On Imagination

The invocation of “On Imagination” reads like the accomplished work typical of the Neoclassical poetry then defining British literature. After invoking the muse of the imagination, the poet’s celebration of the imagination’s ability to craft wondrous objects humbles her. She will attempt to create a work that will reflect the glories of the “Fancy” (Line 9). She is ready to respond to the call of the imagination: “Now here, now there, the roving Fancy flies / Till some lov’d object strikes her wand’ring eyes” (Line 9-10). Her wandering eye has been duly struck.

There is no disputing the achievement of “On Imagination” as a powerful statement on the energy of the imagination. However, this achievement—the elegant lines, the careful rhymes, the learned allusions of mythology, the lofty diction—would likely not be the same if the poem had been written by, for example, a British literature student at Oxford who had studied all the defining works of the Neoclassical Era and was seeking to pay homage to that movement. The poem’s achievement is enhanced—or undercut, depending on the reading—by factoring in that the poet was a self-taught African enslaved as a child and now owned by a white family in the toney neighborhoods of colonial Boston. Wheatley recreates so exactly the expectations of the British template for poetry that some critics say that the result is a kind of reverse minstrel show, a Black artist performing in white face (Pottroff, Christy L. “‘On Imagination’ and Material Culture.” Early American Literature, vol. 57, no. 3, 2022, pp. 751-78).

“On Imagination” can be approached as a poem in conflict with itself; on the one hand, it celebrates the exuberant freedom of the imagination but understands the radiant energy of that freedom as only someone enslaved could understand it: ironically. If the form speaks to her conformity to the protocols of the white European culture that has put her in captivity, her theme reflects her identity as a proud and defiant African. For all the fetters that this white culture hangs about her body, it can never imprison her spirit, her fancy, or her soul. That sense of freedom for any white poet of the same era would inevitably be symbolic. For Wheatley, freedom is no metaphor, and fetters are no symbol. There is an anger just beneath the surface of the poem, a snarky defiance of the white culture that has taken from her everything but her fancy. Look, the poem says in all but words, at what someone called a “savage” can do. Look at what cannot be chained.

Thus, “On Imagination” cannot not be read as anything but the work of an enslaved African. Stanzas 2 and 3, which invoke the notion of how the imagination can take the dreariest winter days and create within the free-scape of the mind a happy spring day, are anything but trite, cliché, or sentimental. Winter means more to Wheatley. After all, she grew up in tropical western Africa and never experienced a frigid, snowy winter until living in the US. In the poem, winter represents not just the forbidding New England cold but also the strange and threatening white world itself, Wheatley’s spacious prison. For her imagination to fly above this dreary wintry world, to “break the iron bands” (Line 25) of the cold, is more than a flight of fancy. It is a proud assertion of her African identity.

If her position as an enslaved African gives depth to her celebration of the ability to shake free of the chilling grip of winter—if even for a moment—then the return to that wintry world in the closing stanza becomes both tragic and heroic. The poet takes solace in the ability of the imagination to assert itself over the intellect and the heart. “Before thy throne,” the speaker says of the imagination, “the subject-passions bow” (Line 37). After all, the conditions of Wheatley’s enslavement rendered both the mind and the heart ironic. The more Wheatley studied the books in the library of her enslavers, the more aware she was of the conditions of her enslavement. Given the limits of her social life imposed by her enslavement, the emotional drama of love and the rewards of family became ironic. She spent most of her life raising the children of a white woman. Wheatley would not marry until after she was given her manumission, and even then, because of racism and poverty, that marriage proved catastrophic. That leaves the poet with the consolation of the imagination.

The surrender to “austere” (Line 50) winter, then, in the closing stanza is especially poignant but quietly subversive. The poet’s “reluctance” to depart from the “pleasing views” (Line 48), the lively created worlds of her fancy, is more than, for example, some Cambridge don reluctantly departing afternoon reveries in the library to return to college studies. For Wheatley, to depart from the mindscape of the imagination is to return to the ignominy of enslavement—not metaphoric enslavement but the reality that her life and identity are not hers. Yet, as the poem itself testifies, she maintains faith in the power of her fancy to liberate her soul. That emancipation will return. Cease, she tells her song, for now.