The Travels As An Epic Work

One of Bartram’s underlying motives in the Travels is to express his vision of America’s place in Western history. The literary Hortus Siccus he sent to Europe described a wondrous New World, but also the Old World transplanted, its centuries of civilized tradition intact. Bartram could have derived this theme from several histories of the late 18th century. We do not know for certain whether Bartram read Edward Gibbon’s classic work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, (1776–1788) which contains many of the intellectual themes used by Bartram, but there is strong evidence to suggest that he did. He was certainly familiar with most of the literary epics that inspired Gibbon, (The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aenid, The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, etc.) and as an educated reader, could hardly have ignored the publication of so important a book as Decline and Fall. We do know Bartram was well-versed in the Bible and had a strong interest in Greco-Roman philosophy and literature.(187)

Perhaps the best evidence for Bartram’s familiarity with epic tradition lies in the Travels itself. In it he alludes to classical mythology, to “The Fields of Pharsalia” and the “Vale of Tempe,” and to Homer, Ovid, Virgil, and Milton. Scripture also(188) gets a frequent nod and these allusions add the weight of ancient tradition to Bartram’s story of the New World. Coleridge saw this quality; it made the book seem “written in the spirit of the old travelers.” Carlyle agreed, advising Emerson that “all American libraries ought to provide themselves with that kind of book; and keep them as a kind of biblical article.”(189) (Italics added for emphasis.)

Throughout the Travels, Bartram clearly senses that his narrative is a form of epic history. He portrays himself as an epic hero, attractively modest, but with impressive credentials of knowledge and sentiment. As a botanist, he is an Adamic figure who wanders in Paradise, still following God’s first command (Genesis 1:18–20), to name the earth’s creatures:

Bartram is not a fallen Adam, but one still at home in the Garden of Eden, looking forward to new “prospects,”(191) and fresh knowledge, as ordained by God. His journey is an epic quest, a “sylvan pilgrimage”(192) with implications of international significance, for both America and Europe. Such is the mission of a hero in a literary epic, and Bartram quite consciously invokes the conventional machinery of that tradition to underscore his point.

He is accompanied in his travels by a Muse, whom he occasionally invokes for inspiration or instruction. Bartram’s Muse is not supernatural, but natural and rational: “Obedient to the admonitions of my attendant spirit, curiosity, as well as to gratify the expectations of my worthy patron, I again set off on my southern excursion…”(193) At times this spirit becomes an uncontrollable and Faustian impulse, relentlessly urging him forward, never satisfied with his deeds: “…I was restless to be searching for more, my curiosity being insatiable.”(194) This inner drive sets him apart from other men, like the ambitious young mechanic with whom he travels briefly in Georgia. Eventually they part company, to Bartram Is relief: “Whilst I, continually impelled by a restless spirit of curiosity, in pursuit of new productions of nature, my chief happiness consisted in tracing and admiring the infinite power, majesty, and perfection of the great Almighty Creator…”(195) In the later Romantic period, a poet like Shelley would characterize this insatiable drive as Promethean, a mood of defiance that encourages men to steal knowledge from the gods and give it to their fellow beings. Bartram’s curiosity was only a means for making discoveries that “might become useful to society.”(196) In this epic, the hero belongs to an unfallen world, where God’s vengeance has not yet forced men to suffer and despair.

As in the traditional epics, supernatural forces occasionally intervene in the Travels, offering their protection to Bartram and encouraging him to continue his mission:

Bartram sees this part of America as an unfallen Eden, a belief that probably traces back to the happy years he spent in his father’s botanical garden, which Alexander Wilson called Bartram’s “little paradise,”(198_ The dominance of this Edenic motif may explain why Bartram provides some anti-pastoral moments in his narrative, such as his combat with the alligators at Battle Lagoon; for the epic hero must struggle at times with dragons and demons to prove his valor. By demonstrating superior courage, he verifies his worthiness to fulfill the mission entrusted to him by the gods. The debate about Bartram’s descriptions of the alligators may therefore miss his point. Perhaps he deliberately turns these creatures into mythic beings to verify his heroic stature and the importance of his quest:

“But what is yet more surprising to a stranger, is the incredible loud and terrifying roar, which they are capable of making, especially in the spring season, their breeding time. It most resembles very heavy distant thunder, not only shaking the air and waters, but causing the earth to tremble; and when hundreds and thousands are roaring at the same time, you can scarcely be persuaded, but that the whole globe is violently and dangerously agitated.”(199)

