Imagery Used in Walt Whitman’s Poetry

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      In Walt Whitman’s poetry, images are generally drawn from the familiar world known by everyone. Whitman makes use of visual images. He uses sensual imagery to reveal his highly sensuous feeling about scenery, people, animals, even his own body. In a passage such as:

Smile voluptuous cool breath’d earth!
Earth of slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset earth of the mountains misty-topt (Song of Myself Section 21)

      We have a complex mixture of visual, sensual and metaphysical imagery. Elemental images-birds, flowers, Earth, ocean, Sun, sky and stars are also used by Whitman. His sensibility (and sensuality) often modify the image of things which he gives to us.

      Whitman’s imagery functions on more than one level of intensity. Firstly it works on the sensory level which is composed of the elaborate catalogs of objects. Secondly, there is what one may call “metaphysical” imagery consisting of single images. In each case, images are used by Whitman to carry the reader from the world of sensory perception to the world of thought in which the former achieves some perspective. In the lines from Song of Myself quoted earlier, the use of the term “liquid” with trees suggests the dissolution of matter and a mysterious transmutation of the real. Not content with what he has before his eyes, the poet wants to evoke all the rest of his world, the infinity of space and the amplitude of time. The various sensuous beauties of nature are employed in a way to suggest the dissolution of matter and a mysterious transmutation of the real. Not content with what he has before his eyes, the poet wants to evoke all the rest of his world, the infinity of space and the amplitude of time. The various sensuous beauties of nature are employed in a way to suggest the sublimation of physical love into a love for all divine creation, involving a union with the “soul” of the universe.

      Almost invariably, Whitman’s images move from the concrete to the abstract in meaning. The open road of Song of the Open Road, the “passage” of Passage to India, the “hugging and loving Bedfellow” of Section 3, Song of Myself, the twenty-eight young men bathing naked in the sea in Section 11 of Song of Myself - all these are concrete images which can be seen or conceived of clearly. But they signify much more than what they are on the surface. The bird, the sea, the star, the sky and clouds, all assume significance on the abstract level as well as on the level of thought and idea. The images are used by Whitman as symbols explaining the significance of love, death, life and friendship in the “unity” of the universe.

      Like the Imagists, Whitman regarded the physical things as intrinsically interesting and sought to capture them in direct, precise description. Unlike the Imagists, however, Whitman achieved condensation, concreteness and clarity of visual focus. His aim is not to regard the fugitive fragmentary sense impressions, but to indicate the connection between reality and his soul. Hence his images point to the unity beyond the surface separateness. The images of the catalog ensembles (Song of the Open Road) is an obvious example; though they are also individually arresting, and do not terminate in sense-impression, but are transformed into a vehicle of the poet’s “Cosmic” emotion. Whitman’s belief that external objects are visible analogs of the soul makes him different from the Imagists with their pure externality of approach. The realism of Whitman’s manner has a transcendental aspect.

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