“Imagery” is derived from the word image. An image is something that can be perceived through one or more of the senses _ sight hearing, smell, taste, touch, the sense of motion, or the sense of heat and cold. Imagery is the pictorial quality of a literacy work achieved through a collection of images. In a broader sense imagery is often used as synonymous with figures of speech or figurative language. It evokes a complex of emotional suggestions, and communicates mood tone and meaning.
Whitman employs different types of images in order to create desired effect. They are images of the sea, the earth, night and day, images of nature and animals, of energy and vitality, and of sex.
Whitman’s long poems like Crossing Brooklyn Ferry seem to be made up of a number of brief descriptions. At a first glance they seem chaotic as they flash past in the eye in rapid succession, but actually have an implicit pattern. One critic remarks, “...each different image fits, as in mosaic, into the general whole”. In Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, we get:
”The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the walk in the street and the passage over the river.”
In these lines we find a quick succession of images, vivid and powerful, which build an important aspect of the Brooklyn Ferry. They seem to be disparate parts, but essentially they are bound together by one common tie.
The imagery of grass is important in Leaves of Grass. It is a graphic representation of individuality and kinship with all, and is thus perfect symbol of democracy.
The image of water symbolizes the concept of unity in the universe in Leaves of Grass. The ‘sea' image stands for birth and death in Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking. It also symbolizes a realm of spirituality across which the poet pleads with his soul to venture forth in voysge.
“Star” is a recurring image in many of Whitman's poems, especially in When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd.
The images of vitality and energy play vital role in many of his poems, notably in Song of Myself.
Whitman’s images are multifaceted. They function on more than one level. Whitman uses images to carry the reader from the world of sensory perception to the world of thought in which the former achieves some perspective. He moves from the sensory level to the metaphysical level. The images are, of course, continually becoming symbols of which the meanings fluctuate.
Whitman's sensibility and response to the visible world are expressed clearly through his images. The poet seems to be specially fascinated by the essential dynamism of life, by the objects that suggest energy and vitality. His sexual images indicate his quest for vitality. His images also suggest that the poet conceives of the existence of created things as one of matter and energy, and both the elements fusing into one another.
There are interpenetrations of the concrete and the abstract in the world of his images. It may be said that they are the external forms of abstract philosophy. In Crossing Brooklyn Ferry the poet gives a list of images of the earth and the sky, but he remarks in section 4,
“These and all else were to me the same as they are to you.”
The images taken from the natural objects serve as a medium of the relationships between different generations of human beings. The readers are impressed by the vivid, evocative, and lively nature of Whitman's images. His ideas of democracy, his philosophy of mysticism, and the universal bond of all things and beings have all been effectively expressed through his powerful imagery.
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