Lanier's Use of Science for Poetic Imagery

Abstract

INTEREST in the relationship between literature and science continues to grow, as is evidenced by the recent fairly extensive bibliography on that subject prepared by the Bibliography Committee of the General Topics VII group of the Modern Language Association.' A good deal of the work indexed in that bibliography is concerned with how the principal scientific concepts or revelations of a period affected the thought of literary figures, and what attitude they expressed toward it in their writings. These questions are important questions, and it is proper that they should be investigated by competent scholars and that the results should be made known to others not specialists in the field. A further aspect of the relationship between science and literature, specifically the change science has effected in the vocabulary, form, and figures of poetry, is as yet largely virgin territory, though a few specialized studies of this sort have been published. Doubtless attitudes, philosophical impact, and influence on thought content, if you will, are basic and should be studied first. But the more specific matters of the technical changes science has made, particularly in poetry, may possibly-be the fruit of the new emphasis on science in our literature and may ultimately be of more widespread interest. Students-and scholars-who yawn when told what effect science had on the thinking of a man they do not consider especially important as a thinker may be more attentive to the information that science made a technical difference in the poetry of a man whom they respect as a poet. With Sidney Lanier the foregoing is true. A prominent American poet, with a well-known interest in science and considerable