The metaphor of leaves as men in classical and modern literature

¶ … Fall to Spring's Sprouting: The Motif of Man as Leaves in Literature and the Emergence of Autonomy as Divine

Literature, like the minds that produce it, does not exist in a vacuum. There is an ongoing and never-ending set of influences that continually impact upon the perspectives, proficiencies, and personalities that lead to the creation of literary works, made up of the innumerable realities of any given writer's life: political tensions, economic hardships, cultural attitudes, technological innovations -- the list goes on. Charles Dickens would not have authored the same novels had he grown up and lived in nineteenth century India instead of England, just as Shakespeare would not have penned the same plays (or perhaps any plays at all) if he were a modern Haitian. Similarly, today's readers do not really perceive the works of Dickens and Shakespeare the way the original readers/audiences of these masters did, as the historical and cultural divide that now exists between readers and the worlds of these authors is too great to allow for such direct and open translation and interpretation. The routine child labor and debtor's prisons of Dickens' England are things of the past, as are (by and large) Shakespearean attitudes towards women, and while we can attempt to view things in their proper historical context we cannot successfully adopt a mindset that belongs to another era. Literature is shaped by its environment at its creation and its interpretation, making it impossible for any work to stand on its own.

No work should stand on its own, however, and in fact it is within some of the common threads of the human condition and situation that influence all literature that some of the more interesting interpretative analyses of literature and the cultures/era that specific works represent can be made. That is, tracing the way in which works of literature form different periods and cultures represent or relate to various universal issues can do a great deal to inform the works of literature examined as well as the understanding of certain aspects of the cultures and societies that produced these works. The works of Dickens and Shakespeare are meaningful in and of themselves, but they are even more meaningful examined alongside each other. There are many ways to go about this type of side-by-side analysis and comparison, and many different lines of cultural and societal commentary that can be followed through such analyses, from socioeconomic evaluations of class representation and the like to more abstract investigations of how individuals defined themselves and their world at a given place and time. It is this last line of inquiry that is of special interest here, and that will be traced though what is perhaps a rather unexpected and seemingly minimal motif.

Not all influences on the trajectory of Western literature rear their heads in ways as glaringly obvious as the gender issues of Elizabethan England of the industrialization of Victorian times. Some influences, such as mankind's understanding of its position in the cosmos and each individual's relation to whatever divine powers might exist, can be quite explicitly rendered at some times while in other works they can be observed only in small yet profound details of the text. The slightest of symbols can be far more revelatory in this regard than might be thought -- more so than the author intended, perhaps, in many cases -- providing not only concrete understandings within the context of the work itself but also providing insights into the underlying perspectives and beliefs of the author and/or that author's culture, time, and place. The leaf or leaves as a symbol for men or mankind is one such revelatory clue, primarily if not solely because it is relatively common throughout many periods of Western literature. Leaves make a natural symbol for man and mankind for several reasons, from physical appearance and anatomy to their growth and proliferation to their fragility and the clarity and rapidity with which their life cycle is represented and observed. It is perhaps for this reason that authors from practically all periods of Western literature have used leaves as symbols in remarkably similar ways, and it is because of these similar uses that the existent differences in the usage can be examined to illuminate cultural changes as they are reflected in literature from different times. Through an examination of the leaves-as-Man motif in Homer's The Iliad, Virgil's The Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy, Milton's Paradise Lost, and Walt Whitman's collection of poem's Leaves of Grass, it can be seen that the symbolism of leaves and their association with mankind has become both more individualized and autonomous, not creating a separation of mankind from the Divine but rather reimagining and repositioning the relationship that exists between them.

The Iliad

The first of the two major epics attributed to Homer, The Iliad is the story of a war -- a war instigated and perpetuated by men's pride and spurred on by some help from the gods. Much of this work could be said to be devoted to developing or presenting an understanding of mankind's relationship to the divine and individual relationships and responsibilities that exist between men, as well, often in very clear and direct terms. The instances of warfare, violence, death, and especially heroism that the action of The Iliad contains provide many opportunities for ruminations and reflections on the grander elements of the human condition and the cultural view of man's situation in relation to the divine, yet even in certain passages that appear at first glance merely descriptive certain comments of this nature can be observed. In describing the assembled masses of soldiers, the author chooses the symbol of leaves to represent their innumerable nature: "Thick as autumnal leaves, or driving sand, / The moving squadrons blacken all the strand" (II.458-468). As simple as this description is, there are many different implications that arise form the choice of this particular symbol.