Against these struggles, Bartram sets his hymns of praise to the benign Powers that rule his universe. In the epic style, he delivers sensual apostrophes to those aspects of Creation that reflect its harmony, order, and propriety:

These are the rhapsodic effusions that irritated some early readers but charmed the Romantic poets, who perhaps saw their relation to the epic tradition, where emotional paeans are expected: “O thou Creator supreme, almighty how infinite and incomprehensible thy workst most perfect, and every way astonishing!”(201) A related version of this motif, the joyous salutation to a diety, is the “dawn song” or aubade, which Bartram frequently uses to hail the daily reappearance of the sun, a symbol of “the universal vibration of life.(202)

The most common epic device Bartram uses is the epic simile, an elaborated comparison between a primary object, something seen in Nature, and a secondary object, an association or train of thought that momentarily excludes the primary object. Using similes, the epic poet draws the facts and ideas of his narrative together; particular objects become analogous to universal ideas. Bartram uses the epic simile for the same end, to give his narrative a historical breadth that mere travel notes or observations would not support alone. The device also concurs with his habits as a botanist; since science can infer from a particular object or set of conditions the workings of universal law: “This delightful and productive island, placed in front of the rising city of Sunbury, …would exhibit a comprehensive epitome of the history of all sea-coast Islands of Carolina and Georgia, as likewise in general of the coast of the main.”(203) A poet would call this inference a synecdoche, that special form of analogy in which the part becomes an equivalent of the whole; for later Romantic theorists like Coleridge, this relationship became the heart of his important definition of the literary symbol. Bartram instinctively uses symbols in his account of the Ephemera life cycle, in which he tells the entire story of Creation in a single year.(204) In the Travels, Coleridge found many objects that probably suggested symbols in his own poetry: the slain pelican(205) and beastly alligators(206) seem early models of the albatross and sea-snakes that figure so importantly in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Bartram’s tendency to see external Nature as a sign of hidden powers greatly appealed to the Romantics; he verified their own theories of Nature and imagination. His interpretation of this process was largely theistic; he assumed that man was the symbol-making animal as part of his Adamic mission. The Florida Indians, for example, lived in a highly symbolic culture; they used objects in Nature, like a vulture’s feathers, to express religious and political meanings.(207) The same merging of fact and idea, he hoped, would characterize his quest and that of his nation, as it assumed a new place in the history of the world.

Footnotes

187. Fagin, William Bartram, Interpreter, op. cit., p. 113; also see: Frank Fox, “The Eden World of William Bartram,” unpublished Phi Alpha Theta Student thesis, Salt Lake City, 1967, pp. 22–23; and Richard M. Gummere, “William Bartram, A Classical Scientist,” Classical Journal, Vol. L (January 1955), pp. 167–170.

188. Bartram’s Travels, op. cit., p. 360, Harper, p. 228.

189. Coleridge, Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, London, 1836, 2nd ed., p. 33; and the Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and R. W. Emerson 1834–1872, Boston, 1884, Vol. 2, p. 198.

190. Bartram’s Travels, op. cit., p. 24, Harper, p. 17.

191. Ibid., p. 346, Harper, p. 219.

192. Ibid., p. 153, Harper, p. 97.

193. Ibid., p. 9, Harper, p. 6.

194. Ibid., p. 34, Harper, p. 23.

195. Ibid., p. 73, Harper, p. 48.

196. Ibid., p. 74, Harper, p. 48.

197. Ibid., p. 107, Harper, p. 69.

198. Fagin, William Bartram Interpreter, op. cit., pp. 6–9.

199. Bartram’s Travels, op. cit., p. 129, Harper, p. 82.

200. Ibid., p. 48, Harper, p. 31.

201. Ibid., p. 59, Harper, pp. 38 and 65; also see “The Universal Anthem,” p. 102.

202. Ibid., pp. 179 and 245–246, Harper, pp. 114 and 154–155.

203. Ibid., p. 9, Harper, p. 6.

204. Ibid., pp. 80–84, Harper, pp. 52–54. It is also interesting to note Bartram’s pun on the word ephemera.

205. Ibid., p. 70, Harper, p. 46. The slain pelican has also, of course, long been used as a symbol of Christ and the Church.

206. Ibid., pp. 122–123, Harper, pp. 78–79.

207. Ibid., p. 151, Harper, p. 96.

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