John Brown’s Body
Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943), 1928
A Pulitzer-winning verse novel of the Civil War that moves from John Brown's raid to Appomattox, mixing real voices, soldiers' dread, and the strange intimacy of a country at war with itself. A grave, lyrical sweep through Civil War voices, with dread and hope braided into long narrative lines and a slow, marching pace.
Feels like dread and hope. About war, freedom and memory.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy historical verse novels that let soldiers, civilians, and public figures speak in distinct voices. The long span from John Brown’s raid to Appomattox and the crowded cast can make some stretches feel demanding.
Why read it
It gives you the Civil War as a chorus of ordinary and public voices, held together by Benét’s lyrical narrative and a steady sense of dread and hope.
Pages from the book
Love as a hawk you feed your own heart to.
Sally Dupré, from the high porch of her houseStared at the road. They would be here soon enough.She had waved a flag the last time they went away.This time she would wave her hand or her handkerchief.That was what women did. The column passed byAnd the women waved, and it came back and they waved,And, in between, if you loved, you lived by a dullClock of long minutes that passed like sunbonneted womenEach with the same dry face and the same set hands.I have read, they have told me that love is a pretty godWith light wings stuck to his shoulders. They did not tell meThat love is nursing a hawk with yellow eyes,That love is feeding your heart to the beak of the hawkBecause an old woman, gossiping, uttered a name. History can dress a man in uniform but cannot say what he felt.
He was a man, and as a man he knewLove, separation, sorrow, joy and death.He was a master of the tricks of war,He gave great strokes and warded strokes as great.He was the prop and pillar of a State,The incarnation of a national dream,And when the State fell and the dream dissolvedHe must have lived with bitterness itself—But what his sorrow was and what his joy,And how he felt in the expense of strength,And how his heart contained its bitterness,He will not tell us. We can lie about him,Dress up a dummy in his uniformAnd put our words into the dummy’s mouth,Say “Here Lee must have thought,” and “There, no doubt,By what we know of him, we may supposeHe felt—this pang or that—” but he remainsBeyond our stagecraft, reticent as ice,Reticent as the fire within the stone. What a court calls justice depends on whose sake you broke the law.
Had I interfered in the matter which I admit, and which I admit has been fairly proved … had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, or the so-called great … and suffered and sacrificed, what I have in this interference, it would have been all right. Every man in this Court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment. Stephen Vincent Benét.Benét wrote much of the poem in Paris and dedicated it to his wife, Rosemary, who typed and edited the manuscript as it grew.
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Questions readers ask
- Is John Brown’s Body for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy historical verse novels that let soldiers, civilians, and public figures speak in distinct voices. The long span from John Brown’s raid to Appomattox and the crowded cast can make some stretches feel demanding.
- What is John Brown’s Body like?
- A grave, lyrical sweep through Civil War voices, with dread and hope braided into long narrative lines and a slow, marching pace. Feels like dread and hope. About war, freedom and memory.
- What should I read after John Brown’s Body?
- If you liked John Brown’s Body, try Oedipus Rex (Sophocles), Twelve Years a Slave (Solomon Northup) and Roughing It (Mark Twain).
A taste of the feed
What stays unforgiven when a crime becomes the price of peace?
My lot be still to lead The life of innocence and fly Irreverence in word or deed, To follow still those laws ordained on high Whose birthplace is the bright ethereal sky. No mortal birth they own, Olympus their progenitor alone: Ne’er shall they slumber in oblivion cold, The god in them is strong and grows not old.
Oedipus Rex · Sophocles
In the very shadow of the Capitol, freedom is put up for sale.
The building to which the yard was attached, was two stories high, fronting on one of the public streets of Washington. Its outside presented only the appearance of a quiet private residence. A stranger looking at it, would never have dreamed of its execrable uses. Strange as it may seem, within plain sight of this same house, looking down from its commanding height upon it, was the Capitol. The voices of patriotic representatives boasting of freedom and equality, and the rattling of the poor slave’s chains, almost commingled. A slave pen within the very shadow of the Capitol!
Twelve Years a Slave · Solomon Northup
The moment a weight you had stopped noticing finally comes off your back.
So I saw in my dream, that just as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do, till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.
The Pilgrim’s Progress · John Bunyan
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