Romantic Attitudes Towards Death - Essay Sample

Introduction

Death is one of the most elusive and magnetic themes in the history of humankind, something that everyone has to face but no one can fathom. Imminent and enigmatic, death has captured imagination of the tortured souls of our culture, writers and poets, whose quills are the most perceptible to the chilling breath of the Dark Angel. William Shakespeare and John Milton, Erich Maria Remarque and Ernest Hemingway, Robert Frost and Joseph Heller have all put their ingenious talent and literary insight into the profound and poignant portrayal of dying. Among the most famous and charismatic works of literature centered on death one cannot but mention the poems by the American romantic authors - William Cullen Bryant, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Their death-related poems are highly imaginative, subtly ironic and inexplicably compelling in terms of the mood and atmosphere, notwithstanding the seemingly sinister and dark object of poetic investigation. Through nimble use of metaphor, especially personification, the poets managed to portray the experience of dying in quite a 'palpable', vivid, visually persuasive way as a journey that might be seen tranquil, peaceful, homely and even satisfying.

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"Thanatopsis" (1811) by William Cullen Bryant is probably the most iconic American poem about death. Death is the unifying, overarching theme that holds the poem together and amplifies its aesthetic effect upon the reader. "Thanatopsis" is an ode to the eternal natural cycle of life and death into which human beings are inescapably drawn. More precisely, the poem portrays, in the words of J.W. Chadwick, "Bryant's favourite contrast of the permanence of Nature with the fleetingness of our mortality" (Chadwick 8). In "Thanatopsis" Bryant ingeniously presents an ambivalent image of death which changes as the poem progresses from the negative, frightening representation to a peaceful and mindful vision of dying as a natural process. At the very beginning of the poem death is shown a scary, sinister phenomenon akin to disease, breathlessness and darkness feared and hated by the mortals:

When thoughts

Of the last bitter hour come like a blight

Over thy spirit, and sad images

Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,

And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,

Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart; (Bryant).

This image is a complete picture of the fear of death which includes all the possible attributes of the traditional perception of death as a tragedy, evil, darkness, etc. Yet, the vision of death changes dramatically as a result of the intimate contact with nature:

Go forth, under the open sky, and list

To Nature's teachings, while from all around

Earth and her waters, and the depths of air-

Comes a still voice ... (Bryant)

Bryant's poem literally embodies the calming effect nature executes upon the human mind. Nature is the law according to which all the living creatures live and die. Seeing the harmony and internal logic of this law can help humans accept their own mortality. Thus, later on in the poem, Bryant portrays death in a more positive light as an indispensable part of the natural lifecycle:

Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim

Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,

And, lost each human trace, surrendering up

Thine individual being, shalt thou go

To mix for ever with the elements (Bryant).

Famous for his portrayals of the majestic and stern natural elements, Bryant does not resort to representing nature as a generalized idea, but rather chooses to create a vivid and detailed picture of the ultimate unity of the human being with nature which can be achieved in death. This picture is endowed with a profound visuality, which B.W. Aspenwall calls "the painter-like quality" of Bryant's poetry (Aspenwall 128-29):

To be a brother to the insensible rock

And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain

Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak

Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould (Bryant).

Bryant offers the reader a higher degree of intimacy with the nature through becoming one not with some abstract ideal, but with the rock, the animals and the plants that can be easily imagined. In this way, the unfathomable notion of death is made more 'tangible,' yielding to at least relative comprehension and embracement. In such a way, Bryant prepares the reader for the the final part of the poem, where the poet offers a clearly positive view of death as comfortable accommodation and peaceful sleep rather than "stern agony, and shroud, and pall, / And breathless darkness, and the narrow house" of the opening part of the poem:

... each shall take

His chamber in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,

Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,

Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch

About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams (Bryant).

Thus, Bryant employs the familiar symbols of a grave as a dwelling and death as a sleep, yet, the author makes them more relatable and vivid through the introduction of concrete details. The picture that is created is a cosmic panorama of the eternal cycle of life and death, which is yet quite relevant for every reader in its universality. In the words of W.A. Bradley, Bryant's "poetry is in the best sense of the word impersonal; it is an embodiment of that element of beauty which hovers between earth and the sky and fills the sensitive soul with a kind of spiritual ardour akin to worship" (Bradley 130).

Walt Whitman is another iconic minstrel of death in the American literature. In the words of Perry D. Westbrook, "'the knowledge of death' and 'the thought of death,' to use Whitman's phrases, pervade Leaves of Grass like leitmotivs" (Westbrook). Whitman's perspective upon death, which he offers in the poem "Whispers of Heavenly Death" from his famous collection Leaves of Grass (1855), is clearly positive rather than ambivalent. Though Whitman was not a religious person, he "clearly shared belief in the immortality of the soul with most of the world's faiths" (Westbrook). This belief in the possible afterlife endows the poem with certain metaphysical optimism. Whitman attitude to the theme of death is much more intimate, personal and intuitive than Bryant's universal, cosmic perspective.

