& # 8217 ; s & # 8220 ; On The Beach At Night & # 8221 ; And Stevens & # 8217 ; & # 8220 ; Sunday Morning & # 8221 ; Essay, Research Paper
The hunt for immortality is non an uncommon one in literature. Many writers and poets find contentment within the ideals of religion and deity ; others, such as Whitman and Stevens, achieve satisfaction with the construct of the immortality of mortality. This apprehension of the rhythm of decease and metempsychosis dominates both Walt Whitman & # 8217 ; s & # 8220 ; On the Beach at Night & # 8221 ; and Wallace Stevens & # 8217 ; & # 8220 ; Sunday Morning & # 8221 ; and demonstrates the poets & # 8217 ; doctrines of worldly immortality.
Both poets present readers with characters oppugning the evident transiency of nature. Whitman & # 8217 ; s immature miss weeps to see the black & # 8220 ; burial-clouds that lower winning shortly to devour all, & # 8221 ; ( line 12 ) merely as Stevens & # 8217 ; immature adult female is saddened & # 8220 ; when the birds are gone, and their warm fields/Return no more & # 8221 ; ( lines 49-50 ) . These characters, unable to hold on the wholly of the rhythm of mortality, are dismayed by earthly loss they continually observe.
Whitman and Stevens likewise structured & # 8220 ; On the Beach at Night & # 8221 ; and & # 8220 ; Sunday Morning, & # 8221 ; in that their storytellers answer to their characters & # 8217 ; concerns by explicating, or at least suggesting at, the beauty of the ageless rhythm of mortality. & # 8220 ; Something there is more immortal even than the stars, / ( Many the entombments, many the yearss and darks, go throughing off, ) & # 8221 ; ( lines 28-29 ) susurrations Whitman & # 8217 ; s storyteller. & # 8220 ; Death is the female parent of beauty ; hence from her, /Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams/And our desires, & # 8221 ; ( lines 63-65 ) echoes Stevens. Through their suggestions of this death-rebirth rhythm, Whitman & # 8217 ; s and Stevens & # 8217 ; storytellers assuage their characters scruples. Further, both poets utilize Jove/Jupiter as a metaphor for looking immortality, and possibly more familiar to the characters than the rhythm of decease and metempsychosis. While Whitman depends upon the planet named after the God to function as the foundation for his analogy, Stevens utilizes Jove & # 8217 ; s embodiment myth. Similar to the narrative of Christ & # 8217 ; s birth, Jove & # 8217 ; s narrative of birth, decease and return to the celestial spheres mirrors, in more familiar footings, the natural rhythm of birth, decease and metempsychosis.
The verse form & # 8217 ; similarities end, nevertheless, at the storytellers & # 8217 ; assurance in the immortality of the rhythm. While Stevens & # 8217 ; narrator confidently explicates the premium of this repeat, Whitman merely allows his storyteller to subtly propose its possible. He refers to the rhythm merely as & # 8220 ; something & # 8221 ; : & # 8220 ; Something that shall digest longer even than bright Jupiter & # 8221 ; ( accent added ; line 30 ) . The storyteller farther susurrations this hint, as though its deductions are excessively cursing to be stated aloud. Yet, the reader is able to spot the subte
crosstalk of these statements. As the storyteller describes the passing of the yearss and darks, the certainty that the Moon will reflect once more, the reader understands his jubilation of the cyclical nature of clip, of decease and metempsychosis. Therefore, the hope the storyteller attempts to convey resonates within the reader’s cognizance.
Where Whitman is hesitating, Stevens is bold. Stevens & # 8217 ; storyteller does non suggest, hedge or susurration ; he proclaims. The storyteller states unambiguously that & # 8220 ; Death is the female parent of beauty & # 8221 ; ( line 63 ) , and expands the averment by depicting the many ways in which people have come to unwittingly depend upon the metempsychosis rhythm, such as the maturation of fruit. Furthermore, Stevens employs his treatment of the rhythm as a direct defense of traditional spiritual patterns. He eschews his characters concerns about losing a Sunday forenoon church service with his dismissal of a faith based upon things that no longer exist:
Whey should she give her premium to the dead?
What is deity if it can come
Merely in soundless shadows and in dreams? ( lines 16-18 )
Stevens prefers the worship of nature and its ageless rotary motion of life and decease to the worship of adult male. He is bold in this pick, whereas Whitman makes no mention to faith, and therefore absolves himself of the contention which Stevens addresses caput on.
Whitman does touch to a deity, nevertheless, which Stevens price reductions. Whitman & # 8217 ; s storyteller, in his treatment of things immortal, alights upon Jupiter as a lord figure. Jupiter, the storyteller assures the immature crying miss, will return one time the clouds disperse. Yet, even Whitman takes note of the rhythm of loss and addition as possibly more immortal than Jupiter: & # 8220 ; Something that shall digest longer even than bright Jupiter & # 8221 ; ( line 30 ) . As such, Whitman tackles a point which Stevens avoids: Whitman & # 8217 ; s storyteller sees even the Godhead as topic to the rhythm of immortality, while Stevens does non do such a connexion. Stevens, alternatively, focal points on the human facets of theist faith, specifically Christianity. In making so, he eludes a theological statement by concentrating alternatively on the sociological issue of faith.
The ensuing verse forms, & # 8220 ; On the Beach at Night & # 8221 ; and & # 8220 ; Sunday Morning, & # 8221 ; express similar beliefs about the cyclical nature of life. Their similar constructions, of a questioning character and persuasively reacting storyteller, let the poets to profess their beliefs about the character of mortal life. And although Stevens focuses on rebuting his modern-day spiritual patterns and Whitman centres on admiting his personal divinity, the verse forms every bit address the hunt for immortality in the human universe.
