Italian Music in Dakota
Italian Music in Dakota - meaning Summary
Opera Amid Prairie Silence
Whitman paints the surprising presence of Italian opera music carried into the Dakota landscape, where arias and choruses seem to belong as naturally as local sounds. The poem juxtaposes cultivated, emotional melodies with rugged terrain and military elements, suggesting an unexpected kinship between art and nature. Rather than clash, the music is received by the land itself, which listens with pleasure, implying unity between human culture and the wild.
Read Complete AnalysesTHROUGH the soft evening air enwrinding all, Rocks, woods, fort, cannon, pacing sentries, endless wilds, In dulcet streams, in flutes’ and cornets’ notes, Electric, pensive, turbulent artificial, (Yet strangely fitting even here, meanings unknown before, Subtler than ever, more harmony, as if born here, related here, Not to the city’s fresco’d rooms, not to the audience of the opera house, Sounds, echoes, wandering strains, as really here at home, Sonnambula’s innocent love, trios with Norma’s anguish, And thy ecstatic chorus Poliuto;) Ray’d in the limpid yellow slanting sundown, Music, Italian music in Dakota. While Nature, sovereign of this gnarl’d realm, Lurking in hidden barbaric grim recesses, Acknowledging rapport however far remov’d, (As some old root or soil of earth its last-born flower or fruit,) Listens well pleas’d.
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