On Culture, Knowledge, and Discipline
Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Sea Symphony” is often giggled at for its overt sexual imagery, given to it by the famous poet who supplied it’s libretto. One must concede, the titterers have a point. Walt Witman’s “limitless heaving breasts”, and “husky nurse” who sings “her husky song”, are visuals that are rather hard to refute.
But, just as much as Witman’s poetry is littered with sexual symbolism, it is also laden quite heavily with religious imagery. Witman’s valorization of the Christian idea of purpose is everywhere in this symphony. With his “emblem of man” that “elates above death”, and his “first intent” that “remains and shall be carried out”, Witman is clearly alluding to the notion of God’s plan for man, and the salvation necessary to complete that plan. And the farther we go in the poetry, the more explicit that gets: “finally shall come the poet worthy that name; the true Son of God shall come singing his songs.”