Definitions of Beauty in Whitman and Poe

In his essay "The Poetic Principle," Edgar Allan Poe denounces the widely accepted notion of Truth as the ultimate goal of a poem. He says that Truth requires one to be "cool, calm, [and] unimpassioned". To Poe, these characteristics are "the exact converse of the poetical" (504). Poe believes that good poetry's real concern should be with man's "immortal instinct," his "sense of the Beautiful," and particularly with the gap between our instinctual sense of Beauty and our inability to recognize it, except in "brief and indeterminate glimpses" (505). In the poem "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," Walt Whitman gives voice to this same notion of transience and fleeting recognition of the supernal in the form of a ferry ride from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Whitman's use of the ferry represents continual movement just as Poe's belief that the "elevation of the soul" represents a rising process; the ferry in the poem unites all generations and represents what Poe calls "Supernal Beauty", which is portrayed in the poem as a type of ephemeral beauty. The ephemeral beauty portrayed in the poem is everlasting and continuous. Both poets emphasize the importance of the eternal.

To Whitman, the ferry ride represents the shared experience of humanity. He is a passenger among other passengers, and these other people are the catalyst that leads to the understanding of the transcendent aspect of humanity. In their shared journey is a sense of the eternal. The ferry gives Whitman a sense of timelessness; this is a journey that has been taken before and will be taken in the future, and this simple fact provides unity. Poe's belief that a poem's worth is in the degree of "the elevation of the soul" and is obtained through "its creation of supernal beauty" is evident through Whitman's appreciation of nature and his relation to overcoming space and time to express humankind's spiritual unity (499). Poe's belief that the true essence of poetry is Beauty is evident in "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," where this aspect depicts the spirit of humans through nature.

For Whitman, the ferry is the medium through which he travels across the dual portions of the world. The ferry transports him from land to land via the water. In the context of the ferry ride, the land represents the physical and the water represents the spiritual. The temporary nature of the ferry ride parallels the temporary nature of transcendence that Poe discusses in his essay. The physical world, land, is the place that frames the journey. A person begins and ends on land but in the intervening space of the water, a spiritual epiphany can occur. The spiritual epiphany Whitman undergoes is that of connection to other generations as he says, "It avails not, time nor place - distance avails not,/ I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence," (Section 3, line 1). The beauty of the tides, sky, and the river do not change as time and distance ascend and this accounts for why all generations are connected. Poe represents this connection through his idea that beauty is everywhere and that everyone possesses an "immortal instinct, deep within the spirit of man" that allows one to find the beauty in nature (505).

Beauty is instilled in everything around us, and Poe believes that each poem should address this Beauty. Whitman portrays the feelings that different generations have through the beauty that each time period evokes; in section 3, Whitman begins three successive lines with the phrase "Just as you," followed by an image that himself is currently viewing. Whitman's use of repetition creates a connection between the feelings of past people, and his feelings at the present moment. The images that Whitman views on his journey on the ferry, such as the heights of Brooklyn, the sky and seagulls, and more importantly their inner significance, represent what Poe would consider a great aspect of nature and a great representation of Supernal Beauty. Poe's idea on the transcending of time is evident as he states, "Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of the glories beyond the grave, we struggle, by multiform combinations among the things and thoughts of Time, to attain a portion of that Loveliness whose very elements, perhaps, appertain to eternity alone" (505). This relation to time coincides with that of Whitman's where he experiences all the feelings that many have and many will come to experience in future generations throughout the third section in the poem.

Whitman's sense of connection to others is a source of salvation, both for himself and for the people to which he relates. The common man may not see the beauty of riding the ferry that Whitman conveys in the poem, but Whitman allows the common man to truly relate to himself by relating to man's faults and saying that "It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall [...] Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil,/ I am he who knew what it was to be evil,/ I too knitted the old knot of contrariety" (Sec.6, line 5).

Whitman employs Poe's ideals not only when speaking the truth to temper both the good and evil that comprise our soul, but also through his method of enforcing the truth. This is evident as Whitman continues to write, "[I too] Blabb'd, blush'd resented, lied, stole, grudg'd,/ had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak" (Sec.6). Here, Whitman is employing his usual choice of cataloging his mistakes to show his reader that they not only relate to humans through their good qualities, but also through their bad qualities.

Just as the Whitman uses the ferry to symbolize the spirit's continual movement in the poem, Poe simultaneously epitomizes movement through the continual rising of the 'elevation of the soul' that a reader experiences as the soul is excited. Poe uses this elevation to describe the value of a poem, but believes that "all excitements are, through a psychal necessity, transient" (p.499). This