The Metaphor of Light in Whitmans Civil War Poems - Literature Essay Samples

O divine power, but lend yourself to meSo that I may show the shadow of that blessedKingdom which is embedded in my brainThe above passage is excerpted from Canto I of Longfellows translation of Dante Alighieris Paradiso (22-24). In this third section of The Divine Comedy, Dante uses light as a metaphor for goodness; as objects move closer to God, they reflect more light. However, light serves another purpose in the work, as well. The divine light in Paradiso is so bright that at first, the speaker cannot even bear to look at it in its entirety. His experience of visiting Paradiso is so intense that he is continually conscious about using language to recount it accurately. In the quotation, the speaker can only hope to convey a shadow of the great light to which he is exposed.As a poet, Whitman, too, is conscious about his ability to accurately depict what he observed in visiting Union hospitals during the Civil War. In the introduction to his Memoranda, written between 1862 an d 1865, he writes:Of the present Volume most of its pages are verbatim renderings from such pencillings on the spot. Some were scratchd down from narratives I heard and itemized while watching, or waiting, or tending somebody amid those scenes. I have perhaps forty such little note-books left, forming a special history of those years, for myself alone, full of associations never to be possibly said or sung. I wish I could convey to the reader the associations that attach to these soild and creasd little livraisons, each composed of a sheet or two of paper, folded small to carry in the pocket, and fastend with a pin. (1)