Poem Analysis - "Ode to the Confederate Dead"

These lines speak of the humors (whose literal translation is four different liquids in the human body, or, metaphorically, the different characteristics of each of the four seasons) which “rot” the graves, of the wind that “stains” and “chips” each grave, of angels that are “uncomfortable” because they are eternally carved into stone. This diction choice is unpleasant and gives a desperate, almost fatal, sense to the graves of these soldiers, which when living, persona described with words such as “desires,” “arrogance,” and “chivalry.” Toward the end of the poem, persona says, “What shall we say of the bones, unclean, / Whose verdurous anonymity will grow? / The ragged arms, the ragged heads and eyes / Lost in those acres of insane green?” These lines about “unclean” and “ragged” bodies of the dead tell the reader that persona thinks of these soldiers as anonymous, and “lost” in the bright, growing, changing world around him. Much like the leaves that persona describes throughout the poem in breaks of two lines, the Confederate soldiers are of an uncountable number – so many, in fact, that they cannot possibly each be remembered, they cannot each have a name.

The transition in this poem from subject, the reflections upon the Confederate dead by persona, and the theme, can be found in three primary examples of poetic tools in the poem: visual imagery, allusion, and diction.

The most obvious connection is that of the jaguar.

Night is the beginning and the end

And in between the ends of distraction

Waits mute speculation, the patient curse

That stones the eyes, or like the jaguar leaps

                 For his own image in a jungle pool, his victim. 

When persona uses this concept of night being the beginning and the end, he is referring to the darkness before birth and darkness upon death, therefore being the beginning and end of life. Because persona says that birth and death are “ends of distraction,” he means that he is focused on either his birth or his death, and therefore entirely devoted to his own life – or really, narcissism. This narcissistic view is again emphasized with the jaguar.

This example of the visual image of a jaguar carries a dual meaning; one, the Confederate dead killing themselves in battle for their own gallant, valiant image that was the Old South (or the subject of the poem) and two, persona’s own narcissistic attitude toward himself (he is so focused on his own birth and death).

The second connection from subject to theme is found in the allusion to Zeno and Parmenides. “…you know the rage, / The cool pool left by the mounting flood, / Of muted Zeno and Parmenides.” The pool that persona speaks of is presumably a pool of blood, left by the “mounting flood” of the Yankee army. Zeno and Parmenides were Greek philosophers that believed that the world was a single, changing whole; this belief is also central to the theory of solipsism. The word choice in this allusion is also important, for persona says that these theories are “muted.” They are muted in the Confederate soldiers because they are so intensely focused and “hurried beyond decision” that they cannot stop to think about the futility of their spilt pools of blood. The world, according to Zeno and Parmenides, and solipsism, is a changing object – and it will continue to change no matter what happens, no matter how many soldiers die. There is an image near the beginning of the poem to support this allusion, one of a crab: “You shift your sea-space blindly / Heaving, turning like the blind crab.” Persona is talking to the Confederate soldiers, essentially telling them that their motion is useless – much like a crab that moves with no direction or purpose, so did the Confederates fight and die without a broader sense of purpose than their own narcissism.

The theme of this ode is a combination of two philosophies about the human ego, narcissism and solipsism. The ego is the human psyche, or everything that makes up the way a human perceives the world. The word “ego” is the Latin pronoun for “I.” It is often thought of as a single concept that holds together all the perceptions and thoughts of a single being. In narcissism, the ego is devoted entirely to itself, or rather, a human being loves itself intensely and with a huge focus. This theory is rooted in the Greek myth of Narcissus, a young man who falls in love with his reflection in a pool of water (much like the jaguar). He becomes so infatuated with himself that he leaps into the pool at an attempt to take hold of himself, or really his reflection, and drowns himself in doing so. This myth explains the philosophical theory of narcissism perfectly – an intense love for oneself. Solipsism, on the other hand, is much more complicated. The literal definition is, “A theory holding that the self can know nothing but its own modifications and that the self is the only existent thing.” The theory of solipsism is based on the ego being a collection of perceptions and ideas. Because these perceptions change over time, the ego must constantly change as well. Therefore, the ego is a changing concept, as well as everything that the ego perceives. The universe is thus a changing and changeable whole, because it is perceived by the ego - which is clearly alluded to in the poem when Tate mentions Zeno and Parmenides. 

Persona, through talking with the dead, gives the reader insight into his internal conflict. Persona can be connected to the overall theme of the poem in many of the same ways the Confederate soldiers were connected to the theme of the poem; that is, diction and imagery give the reader a sense of struggle within persona to grasp his own problems and sort them out.

The breaks in the long stanzas often are images of leaves “flying,” “plunging,” and “expiring,” and the poem also begins with,

In the riven troughs the splayed leaves

Pile up, of nature the casual sacrament

To the seasonal eternity of death;

Then driven by the fierce scrutiny

Of heaven to their election in the vast breath,

The sough the rumour of mortality. 

