Table of Contents
An opening
Whitman uses the metaphor of light
In conclusion
Beginning
Glory to Him Who moves all that is.
The light that shines out from the sun is a beam of light that penetrates into space and then reflects back.
Reflection is greater in some parts and less elsewhere.
He is high above the sphere of darkness that steals His light.
I was there – I really was! I was there – I was!
Who descends knows or can ever repeat.
As it draws nearer to its most desired,
Our intellect sinks so deep into the depth
No memory can track it all the way.
The passage above is an excerpt from Canto I, Paradiso by Dante Alighieri. Dante uses Light as a Metaphor for Goodness in The Divine Comedy. The closer objects are to God, the more they reflect light. Nevertheless, Dante uses the metaphor for light to further another purpose. The divine light of Paradiso shines so brightly that the speaker can’t bear to see it all at first. The intensity of his experience in Paradiso makes him constantly conscious of the language he uses to describe it. In this quote, the speaker hopes to only “shimmer” the bright light he was exposed to.
Walt Whitman’s Civil War poetry is no exception. Whitman is aware of his ability accurately to depict the events he witnessed while visiting Union hospitals in the Civil War. In his Memoranda between 1862-1865 he wrote:
The present volume is largely a collection of these pencilled notes. Some of the pencilled down stories I heard were itemized as I watched, waited, or cared for someone in those scenes. I’ve got about 40 of these tiny note-books that form my own personal history, full of feelings and associations, that can never be expressed or sung. The reader would love to know the associations associated with these small, creased, and soil-covered deliverys. They are made up of just a couple of sheets of paper that have been folded and attached with a bobby pin.
Whitman actually uses Dante’s metaphors of reflection and light in many of his Civil War poetry. Whitman’s use of illumination is a part of his effort to glorify soldiers. He uses illumination as a way to bring out the horrors in war, such as the bodies and wounds of soldiers. Whitman also uses reflection or scarcity of lighting to express the literal absence of holiness. He is also concerned about depicting realistic images in his poetry.
Whitman’s Use of the Metaphor of LightThe idea of casting a shadow or reflecting a real image, first introduced by Plato 360 B.C.E. then adapted and developed by Dante 1300 A.D. was re-introduced by Whitman in the 1860s, as a consequence of the technological advances made in the photography field. The first picture that was successful (i.e. The first successful picture (i.e. Frederick Scott Archer’s Collodion, which reduced the exposure time to only 2 or 3 seconds, was introduced in 1851, 10 years before America’s Civil War. To capture a real image, the aim was to create a still photo that accurately reflected the true meaning of the picture. During the Civil War photographs were widely used to capture images on battlefields, including those of wounded and dead soldiers.
Whitman wondered if his poems would accurately portray his observations and experiences. It’s for this reason, in several Civil War-era poems, soldiers are described by their dark or shadowy appearance. Whitman uses the moon to illustrate the metaphor “light”. Moonlight, while it can illuminate, is also “photographic,” as its rays reflect the sun.
Whitman captures this moonlight quality in his poem “Look Down Fair Moon”. Whitman acknowledges that it is impossible to accurately depict the soldiers through the poem. The poem is a mirror of the soldiers’ true image, just like the moonlight which bathes them reflects sunlight.
The romantic language used at the start of the piece is abruptly stopped by the last line, “faces ghastly…swollen, plum,” to indicate that the poem’s purpose is more than just their memorial. Whitman’s Civil War poetry is full of examples where he deliberately calls attention to the bodies and physical appearance of dead soldiers. Whitman uses the phrase “the corpses on their arms toss’d” in order to describe them as Christlike figures. The images are not that of soldiers lying calmly but rather, bodies scattered around, as though they had died suddenly. The Christ-like words suggest that the dead soldiers were martyrs or innocents killed for their country. The fact the bodies and faces of the victims are not at ease, as well as “ghastly,” “swollen,” and “purple” indicates that there’s something wrong with this picture. The scene in the poem is like a still picture. Reading it gives you the impression that the battlefield is at night.
Reading the poem has the same effect as viewing wartime photographs. Whitman recognizes the challenge of describing a powerful emotion in a poetry. His goal is not to shock, but to make the reader remember the horrors he saw during World War II. Whitman memorializes the dead soldiers by shining moonlight on them. This exposes their horror and shows Whitman’s concern to accurately represent them. Whitman, unlike Dante, can only portray a shadow because the image is too horrifying to describe.
