary and their three sons, he also wrote poetry for magazines. His most famous poems were "Corn" (1875), "The Symphony" (1875), "Centennial Meditation" (1876), "The Song of the Chattahoochee" (1877), "The Marshes of Glynn" (1878) and "Sunrise" (1881). The latter two poems are generally considered his greatest works. They are part of an unfinished set of lyrical nature poems known as the "Hymns of the Marshes," which describe the vast, open salt marshes of Glynn County on the coast of Georgia. There is a historical marker in Brunswick, Georgia commemorating the writing of his poem The Marshes of Glynn. The largest bridge in Georgia (as of 2005) is a short distance from that location, and is named the Sidney Lanier Bridge.

Late in his life, he became a student, lecturer and, finally, a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, specializing in the works of the English novelists, Shakespeare, the Elizabethan sonneteers, Chaucer and the Anglo-Saxon poets. He published a series of lectures entitled The English Novel (published posthumously in 1883) and a book entitled The Science of English Verse (1880), in which he developed a novel theory exploring the connections between musical notation and meter in poetry.

Later life

Putting these theories into practice, he developed a unique style of poetry written in logaoedic dactyls, which was strongly influenced by the works of his beloved Anglo-Saxon poets. He wrote several of his greatest poem in this meter, including "The Revenge of Hamish" (1878), "The Marshes of Glynn" and "Sunrise." In Lanier's hands, the logaoedic dactylic meter led to a free-form, almost prose-like style of poetry that was greatly admired by Longfellow, Bayard Taylor, Charlotte Cushman and other leading poets and critics of the day. A similar poetical meter was independently developed by Gerard Manley Hopkins at about the same time (there is no evidence that they knew each other or that either of them had read any of the other's works).

Lanier also published essays on other literary and musical topics and a notable series of four redactions of literary works about knightly combat and chivalry in modernized language more appealing to the boys of his day.

The Boy's Froissart (1878), a retelling of Jean Froissart's Froissart's Chronicles, which tell of adventure, battle and custom in medieval England, France and Spain
The Boy's King Arthur (1880), based on Sir Thomas Malory's compilation of the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table
The Boy's Mabinogion (1881), based on the early Welsh legends of King Arthur, as retold in the Red Book of Hergest.
The Boy's Percy (published posthumously in 1882), consisting of old ballads of war, adventure and love based on Bishop Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.

He also wrote two travelogues that were widely read at the time, entitled Florida: Its Scenery, Climate and History 1875 and Sketches of India 1876 (although he never visited India).

Lanier finally succumbed to complications caused by his tuberculosis on September 7, 1881, while convalescing with his family near Tryon, North Carolina. He was only 39. He is buried in Greenmount Cemetery in Baltimore, Maryland.

Lanier's poem "The Marshes of Glynn" is the inspiration for a cantata by the same name that was created by the modern English composer Andrew Downes to celebrate the Royal Opening of the Adrian Boult Hall in Birmingham, England in 1986.

Lake Lanier, operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers northeast of Atlanta, is named in his honor as are Lanier County, Georgia and Lanier High School, Montgomery, Alabama.

External links

Project Gutenberg edition of A Biography Of Sidney Lanier
Lanier On The Runaway Slaves at Fort Gadsden. Sidney Lanier describes the history of a fascinating fort commandeered by runaway slaves.
Sidney Lanier on the Fate of the Seminoles. The consumptive poet Sidney Lanier agreed to do a guidebook on Florida, for Lippincott & Co., for $125 per month, travel expenses and the benefit he hoped the excursion would give to his health.