These lines are speaking of the eternal cycle of death, which is solipsistic, and the leaves essentially being judged before going to heaven or hell. Upon looking at the placement of both this passage and the two-line leaf passages, there is a common theme in each passage. The first, longest section is persona’s way to ease his way into some of the more intellectual, harder to grasp segments of the poem. Furthermore, whenever persona breaks to talk about the leaves for two lines, it is always in the midst of a very profound thought. Persona seems to stop himself from thinking too much about himself or his subject, the Confederates throughout the poem. Many views on persona can be taken from this, whether it is that he is afraid to probe into himself too deeply, or he is semi-intellectual, that he can only think so far before his mind is incapable of continuing the thought.

At the end of the poem, there are four lines discussing what persona should do with his newfound knowledge of the Confederates and himself. Should he never admit to himself that he knows of his own failures, “…[taking] the act / To the grave?” Or, should persona acknowledge his own failures as a narcissistic human being, and “…set up the grave / In the house?” thereby living with his failure daily? Persona never answers this question, which perhaps enforces his semi-intellectualism implied by the leaf lines.

Through Allen Tate’s precise choice of diction for his persona, and the images presented in the poem, “Ode to the Confederate Dead” becomes much more than a poem simply about soldiers who died in the Civil War. The poem becomes a reflection on the Confederate preoccupation with their own image of honor, valor, and chivalry, despite that they were ill-equipped to fight a war for that image. Tate’s poem is a dramatically ironic tribute to the Confederate soldiers who died fighting for image of the Old South; but as persona realizes, the world is always changing and this image could never have been preserved, even if the South had won the war. Through these reflections on the Confederates, persona discovers his own faults as a human being, and although he never comes to a resolution, he leaves the graveyard different as he entered it for he now has a greater understanding of his own ego. Tate’s beautiful poem is a tribute to the poet’s ability to probe the human psyche through a generation of young men from the most romantic age in the history of this country.

ODE TO THE CONFEDERATE DEAD

By Allen Tate © 1937

Row after row with strict impunity

The headstones yield their names to the element,

The wind whirrs without recollection;

In the riven troughs the splayed leaves

Pile up, of nature the casual sacrament                                      5

To the seasonal eternity of death;

Then driven by the fierce scrutiny

Of heaven to their election in the vast breath,

They sough the rumour of mortality.

Autumn is desolation in the plot                                                              10                                                    

Of a thousand acres where these memories grow

From the inexhaustible bodies that are not

Dead, but feed the grass row after rich row.

Think of the autumns that have come and gone!--

Ambitious November with the humors of the year,                          15

With a particular zeal for every slab,

Staining the uncomfortable angels that rot

On the slabs, a wing chipped here, an arm there:

The brute curiosity of an angel's stare

Turns you, like them, to stone,                                                  20

Transforms the heaving air

Till plunged to a heavier world below

You shift your sea-space blindly

Heaving, turning like the blind crab.

     Dazed by the wind, only the wind                                          25                        

     The leaves flying, plunge

You know who have waited by the wall

The twilight certainty of an animal,

Those midnight restitutions of the blood

You know--the immitigable pines, the smoky frieze                          30

Of the sky, the sudden call: you know the rage,

The cold pool left by the mounting flood,

Of muted Zeno and Parmenides.

You who have waited for the angry resolution

Of those desires that should be yours tomorrow,                                         35

You know the unimportant shrift of death

And praise the vision

And praise the arrogant circumstance

Of those who fall

Rank upon rank, hurried beyond decision--                                 40

Here by the sagging gate, stopped by the wall.

     Seeing, seeing only the leaves

     Flying, plunge and expire

Turn your eyes to the immoderate past,

Turn to the inscrutable infantry rising                                        45

Demons out of the earth they will not last.

Stonewall, Stonewall, and the sunken fields of hemp,

Shiloh, Antietam, Malvern Hill, Bull Run.

Lost in that orient of the thick and fast                

You will curse the setting sun.                                                              50

     Cursing only the leaves crying

     Like an old man in a storm

You hear the shout, the crazy hemlocks point

With troubled fingers to the silence which

Smothers you, a mummy, in time.                                                         55

                               The hound bitch

Toothless and dying, in a musty cellar

Hears the wind only.

     

                    Now that the salt of their blood

Stiffens the saltier oblivion of the sea,                                                   60

Seals the malignant purity of the flood,

What shall we who count our days and bow

Our heads with a commemorial woe

In the ribboned coats of grim felicity,

What shall we say of the bones, unclean,                                              65

Whose verdurous anonymity will grow?

The ragged arms, the ragged heads and eyes

Lost in these acres of the insane green?

The gray lean spiders come, they come and go;

In a tangle of willows without light                                                       70

The singular screech-owl's tight

Invisible lyric seeds the mind

With the furious murmur of their chivalry.

     We shall say only the leaves

     Flying, plunge and expire                                                                  75

We shall say only the leaves whispering

In the improbable mist of nightfall

That flies on multiple wing:

Night is the beginning and the end

And in between the ends of distraction                                                  80

Waits mute speculation, the patient curse

That stones the eyes, or like the jaguar leaps

For his own image in a jungle pool, his victim.

What shall we say who have knowledge

Carried to the heart?  Shall we take the act                                            85

To the grave?  Shall we, more hopeful, set up the grave

In the house?  The ravenous grave?

                                   Leave now

The shut gate and the decomposing wall:

The gentle serpent, green in the mulberry bush,                                    90

Riots with his tongue through the hush--

Sentinel of the grave who counts us all!

        

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