Whitman’s progression from “Look Down Fair Moon”, “Dirge for Two Veterans”, and “Look Down Fair Moon”, “Dirge for Two Veterans”, is a parallel to the issues that were growing in photography during Whitman’s lifetime. In “Look Down Fair Moon”, the moon is shining over motionless, dead bodies. However, in “Dirge for Two Veterans,” the movement is more pronounced. This poses the problem of photographing a moving picture. Whitman is able to convey his intention to interpret the moon’s appearance in “Beautiful Over the House-Tops, Ghastly Phantom Moon,” by combining “beautiful”, with “ghastly”. The poem begins with the two veterans (father and son) who are dropped together, but quickly transforms into the “strong dead march” which is a dirge dedicated to all soldiers. The final stanza refers not only to the veterans, but also all the others who died unjustly during battle. Whitman’s “The Moon Gives You Light” refers to both the moon as a light that illuminates their corpses and the horrors of their deaths. As if to emphasize this duality further, the poem starts with the last sunbeam that falls “from the finished Sabbath.” Much like the dead soldier who lay flat on their stomachs, the burial father and child in the “newly-made double grave,” on the most holy day of the seven days, is extremely unholy. The “strong dead march” is a parallel to his struggle in reconciling the commemoration of the unholy with the exposure of it.
Whitman uses light in a more complex way in “A march in the ranks hard-prest, and The Road Unknown”. This is because the setting for the poem in this case is darker, more ambiguous, and more mysterious than other poems. Whitman’s use of scarcity of lighting instead of the moon is a way to illustrate the difficulty of photographing moving images and the need to balance commemoration of war with the exposure of the grotesque. Whitman uses the images of shadows, and limited light to illustrate his concern about conveying his observations accurately. The retreating army sees dim-lit building in the third and fourth line. Inside, it is a scene that surpasses all pictures and poetry ever created. It’s a deep, dark black with only moving lamps and candles.
Whitman can’t describe the experience to the readers, or even capture it completely in a picture. The images of the poem are therefore vague and difficult. The words are only shadows, a mere reflection of the original forms. Whitman expresses his doubts in portraying his experience in the voice of a nurse when he says, “I stanch temporarily the blood.” Whitman is expressing his concerns about his ineffectiveness as a writer by presenting himself as an ineffective nurse. Whitman’s poem is also ephemeral, as Whitman feels that the stanching of blood was an act of temporary inaction. By using nondescriptive language and vague phrases, Whitman reinforces his belief that he can’t effectively describe the experience.
Whitman continues this duality with “Look Down Fair Moon,” “Dirge for Two Veterans,” and other works. Whitman honors the soldiers while exposing the unholy. The setting of “A march in the ranks Hard-Prest”, “a large church at the crossroads, now an impromptu Hospital,” suggests that these soldiers are sacred and praiseworthy. It is ironic that they are in church, just as in “Look Down Fair Moon”, where the dead soldiers were depicted like Christ figures, and in “Dirge for Two Veterans”, when the father-and-son are laid to rest on Sabbath. The sparseness of light in the poem brings to mind Dante’s Paradiso. In this work, the amount and quality of light that is reflected on an object are proportional. Whitman’s poem ends with an image that is dark, with “an army ever in darkness marching” because technology at the Civil War was not efficient enough for a photographing a moving force. The army is also in darkness and would be impossible to photograph, since there was no light source. Whitman is expressing his dissatisfaction with the poem because it fails to capture reality. The “dimly lighted building” or “shadows of darkest, deepest noir” are examples of this. Similarly, the distance between the soldiers and the light conveys the blasphemy.
Louis Daguerre invents the Daguerreotype (which produces images on photographic sheets) after Joseph Niepce’s death, 1839. At that time, many skeptics were of the photography process and its goals. As an example, one German newspaper stated: “The desire and will to capture evanescent images is not just impossible, but is also blasphemy.” God made the man in his own image. A machine cannot fix God’s image. Can it be that God would have allowed a Frenchman…to give the world a devil’s invention?
Whitman wrote poetry to counteract the views expressed in this article. By publishing numerous poems and his journals that describe the war with great detail, Whitman aimed to do what photographers at the time hoped to accomplish: capture the true essence of an image within a still-frame. Whitman also knew the difficulties in trying to achieve this, but he was not blinded by it. Many of Whitman’s poems express similar concerns to the speaker of Paradiso in regards to the failure to accurately describe the experience. Whitman uses the light metaphorically in Dante’s Divine Comedy to illustrate the Civil War. He also expresses his concern over being able accurately reproduce it.