Leviathan (Poem Summary)

Poem Summary

Lines 1-12

The word “leviathan” is mentioned repeatedly in the Bible’s Old Testament — for example, in Job 3:8 and 41:1, Psalms 74:14, and Isaiah 27:1. A contemporary definition, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, is a “large sea creature” or “anything unusually large for its kind.” Traditionally, however, the leviathan has been associated with a whale, due to the word’s derivation from the Hebrew term for “great water animal.” Though the 39 lines of “Leviathan” are not divided into stanzas, the poem can be subdivided into four parts. The first section runs from lines 1 to 12, ending with “And harvest”; it describes a wild whale swimming at sea. This rather long section might be read more easily if the entire part is seen as a prosaic, two-part sentence with a beginning, main clause, “This is the black sea-brute bulling through wave-wrack, ancient as ocean’s shifting hills,” and a much longer, dependent clause attached at the end of the independent clause: “who in sea-toils travelling, who furrowing the salt acres heavily, ... finds home and harvest.” Line 4, “his wake hoary behind him,” comes from a description of a whale in Job 41:32: “Behind him he leaves a shining wake; one would think the deep to be hoary.” In this first part of “Leviathan,” Merwin twice uses a literary device called metonymy, whereby characteristics are transferred from thing to another because they are near. For example, in “sea-toils” and “sea-marches,” the “toilsome” swimming or “marching” of the whale through water is transferred to the sea which toils and marches; in “bellowing fields” the bellowing of horses becomes that of the fields; and in “wastes” and “tide-ruin,” the corpses of men and horses, and the wreckage of ships, become the ocean itself. Merwin also uses metaphor, where one thing is substituted for another, as in “bone-wreck,” where a wrecked futtock (the curved beams of a ship’s hull) resemble the bony ribs of a floating creature, especially a whale. Through metaphor, the ocean becomes like a field (“salt-acres”) and the whale like a plow (“furrowing”) that collects a “harvest” from the ocean-field. This image somewhat complements the idea of the whale as an ox or bull pulling a plow, or, as Merwin says, “bulling” through the field. Lastly, lines 10 through 12 contain language that is somewhat militaristic: “ravening,” “wave-marshalling,” “overmastering,” and “sea-marches.” Here the whale is a kind of weapon or one-animal army marching over fields that present no obstacle to its powerful forward progress. All in all, the ocean is a field (see also “foaming pastures,” line 35) across which the whale moves like a plow or army.

Lines 12-21

These lines are, in spirit, taken from The Exeter Book, a tenth-century Anglo-Saxon manuscript that includes a bestiary, a compendium of descriptions of animals through which morals are taught. For example, the poem “The Whale” describes how a whale is mistaken for land to such an extent that men will moor their boats to it, climb on top, and build a fire. Then, suddenly, the whale will dive and drown the men. In this respect, the whale is a kind of demon or devil that fools people and drowns them. In “Leviathan,” the dark whale is also compared to land — an island to be exact — with waves slapping at its shores.

Lines 22-26

In these lines, Merwin gives us an abridged history of the whale in story and myth. “Named for rolling” comes from an etymology at the beginning of Moby Dick, in which Melville quotes Webster’s Dictionary: “This animal is named from roundness or rolling for in Danish, hvalt is arched or vaulted.” According to Genesis 1:21, the whale was the first of the animals created by God. And also in the Old Testament, the short book of Jonah tells the tale of a whale who swallowed Jonah in the sea and vomited him up on land three days later. Line 25 likely refers to the apocalyptic passage of Isaiah 27:1: “In that day the Lord, with his hard and great and strong sword, shall punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent; and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.” Line 26 harkens back to The Exeter Book, with the word “shadow” referring to the whale’s blackness mentioned in the previous section and to death, as in the word “shade” — the term for a dead person, specter, or ghost. Together, these descriptions promote the idea that the whale is deadly and, thus, an animal to be feared.

Lines 27-39

The theme of these lines is the whale as a symbol of rebirth, not of death as in the previous two sections. For example, when a repentant Jonah is vomited onto dry land, he is resurrected because he pledged his devotion to God. Resurrection also complements the whale as an “angel,” even if a “lost angel.” Some have interpreted the words “lost angel” to imply the whale’s relation to Satan or the devils mentioned in The Exeter Book. What seems more fitting — since Merwin did note use the more common tag line given to the devil, “fallen angel” — is that “lost angel” merely refers to a whale alone, as if lost upon the vast sea. The whale alone, but not necessarily lonely, is reinforced by the image of the original whale that existed for a time before the rest of the animals were created. In this section of stillness, the whale waits quietly and alone for the unfinished world — symbolized by the restless, churning sea — to be reborn. It has one eye focused on the sunrise (birth) and the other on the sunset (death). The earth’s oldest animal — according to biblical legend — cannot die and will continue to live as long as does the world. The whale is that a creature so large it spans the time from the world’s beginning through its myriad deaths and rebirths. This master of the sea and angel of God, this whale that stands for the first whale and all whales that ever lived, cannot be made extinct, but is as immortal as God’s power manifested in nature.

Media Adaptations

• Merwin’s poems have been recorded for the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature.
• Merwin’s animal poems, including “Leviathan,” were recorded in May and June of 1954 on the BBC Third Programme under the title “Physiologus.