By James Harvey Stout (deceased). This material is now in the public domain. The complete collection of Mr. Stout's writing is now at http://stout.mybravenet.com/public_html/h/ .

Symbolism is the translation of an image from one context to another. For example, we might translate the image of an oak tree from its context in the natural world (as "an object in a forest") to the context of the human world (as "an object of human strength").

Symbolism is based on images which the physical senses would perceive. We interpret the images on the basis of a variety of associations:

1. Traditional interpretations in literature. A mountain stream generally symbolizes a quality such as purity or playfulness.
2. Physical encounters with that object. The ocean might symbolize peacefulness to someone who enjoys the ocean; it might symbolize terror to someone who has been attacked by a shark.
3. Society's values. A particular type of car might symbolize success in our society.
4. Our own values. That same car might symbolize wasteful opulence to us.
5. Other associations. For example, perhaps the symbol has a particular meaning when we see it in our dreams.

Words have unconscious connotations, so we can relay meanings by knowing the influence that an individual or culture has put into words and images. The images that we draw, in turn, draw out particular reactions in an emotional and mental pattern that we are creating, in harmony with the readers' conditioning. The poem is not in the words, but in these feelings that we are experiencing. We put the feelings into visual images of things that, if experienced on earth, would cause those feelings. Those images are the poem, as it exists in our inner world.

Images evoke feelings and moods even if we cannot say specifically when the image means.

Readers will find symbolic meaning in our work even when we have not intended any, or recognized any. As an experiment, I have written prose stories that were so full of conflicting, nonsensical images that I could see no meaning in them. Yet consistently people who have read them have discovered meanings, sometimes profound.

Our own lives are symbolic. If I am a guitarist, I fill my world with the symbolic gear: instrument, music books, and guitar strings. If a poet simply described my practice room with these music accessories you would know (in a mental process like that of interpreting poetry's symbolism) that I am a guitarist.

In our everyday life, we are continually translating symbols -- interpreting a smile as friendliness, interpreting a harsh voice as anger, interpreting human life and behavior as a symbol of the inner self.