The most significant feature of Whitman's representation of death is that the poet is introducing it through the audial rather than visual channel. In the line "whispers of heavenly death murmur'd I hear" (Whitman) one can observe an unintended parallel with Dickenson's soft and gentle conversation with her neighbor in the grave. The sounds associated with death are soothing and calming. Whitman in a very traditional metaphoric vein associates death with the night. The night is dark, that is why the poet makes the readers 'see' with their ears:

Whispers of heavenly death murmur'd I hear,

Labial gossip of night, sibilant chorals,

Footsteps gently ascending, mystical breezes wafted soft

and low,

Ripples of unseen rivers ... (Whitman)

The labial, hissing sounds and elaborate alliterations are supposed to imitate whispering, rustling and the quiet murmur of the river. The river itself is a powerful, timeless symbol which stands for the unstoppable flow of time, imminence of change, natural fluidity of life to which no end can be seen. The river of life is carrying the reader quietly into the night:

Ripples of unseen rivers,

tides of a current flowing,

forever flowing (Whitman).

Another important symbol in the poem which also stems from the natural realm is the clouds:

I see, just see skyward, great cloud-masses,

Mournfully slowly they roll, silently swelling and

mixing (Whitman).

The clouds are one of the most fascinating sights for the human beings, in eternal motion, the celestial theatre open to all interpretations. But the clouds are also the natural veil that prevents the mortal eyes from seeing the higher order of the universe. Clouds are limiting human understanding by fostering human imagination. Through this metaphoric 'veil' the speaker is trying to see the stars which symbolize in this poem the mystery of life and death:

With at times a half-dimm'd sadden'd far-off star,

Appearing and disappearing (Whitman).

Thus, though Whitman chooses a more lyrical interpretation, he too is using his poetry to fathom the cosmic, universal truths. In line with Bryant's interpretation, he sees life and death as a natural circle.

Any exploration of the way the theme of death is represented in the American literature would be incomplete without Emily Dickinson's insightful, intuitive poems which reveal the author to be mesmerized and fascinated by death. In her poem "I Died For Beauty" (1862), the reader can discover ambivalent attitude to death where the positive coloring prevails. One can see it from the imagery that is used and the connotations this imagery exhibits. Following in the footsteps of Bryant, Dickinson portrays a tomb as a dwelling, even a home, which has rooms. Thus, people in lying in their graves become neighbours. Dickinson shows that in death people can become closer because death strips the consciousness of the routine thoughts and leaves only the things that matter - the Beauty and the Truth. Through such metaphysical 'declattering' it becomes easier for a solitary soul to find fellow-thinkers. The poet actively uses traditional imagery associated with death to speak about its eternal unfathomable truth comparing death with the night. Wonderfully visual symbol is used to embody the oblivion that comes after death:

We talked between the rooms,

Until the moss had reached our lips,

And covered up our names (Dickinson).

Death silences even the most eager speakers and erases their names from the memory of the generations which follow. Dickinson sees it as a natural process, a part of the life cycle. "It is a suggestion of the death reversion which springs the thought to a harmony more subtle and remote," writes Francis H. Stoddard about Dickinson's poem (Stoddard 25). Through familiar, traditional symbols and natural imagery Dickinson manages to speak about the eternal mystery of death with intimate warmth and calmness, while making the subject relevant for the most diverse readership.

Conclusion

In conclusion, one should say that all three poems are incredibly modern in terms of their original treatment of the traditional imagery and the timeless theme. Nowadays fascination with death is no less ubiquitous than in the times of Ancient Egypt. Literature, theatre, cinema, art and photography, philosophy and science are preoccupied with the mystery of death and afterlife. On the one hand, in many works of art, especially within the mass culture, death has become a commonplace. Too much blood is shed and too many bodies lie breathless on the ground. Death has ceased to be a unique intimate experience. On the other hand, it is sometimes feared to the point of total exclusion from the cultural space of impeccably optimistic and cheerful movies, books and music. Both perspectives seem to be limiting as they let the audience lose sight of the fact that appreciation of death is the other side of appreciation of life. Profound and thoughtful approach to the opposition of mortality of human being and the immortality of the nature in the given poems are the necessary counterbalance for the modern superficial attitude to this timeless mystery.

Works Cited

Bradley, William Aspenwall. "An excerpt from William Cullen Bryant." Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, edited by Laurie Lanzen Harris and Sheila Fitzgerald, vol. 6, Gale, 1894. Literature Resource Centre, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420011608/ LitRC?u=txshracd2489&sid=LitRC&xid=20ca0e62. Accessed 3 Apr. 2019. Originally published in An Excerpt from his W...