SOURCE: Petry, Alice Hall. “Death as Etherealization in the Poetry of Sidney Lanier. South Dakota Review 17, no. 1 (spring 1979): 46-55.

In the following essay, Petry examines Lanier's theory of etherealization, or abandonment of the senses for the soul, as presented in his essay “Retrospects and Prospects.” The critic also considers the representation of death in his poetry.

It was in the Spring of 1871 that the Southern poet, essayist, critic, and flutist Sidney Lanier published an essay entitled “Retrospects and Prospects” in successive issues of the Southern Magazine. In this little essay, which has been quite ignored by otherwise enthusiastic Lanierolators, Lanier expounds his not-too-original, rather unconvincingly argued, and occasionally frankly illogical theory of “etherealization,” that “great central idea of the ages”(286)¹ which, at least for Lanier, manages to conveniently explain the development of the natural world, mankind, culture, and human institutions. In a nutshell, “etherealization” [or “spiritualization”(289)] involves the...