First and foremost is the apparent anonymity of the individual soldiers themselves, who are indeed unimportant to The Iliad and the world that they occupy. There are individual heroes celebrated -- and shamed -- in the epic, and thus it cannot be stated from this brief couplet passage alone that all men were seen merely as small parts of a whole, but the manner in which the soldiers are described here makes it clear that they are not important in and of themselves, but as the mass that they create in combination. Heroism for these levels or grains of sand is to be found in their numbers and their relations to each other, not in their individuality of autonomy. Autonomy, in fact, is entirely absent in the image of thick leaves created by this passage; just as individuality is eradicated, so is any sense of growth, movement, or freedom. The leaves in this image, like the grains of sand, are dumb and immobile things, not imbued with any internal purpose or drive but simply artifacts of natural processes at their terminus. Grains of sand are all that is left of rocks after untold periods of being broken down, and the leaves here are specifically described as "autumnal," calling to mind images of vivid color, perhaps, but also of dry, brittle, and essentially dead matter. In all of this, mankind's place in the overall universal scheme is clearly painted as one of natural happenstance and fate, not admitting and individual motives, desires, or designs.

The description of the leaves as autumnal lends a definite fatalistic cast to the image and the understanding of mankind that it presents, as well. These men are at the end point of their lives, having served their primary purposes and come to their end. They cover the ground, where they will be swept away to make room for the sprouting of new trees and new generations of leaves. This is reinforced by a later image, where the narrative is paused and the narrator reflects, "The generation of men is like that of leaves. The wind scatters one year's leaves on the ground, but the forest burgeons and puts out others, as the season of spring comes round" (VI.146-150). Seen in this light, the lack of autonomy and individuality is somewhat softened by the sense of interconnectedness and the needed succession of each new wave of mankind: new generations of men could not arise if the old did not fall to the ground and become the dust and dirt of the world, and thus the autumnal leaves of the image are completing their part in this cycle of generation and regeneration. There is a sort of heroism here, though this might be a modern reading not initially intended in The Iliad, and more so there is a clear representation of man's place in the cosmos according to the culture that produced this work. This image of the leaf shows a belief in fate, in collective destiny, and in continuing and inescapable cycles of death and birth, all of which diminish the importance and perhaps even the existence of true individuality and autonomy.

The Aeneid

Taking a character from The Iliad and setting him on his own journey, the Roman Virgil's epic The Aeneid necessarily contains certain parallels with the earlier Greek text. The overall story of this lengthy poem in and of itself reflects many of the same basic understandings of mankind's place in the universe, its relationship to the gods, and the relationships that exist within society and between men that are already described above, demonstrating that no real fundamental change has occurred in this schema. Aeneas, the titular hero of the tale who flees his native Troy after it is sacked by the Greeks, is as important as the individual heroes of the war itself, but more than a tale of individual heroism The Aeneid is the story of the founding of a people and the long trajectory of history and humanity. It is a tale for and in many ways about successive and succeeding generations rather than about the exploits and adventures of a singular human being. Virgil also uses leaves as a rather fatalistic symbol in this work, echoing its appearance in The Iliad with more macabre overtones.

For Virgil, at least in The Aeneid, the world of the afterlife is as real and as potent as the mortal world experienced every day. In a description of the souls of those who did not receive proper burials lining up and waiting to across the Acheron into Hades, a series of descriptions implying the same lack of autonomy and individuality noted in The Iliad again makes itself known. The collection of souls all yearning for the river's other side are, in the words of the poet, "countless as leaves that fall in the forest, / loosened by autumn's first frost…they stretch their hands for love of the opposite side" (VI.309-314). Again, there is the use of leaves as a collective symbol, with each individual leaf representing an individual human being but with no real recognition or acknowledgment of the individuality that belongs to any of these souls in and of themselves. The fact that these "leaves" can do nothing to alter their own destiny and position serves as another limitation of their autonomy, and in fact it can be seen that these leaves are at the mercy of other elements and forces to an even greater degree than those of The Iliad. In the earlier work, the image of the leaves simply removes autonomy by making any decision-making or physical power absent; in this later example of a very similar symbol, the "first autumn frost" acts on the leaves as the cause of their fall and their scattering, not simply making autonomy absent but directly refuting or countering it.

