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What literary devices are used in "Brahma"?
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In "Brahma," Emerson employs literary devices such as alliteration, particularly sibilance, to mimic a spirit whispering wisdom. Internal rhymes and repeated words create a sense of epigrammatic distillation. The poem uses powerful imagery and symbolism, irony in the speaker's simple yet puzzling instructions, personification of Brahma, and oxymorons to convey the paradoxes and skepticism inherent in the poem.
"Brahma" is probably one of Emerson's most enigmatic poems. Behind the deceptively simple language and structure there is a veiled subversiveness, made more obvious in the final line, which seems almost as if it could have been written by Blake:
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.
The principal literary device that informs the entire poem is, arguably, irony. It is ironic that the speaker, the Creator God of Hinduism, would instruct people in such a simple but simultaneously puzzling way. A standard poetic device is the alliteration of "s" in the first stanza:
If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
It is reminiscent in sound to verses in Emerson's famous "Concord Hymn":
The foe long since in silence slept;
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conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
Far or forgot to me is near; Shadow and sunlight are the same;