Ancient Wisdom versus Material Progress in William Gilmore Simms’s “The Hunter of the Calawassee”

DOREEN THIERAUF University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill Ancient Wisdom versus Material Progress in William Gilmore Simms’s “The Hunter of the Calawassee” WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS’S SIXTEEN-STANZA NARRATIVE POEM “THE Hunter of the Calawassee; A Legend of South Carolina” depicts a young man’s fatal hunt of a one-horned white deer that takes on supernatural characteristics and represents the mystic forces of nature. The poem first appeared in 1838 in a time when Simms saw the impact human greed would have on nature. The poem serves as a vehement warning against the destruction of nature caused by a mortal who assumes the role of God. Sims’s view of the poet as “seer” and “prophet” goes along with the aim of his poetry to raise humanity above superficial perception and to guide it to find its place in the world. The complex symbolic layers in the poem are responsible for the poem’s larger implications, implications that might be hidden at first sight. Simms had always felt a strong bond to his native South Carolina. The setting of “The Hunter of the Calawassee” mirrors the familiar landscape as the source of Simms’s inspiration. Place names such as Calawassee, Ocketee, and Che-che-see refer to a specific locale which draws the reader’s attention to the poem’s claim that Kedar’s hunt really took place.1 However, the tale of the hunt of a supernatural buck is an old motif in folklore tradition, reaching back to ancient Greek and Celtic sagas. Thus “The Hunter of the Calawassee” is not only inspired by the typical romantic fondness for supernaturalism but also finds itself in the larger and much older tradition of allegorical legend. The merging of ancient allegorical motifs with a regional setting that actually exists is characteristic of Simms’s writing. He always aimed to bring the “internal-spiritual life,” or the greater moral meaning, and the visible “external” life together. As a nature poet in the romantic period, Simms 1 The island of Calawassee (also Caliwasee, today called Callawassie) is situated in lower central Beaufort County, South Carolina, in a cypress swamp between the rivers Chechessee and Colleton. It was uninhabited in Simms’s days. The Ocketee River flows into the Colleton by Calawassee Island. See Simms, Selected Poems 348. 136 Doreen Thierauf considered joining perceptions of the physical world and its hidden spiritual truths as a major goal in his poetry (Kibler, “Perceiver and Perceived” 107). Therefore, nature in “The Hunter of the Calawassee” is highly emblematic in spite of being localized. The poem’s initial three lines provide a brief depiction of nature at the end of autumn. Expressions such as “bleak November,” “the blast that rives the tree,” “yellow leaves,” and “sweetly sad” (1-2) communicate coldness, gloom, old age, and the beginning of the seasonal death-like sleep of nature. The numerous yellow leaves and their susceptibility to the wind which scatters them in all directions connote transience and human mortality. The poet thus creates a densely atmospheric environment laden with bittersweet emotions at the beginning of the poem. Unaware of the sad and dreary surroundings, the hunter feels his blood stirred by the November “blast” and he gladly follows the “summons” (5) of the falling leaves. The persona of the hunter in the first two stanzas is a general one; no name is given and the detailed hunting scene in the first two stanzas is given in a cheerful mood—apart from the “ghostly cypress” and the “dodder’d oak” (9) which again hint at the decay and withering of the woods. According to Ad de Vries, cypresses are symbols of death (125), whereas the oak is connected to the afterlife in Celtic folklore (Monaghan 364).2 The contrast between decaying nature and the joyous hunting scene is very striking; the cypresses and the “dodder’d” oak, both symbols of old age and death, seem to heavily collide with the “mellow notes” (11) of the horns whose sounds are full of life. The very act of hunting is depicted as life-releasing: “There’s life within that bugle note, steeds snort and riders shout, / And life, in every bound...