It is worth noting, however, that despite the collective nature of the image that is clearly present in this usage and the lack of autonomy and individuality in the symbol, these souls are described as having desires -- desires that they cannot act upon and that are continually thwarted, it's true, but desires nonetheless. This along with certain plot and character details that put this passage in a richer context suggest that while individual paths, destinies, and proclivities are recognized to a greater degree in the Roman society that produced this work, beliefs in communal success or failure and the inescapable nature of fate and destiny are also still quite strong. Ultimately, the comparison of these souls and mankind at large to so many dead or dying leaves suggests a position of mankind that is imbued with all of the drives, passions, and plans of the gods, yet with capabilities amounting to that of mere vegetation. Individual men are trampled under the course of larger histories and destines, and heroism exists only in recognizing and serving this purpose, and in bearing the individual fates that these larger trajectories require of the lives they incorporate and touch.

The Divine Comedy

Virgil was not the only notable author of the Italian peninsula to have his characters visit the underworld, nor is he even the most famous. Dante's Divine Comedy, especially the first volume, Inferno, is one of the most well-known works of any Latinate language, and with good reason. Exploring quite directly, explicitly and eloquently many of the features and foibles of men and mankind, this work provides a comprehensive commentary on the state of man and his position to the Divine and the universe at large. As might be expected, this work also includes the use of leaves as a symbol for mankind, providing another instance of insight into the development of man's view of himself and the world around him. These leaves are again autumnal, and again reflect a certain fatalism and lack of individuality, and even a certain subsuming of autonomy in the face of larger and more powerful forces. There are also significant differences in Dante's use of the symbol, however, that suggest more fundamental changes in Western society and culture having taken place in the centuries between Virgil's ancient Rome and the pre-Renaissance Italy of Dante's time.

It is immediately following Dante's arrival in Hell that this image arises, and again it is in relation to the river Acheron and the person of Charon, tasked with ferrying the deserving souls across into Hell-proper, as it were. This is not Hades, though, where souls seek to go as a final place of rest (or unrest, as the case may be), but truly Hell, and Charon is vicious and much more active in his job of collecting and moving souls as he "herds them in":

As leaves in autumn loosen and stream down

Until the branch stands bare above its tatters

Spread on the rustling ground, so one by one

The evil seed of Adam in its Fall

Cast themselves, as his signal, from the shore

(III.109-13).

Again, there is a sense of collectiveness and thus of an eradication of individuality; one leaf is the same as the next in this scenario, and the fatalistic autumnal period causes the leaves to fall just as the evilness of these particular people is an inherent trait that leads inevitably to their own descent. The leaves spread on the ground as in The Iliad, and are loosened by the external forces of autumn as in both The Iliad and The Aeneid, creating a direct through-line for this image.

Here, though, the similarities essentially cease. Though the autumn causes leaves to fall, there is no sense of regeneration or a cyclical imperative here; instead, the bare branch is focused on as an important feature. Dante is describing souls that are damned and not mankind as a whole, of course, which changes the nature of the symbol to a certain extent, but it is telling that his focus and the symbol moves in this direction. Also telling is the presence of at least some degree of autonomy here -- though the leaves are loosened by autumn, the souls that these leaves represent "cast themselves" down, and while evil might be an inherent part of a soul it is through the choices individuals make that they end up banished to hell. While fate and external powers still exist and remain hugely influential in the culture underlying the production of the Divine Comedy, there is a greater sense of control as well. Individuals might not have real control over the elements of their lives, but there is a choice of at least basic paths to be made. Autonomy and individual identities play a larger role in the plot and side commentary of this work as a whole, as well, strengthening this reading of the leaf symbol.