PREFACE BY CHRISTOPH IRMSCHER
When Longfellow heard the story that night, he was immediately captivated. It was, he said, “the best illustration of the faithfulness and constancy of woman that I have ever heard or read.” If he did not want the incident for one of his tales, Longfellow said to Hawthorne, “let me at least have it for a poem.” Hawthorne agreed, and a few years later Evangeline was published, to great acclaim.
Evangeline, By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
At night, resting from the labors of the day, the Acadians would assemble by their fireplaces and sing ancient songs while the spinning wheels clacked and the clocks ticked. Or they would listen to the tales told by Rene Leblanc, the wizened village notary, about the loup-garou (werewolf) in the forest, of goblins that brought the horses water at night, or of ghosts of unbaptized children that haunted their dreams. They would hear how the oxen suddenly started talking on Christmas Eve and how a spider shut up in a nutshell would cure a fever.
While some Acadians—represented by Basil the Blacksmith in Longfellow’s poem—eventually settled in Louisiana, others continued to wander across the continent. Evangeline, searching for traces of her lover, Gabriel, from the swamps of the South to the prairies of the West to the cities of the East, where the only reminders of trees are the streets named after them, became the patron saint for exiles all over the world, a symbol for the terrible price that enforced displacement exacts to this day from migrants anywhere. At the foot of the Ozarks, a Shawnee woman enters Evangeline’s makeshift camp and tells her about her lost—indeed, murdered—lover, and the stories and tears both women share are among the most intensely egalitarian moments in all of American literature.
Longfellow’s poem ends as it began, mournfully, as the murmuring forest laments the absence of those who, in better days, dwelled in its leafy shadows. The thatched-roofed comfort of the Acadians has long yielded to another culture, “with other customs and language.” But some Acadians are still there, carrying on with their lives, and now—and here Longfellow self-consciously envisions his poem’s afterlife—the stories they tell each other also include, as indeed they do to this day, the one about the resilient Evangeline.
“Sais tu, Acadie, j’ai le mal du pays Ta neige, Acadie, fait des larmes au soleil” (You know, Acadia, I am homesick for you Your snow, Acadia, makes tears in the sun) -Longfellow in Evangaline
EPILOGUE: BY MARK MARCHESI.
Having no prior knowledge of Evangeline or the expulsion of the Acadians—the historical event upon which the poem is based—I stumbled upon the epic and was instantly captivated. I studied up on the deportation and read the poem repeatedly. I went to work photographing the Canadian province in June with Longfellow’s words ringing in my ears.
Eagles hunt from coastal pine trees, seals lounge on sun-warmed rocks, and the wind can be unrelenting. Fog banks lurk around lush green headlands, creeping into coves and sweeping across the flats. Nestled into the scenery, a stoic culture, descended from Acadian settlers who were allowed to return from exile in the late 18th century, has adapted to living in harmony with the harsh elements.