landscape. In a bizarre example of synesthesia, the twilight seems to be
“soughing,” or mumbling, its unintelligible secrets. In vain the persona
implores the “sparkles” to illuminate the mystery of decay and rebirth.
But in this “muck” of dead bodies, the bones utter only the meaningless
“gibberish of the dry limbs.” Even “the grass of graves,” whose meaning
the persona had undertaken to translate in section 6, reveals nothing.
Frustrated that his excursion into death’s realm has revealed no secrets,
the persona cries out:
I hear you whispering there, O stars of heaven,
O suns.... O grass of graves.... O perpetual transfers and
promotions... if you do not say anything how can I say
anything?Of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest,
Of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing twilight,
Toss, sparkles of day and dusk.... toss on the black stems that
decay in the muck,
Toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs.Despite this apparent failure to unlock death’s secret, the persona clings
to the faith that even death’s domain, if it could be properly explored,
would eventually yield the secret of perpetual life.
Having failed to secure the secret of mortality during his foray into the
netherworld, the persona then “ascend[s] from the moon,” which has also
been associated with the cold realm of death, but whose “ghastly glitter”
nevertheless re®ects the sun—the source of physical life.^74 In a ¤nal
epiphany, the persona pictures himself making an astonishing leap of
faith—high enough to gain a sunlit view of all creation. This Spinozan
overview of eternity seemingly affords him the perspective he needs to
con¤rm that death is part of nature’s purposeful plan and to see that “the
ghastly glimmer [of death] is noonday sunbeams re®ected.” From his ex-
alted vantage point death and evil appear to be only transient elements of
an overarching, bene¤cent plan. In a rather tortured ¤gure of speech,
he declares, “I debouch to the steady and central from the offspring great
or small.” Literally, to debouch is to ®ow as from a narrow channel to a
broader one, like a river emptying into a delta or bay. And the term off-
spring most plausibly alludes to the plentiful “springboards” from which
the soul can be launched on its “steady and central” voyage through eter-
“Triumphal Drums for the Dead” / 71