1. A Noiseless Patient Spider Flashcards
Context
Whitman first published “A Noiseless Patient Spider” as part of a longer sequence, “Whispers of Heavenly Death,” in 1868.
“Whispers of Heavenly Death” revolves around the speaker contemplating death, and specifically, the death of his male lover.
in this context a noiseless patient spider is about filling the void left by a lovers death (vacant vast surrounding).
The “vacant vast surrounding” in the poem could also convey a sense of spiritual vacancy left by Lincoln’s death and the trauma of the war.
M. Jimmie Killingsworth
“Whitman might have gone the conventional route of offering a reflection on human striving.”
Theme: Isolation and Creativity
“A Noiseless Patient Spider” explores the relationship between the individual self and the larger world.
This spider becomes an extended metaphor for the speaker’s soul, which is likewise isolated and working to find a sense of connection. Ultimately, the poem suggests that in spite of the loneliness people might experience as individuals, the work of the soul is to constantly seek and make connections—however daunting such a task may be.
The poem switches to the future tense in its final lines, which suggests that the work of the soul is ongoing.
The future tense also conveys a sense of uncertainty in the poem, since the connections are not yet complete.
At the same time, however, since readers can see that the spider’s work is both natural and inevitable—readers trust that the spider will create its web eventually, since that is simply what spiders do—the metaphor between spider and soul imparts a sense of hope in the poem’s ending.
What’s more, while the poem depicts both the spider and the soul as isolated, the metaphor it creates between them suggests that connection already exists.
The words “surrounding” and “surrounded” imply a presence outside the self, even if that presence is at first experienced as “measureless oceans of space.” Through its metaphor of a natural web, the poem thus ultimately suggests that people seek and make connections within a universe that is already, like a web, infinitely complex, meaningful, and interconnected.
Essentially there is a dance between the themes of isolation and connection, suggesting that both r natural.
Theme: Creation and Creativity
“A Noiseless Patient Spider” presents a spider engaged in an act of creation, as it makes its web. The speaker’s soul, too, is engaged in a creative act, as the soul crafts its own “web” of connection.
The poem thus suggests that any creative act (including the writing of poems) is an act of exploration, in that it involves both finding and making connections between apparently unlike things.
Just as the spider’s purpose is to create webs to ensure its survival, the soul to creates art and connects itself to the web of life to survive in a different way.
Walt Whitman stated, “It is a beautiful truth that all men contain something of the artist in them. And perhaps it is the case that the greatest artists live and die, the world and themselves alike ignorant what they possess.”
Maria Popova- ““Whitman contemplates how art feeds life so that life itself becomes a victual of the poetic.””
Symbol: Filament
Dramatic Method
A filament is a thin thread or fiber. In “A Noiseless Patient Spider,” the spider is described as “launch[ing] forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself” in order to make its web. The filaments are, then, within the poem, the literal material of creation.
Allusion: Spheres
Could refer to the Greek concept of the Music of the Spheres.
Walt Whitman poetry was highly influenced by music, and especially opera.
Pythagoras proposed that the Sun, Moon and planets all emit their own unique hum based on their orbital revolution, and that the quality of life on Earth reflects the tenor of celestial sounds which are physically imperceptible to the human ear.
Whitman is suggesting he wants connections which are literally mathematically perfect, ones which are meant to fit axiomatically.
Allusion: Transcendentalism
Whitman was profoundly influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson and the ideas of Transcendentalism, which emphasized a return to nature. Readers can see these ideas reflected in “A Noiseless Patient Spider,” as the speaker looks to an element of nature (a spider) as a model for how to create and seek connections.
The sense of interconnection in the poem, and its preoccupation with the soul, also reflect the Transcendental idea of the Over-Soul, a kind of larger consciousness of which everything and everyone is part.
Extended Metaphor: Spider
Dramatic Method
the speaker’s soul will continue seeking connections until it succeeds. The spider thus serves as a visual metaphor, extended throughout the poem, for what it means to experience aloneness but nevertheless try, over and over again, to form connections with the surrounding world.
The poem’s metaphor also serves another purpose. Metaphor is a device that brings together—or makes connections between—unlike things. In this sense, the poem enacts what it describes.
Connection
End-Stopped Lines
Each line in the poem is end stopped They create a sense of even pacing in the poem, which could be read as reflecting the spider’s and the soul’s work. Neither’s efforts feel frantic, because the lines don’t feel frantic; rather, the lines (and implicitly the filaments) are varied in length but steady, allowing a moment of breath at the end of each.
At the same time, the fact that the lines end with commas, not periods, creates forward movement in the poem. This forward movement likewise conveys the actions of the spider and the soul, as their work is constant, ongoing, and “tireless.”
Continuity
Personification
The spider is described as “noiseless,” as though it is actively refraining from making noise rather than simply being quiet. It is also described as “patient,” an adjective usually associated with a moral quality in a person.
The speaker’s soul is also personified in the poem. That both the spider and the soul are treated as human is important in the poem, because it makes the poem’s extended metaphor immediately easy to grasp.
Since the spider has already been introduced in terms that reflect human values (values of work, effort, and patience), it is imbued with a kind of consciousness. The comparison to the soul, then, seems to develop naturally. It is as though, at some level, the spider and soul share a similar consciousness and intent.
Connection
Apostrophe
the speaker says at the beginning of the stanza, and “O my soul” repeats as the closing of the poem. This is a form of apostrophe because the soul, though it is imbued here with a kind of agency, can’t actually reply to the speaker.
The apostrophe in the poem distances the speaker, in a way, from the soul, as the soul is depicted almost as though it is independent, with its own intents and its own work.
Both the spider and the soul are held out in front of the speaker, to be observed, described, and implicitly praised for their efforts.
The use of apostrophe also works to direct the poem outward to the reader, as though the reader is the “you” and “soul” of the speaker. This works, then, to create a third filament of connection within the poem, as the poem connects spider to speaker, and then the speaker to the reader.
kind of transcendant; reader is treated as the soul of the speaker implies a universality of the message. we all are connected and the strife for connection connects us all.
Connection
Repitition
Repetition in the poem begins slowly in each stanza, then accumulates and builds momentum.
Adds a musical quality.
repitition of gerund verbs implies continuity.
Anaphora
Anaphora works to create momentum and insistence.
The repetition of “till” works, here, to emphasize the soul’s actions as going on even beyond the ending of the poem, and perhaps endlessly.
Asyndeton
First, asyndeton works in the poem to emphasize its forward movement and momentum. Conjunctions slow a reader down, allowing a pause between the first and last clauses in a list.
Form
Structure
Though the poem does not follow a specific form (like a sonnet or villanelle) the form it creates is still important to its meaning. The poem describes two things (the spider and the soul), with one stanza dedicated to each.
The poem also implicitly describes two webs (the one made by the speaker and the one made by the soul). The stanzas could be read as visual representations of these webs, while the white space between them could be read as the space that both the spider and speaker—and, implicitly, the poem—are trying to bridge.
Finally, the five-line stanzas are important, as the odd number of lines in each creates a sense of irresolution in the poem, in keeping with the sense of connections that are not yet sure or complete. At the same time, Whitman brings this into balance and a kind of resolution by combining the two stanzas into a poem that, as a whole, has an even number of lines.
