The Meaning of Rivers: Flow and Reflection in American Literature

4. Down the River

4 | Down the River IthinkIwasinjuniorhighschoolwhenmyparentstookmetoWashington, D.C.Itwasmostlyastandardself-guidedsightseeingtourofmemorialsand monuments,leavingmewithageneralimpressionofthenation’sgrandeur andfewdistinctmemories.Theonesouvenirthatremains,afterthirty-some years,isasetofeight-by-twelve-inchreproductionsofThomasCole’sseries of four paintings called The Voyage of Life. I do not recall precisely what it wasaboutCole’spaintingsthatcapturedmyadolescentattention—maybe theornatemajestyoftheactualpaintings,eachatleastsixfeetwideandover four feet high; maybe the allegory, with a story line I could easily follow; perhaps the allegory’s reassurance—in each painting a guardian angel accompaniesthevoyageronariverjourneyfromchildhoodtoyouth ,oninto manhood, and finally to old age, at the end of which another angel awaits to welcome the voyager to heaven. I do not remember being particularly fascinated by Cole’s river of life. Theriver,however,playsaportentouspartinthepaintings’storyline.It issuesfromacaveandbeginsasapleasant,placidstreamwithgreen,flowerbestrewnbanksthatcontrastsharplywithitsmysteriousmountainsource . In Youth the stream’s floodplain widens, while its course at first appears to head straight toward a domed dream castle shimmering in the sky; not far in the distance, however, the river makes a hard right and enters foothills, therocksofwhichcreatemildwhitewater.Stormcloudswithfuriousfaces loomover Manhood asthestreamflowsprecipitouslyintoaperilousrapid featuring a frothing hole of unknown depth. And finally the River of Life concludes by issuing into the black sea, with a brilliance breaking through the clouds over the offing. The physical features of the male voyager of course change throughout the voyage, as does the boat on which he rides 88 | Down the River and the relative position of his guardian angel: first ebullient child (angel at the helm, boat filled with flora and fronted with a prominent seraphic bowsprit), then beardless youth (voyager at the helm, boat prominently ornamented with wings, angel on the bank bidding farewell). Next, the poor bearded man prays as his helmless boat enters the rapids (while the angelwatchesfromonhigh);finally,baldandwhitebearded,inaboatwith neitherhelmnorbowsprit,thevoyagerisrejoinedbytheangel,whopoints heavenward. Cole’svoyagerexperiencestheRiverofLifefrombeginningtoendinwhat iscommonlyconsideredthe“natural”wayforstreams,movingfromtopto bottomwiththeflowofwaterandthepullofgravity.Writingsthatoverlook the river may very well be detached from the flow of things. By-the-river storiesusuallyfeatureaclosebutstationaryencounterwithalimitedsection oftheriver;thestream’scurrentinsuchwritingsmayhavesignificance,but primarily as something that enables the watcher to contemplate relations amongavarietyofelementsorparties.Up-the-riverstoriesruncounterto naturalforces,underscoringoppositions(cultureversusnature,selfversus other, light versus dark). Although down-the-river writings also consider such topics, they tend to do so against the meaningful backdrop of going withtheflow. Downriver works drawmuchof their meaning fromthefact that they go somewhere, and especially from the fact that they go there by dintoftheriver’sforce,whichcausesthemtoruninacertainmetaphorical direction: from birth to death, from the past to the present, from order to chaos, and so on. While they may sometimes resemble upriver narratives by venturing from the known to the unknown, downriver tales tend to raise questions regarding truth, fiction, and their correlatives. In The Voyage of Life, for instance, the artist suggests that human lives are shaped by fictional versions of reality, including the illusion that we are alone, that we can alter our course by our own actions, and that we can reach an imaginary Land of Grandeur shimmering in front of us. In other words, we take what we “see” as reality, but that reality is merely a product of our limited ways of seeing. What is truly real, according to Cole’s extended down-the-stream metaphor, is that we are accompanied byanunseenspiritwhoguidesandguardsus,thatourultimatedestination is the “Ocean of Eternity” governed by a “Superior Power,” and that the River of Life is but a means of transporting us from our “earthly origin” in Down the River | 89 the “mysterious Past” to the “Haven of Immortal Life.” In its guide to the paintings the National Gallery of Art recognizes the Christian allegory at workinTheVoyageofLifebutaddsanotherpossiblereadinginwhich“Cole’s intrepidvoyager”represents“apersonificationofAmerica.”Thefiction,the gallery speculates, entails America’s materialistic pursuit of treasures on earth and the ill-conceived dogma that the river of “unbridled westward expansion and industrialization” will lead to palaces and pleasure domes. The unfortunate reality, however, is that the dream building is merely “a cloudypileofArchitecture,anair-builtCastle,”asColehimselfexplained; the“adolescent”nation’s“feverishquestforManifestDestiny”leadstothe same destinationaseverythingelsewhile having “tragic consequencesfor both man and nature.” Downriver stories such as Cole’s flow over a bedrock of truth, relying on the incontrovertible fact that water flows downhill as the substratum for other meanings. The most interesting of these stories use the facts of nature as a primary meaning from which they explore secondary meanings , moving from terra firma into other regions, some testing the validity of fables and myths, others investigating personal identity and cultural practices. Frequently, down-the-river texts connect primary and secondary meanings to form foundational theories on the creation or formation of the world itself as well as on the place of humans in that world. All such stories proceed by an interplay...