Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-jbqgn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-02T10:41:57.246Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Nation Past and Present: A Study of Robert Lowell's ‘For the Union Dead’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Paul Kavanagh
Affiliation:
University of Queensland

Extract

In ‘For the Union Dead’ Robert Lowell evokes a landscape which is symbolic in both a social and an historical sense. His aim in doing so seems to be to test the relevance of the traditional ideals of freedom and racial equality in contemporary American society. The landscape is arid and undermined by a garage which stands for the destructive and unreasoned actions of a city enslaved by the motives of affluence. Two major symbols stand together over the abyss of the underground garage, the Statehouse and a bas-relief of Colonel Shaw. The first stands for the actual administration of the ideals of democracy as expressed in the constitution, while the second represents the deepest convictions of American liberalism which motivated the North during the Civil War. This article explores the historical relevance of the death of Colonel Shaw, who was ‘a martyr’ for the cause of die Negro soldiers he led into battle. This is done through historical documents, and through an examination of James Russell Lowell's ‘Memoriae Positum’ which is a celebration of the death of Shaw. The conclusions drawn indicate that Robert Lowell's poem is ambiguous in its treatment of die material relating to Shaw, that he is far less certain as to the relevance of liberalism either to die historical development of American society, or to the disintegrating contemporary scene. Robert Lowell is forced to accept the unreality of claims made for the racial equality, either supposedly realized or hoped for. His vision extends into the future and contemplates social disintegration in the image of atomic destruction which illustrated the destructive power of American idealism in die last war.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Lowell, Robert, Life Studies (New York, 1959).Google Scholar

2 Lowell, Robert, For the Union Dead (New York, 1964), pp. 70–2.Google Scholar

3 The Selected Poetry of Andrew Marvell, ed. Kermode, Frank (New York, 1967), p. 75.Google Scholar

4 Letters of James Russell Lowell, ed. Norton, Charles Eliot (New York, 1966), vol. 2, pp. 78–9.Google Scholar

5 The Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (New York, 1966), vol. 5, pp. 1215.Google Scholar

6 See Nevins, Allan, The War for the Union (New York, 1960), vol. 2.Google Scholar I have taken much of the historical detail referred to here from this book.

7 Ibid., p. 513.

8 Moore, Frank (ed.), The Rebellion Record (New York, 1869), vol. 7, p. 215.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., p. 37.

10 Lowell, Robert, Imitations (London, 1962), p. 149.Google Scholar

11 ‘91 Revere Street’ in Life Studies (New York, 1959), p. 12.Google Scholar