Abstract
In Democratic Vistas Whitman defined a poem as an “image-making work.” If we are to judge by what he says in the prefaces about the function of poetry, the image to which he referred would be, in very general terms, the Ideal by which a nation is enabled to realize itself (as individuals and en masse), or, more particularly, the self of the individual poet, which is presented as archetype. The drift of the interpretation, in either case, is away from the esthetic; it moves instead toward areas that may be variously described as psychological, religious, or metaphysical. The tendency toward the esthetic is there, however; present in such a definition is a basis for speculating upon the kinds of imagery Whitman uses and the extent to which he relies upon the expressive possibilities of this traditional device of the poet—the relation between images and the final, single image.
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