Toward the Gulf (Masters)

Toward the Gulf – tomik wierszy amerykańskiego poety Edgara Lee Mastersa, opublikowany w 1918 nakładem nowojorskiego wydawnictwa The Macmillan Company. Tytułowy wiersz Toward the Gulf został zadedykowany Theodore’owi Rooseveltowi. Utwory w tomiku są napisane generalnie rzecz biorąc wierszem wolnym. Poeta stosuje aliterację, na przykład All the while a gift/For analytics stored behind that brow,/That bulges like a loaf of bread, is all/Of which he well may boast above the man/He hates as but a slave of faith and fear, albo A nothingness/Moving as malice marred the life of man. Na użycie tego środka instrumentacji głoskowej u Mastersa zwraca uwagę Herbert K. Russell. Autor wykorzystuje też rozbudowane paralelizmy.

Let us lay out the facts as far as we can.

Her eyes were black,

His eyes were blue.

She saw through shadows, walls and doors,

She knew life and hungered for more.

But he lived in the mists, and climbed to high places

To feel clouds about his face, and get the lights

Of supernal sun-sets.

She was reason, and he was faith.

She had an illumination, but of the intellect.

And he had an illumination but of the soul.

And she saw God as merciless law,

And he knew God as divine love.

And she was a man, and he in part was a woman.

He stood in a pulpit and preached the Christ,

And the remission of sins by blood,

And the literal fall of man through Adam,

And the mystical and actual salvation of man

Through the coming of Christ.

Edgar Lee Masters, Excluded middle

Bibliografia

• Edgar Lee Masters: Toward the Gulf. ia600206.us.archive.org, 1918. [dostęp 2017-02-27]. (ang.).