Walter Whitman

 

Walter Whitman

A MAJOR AMERICAN POET

 

Walter Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. He was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is often called the father of free verse. His work was controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sensuality.

Born in Huntington on Long Island, as a child and through much of his career Whitman resided in Brooklyn. He worked as a journalist, a teacher, and a government clerk. His major poetry collection, Leaves of Grass, was first published in 1855 with his own money and became well known. His poetry often focused on both loss and healing. On the death of Abraham Lincoln, whom Whitman greatly admired, he wrote his well-known poems, "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd". When he died at age 72, his funeral was a public event.

Walt Whitman has earned a place of distinction both at home and abroad. His poetry has many subtleties and complexities. The influences upon Whitman from childhood onwards were:

·      the influence of his parents, father’s radical democratic ideas and his mother’s Quakerism.

·      A faith in the dignity of the individual and in equality and fraternity.

·      Homer, Shakespeare and Emerson.

·      the mystic transcendental philosophy of India, especially the Bhagwat Gita.

Whitman is the poet of democracy and the poet of science, and his Leave of Grass is the epic of modern America.

Whitman was a great rebel. As an innovator, he offers new solutions posed by “tradition and the individual talent.” Sexual energy and mysticism are the dominant themes in his poetry. The marriage of body and soul brings divine ecstasy. Whitman’s is the first most articulate and open American voice which challenges the puritan tradition that held America captive till the end of the 19th Century. He boldly asserts- “Copulation is no more than to me.........” Sex is sacred in any other part of the self. It is but the quintessence of being- “Yet all were lacking if sex were lacking.” Thus, Whitman rescued poetry from puritans and pundits. He gave equal significance to both body and soul in relation to sex and mystical experience, and brought about a revolution in American poetry. Whitman was the first powerful celebrant of the upsurge of the masses. His impulses are close to modern times particularly in his insistence upon the vital importance of sex in human relationship.

Whitman’s use of symbolism in his poetry is a modern trend. Symbolism helps to illuminate poetry. Whitman’s symbolic treatment has the remarkable effect of universalizing his themes. Whitman’s symbolism was a native language of his poetry. The symbols act as characters in Whitman’s poem. They embody various fundamental issues of human existence. Whitman’s use of symbols is central to the drama of becomingness. They explore and explain a vision of life.

Whitman’s boldest innovation is his language experiment. Whitman showed himself to be one of the first to assail the barriers of form. The shifts of cadence, tone, language, the breathless excitement of the poet’s words grip the reader. The style hooks you round the waist, compelling you to see where Whitman sees, feel as he feels, and soar with him as he moves at will through time and space. The flood of images and emotions sweeps the reader along, not in straight but in circular or spiral forces. He keeps us constantly off-balanced, talking one moment about universal truths, and the next about the scent of arm pits. He dares at one moment to assault with abrupt rhythms and common place monosyllables, and the next to delight with exquisite music. By sacrificing rational forms of coherence, Whitman was releasing the mind from arbitrary order and pointing to new possibilities in literature. Whitman could make words sing, dance, kiss, do anything that man or woman or the natural powers can do. Nevertheless, he proclaims all words are spiritual, nothing is more spiritual than words. Whitman’s rebellious rhythms have influenced modern poetry.

Whitman appears before us in many colours- as a visionary, as the spokesman of America, as a poet-prophet of democracy, as a transcendentalist, and, above all as a mystic. All these traits are curiously blended in him and find their expression ultimately in his mysticism. Gautama and Buddha, Jesus Christ, and Walt Whitman are the persons who reached the cosmic level of consciousness. Whitman knows that others must be afraid of him so he seeks to calm their fears:

“Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass,

Be not afraid of my body.”

The spirit, being alone, is the only reality which frightens others. But the mystic becomes his object. He takes upon himself the woes of the world:

“Agonies are one of my changes of garments.

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels,

I myself become the wounded person..............”

Whitman feels oneness with the objects before him. He loses himself in their actions. His own self merges into the universal self. He is here and everywhere. His is an inspired soul. In order to seek that ultimate truth, whatever it may be, Whitman directs his mind towards the worldly things. He lets his imagination go everywhere-in the remote places, in the far east, and in the crowded cities.

Whitman’s mysticism lies in his projection of the film of the past and the future and of the present swinging in between them. This is his Divine Self:

“I know I have the best of time and space and was

never measured and never will be measured

I am an acme of things accomplished, and I am

encloser of things to be”

Whitman is ‘Mr. know all. He, being the spectator of the world of appearances, is silent. This attitude sometimes makes him fashion Christ in his own image:

“We walk silent among disputes as assertions, but

reject not the disputes nor anything that is asserted.”

He does not accept sorrow and disillusionment as the real features of existence. He believed in the evolutionary progress and perfection of the soul. To achieve this, one has to struggle. Therefore his,

“Call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion,

He going with me must go well armed.”

He was of the view that all selves are potentially divine. He shows himself to be ‘the poet of the Body’ and also ‘the poet of the Soul.”

“The pleasures of heaven are with me and the

pains of hell are with me,

The first I graft and increase upon myself the

letter I translate into a new tongue.”

This is a new kind of mysticism. He relates the body to the mystical experience. Whitman sees the soul through the body. The soul holds the body captive and then the poet has a moment of illumination:

“And I know that the spirit of god is the brother of my own,

And that all the men ever born are also my brothers,

and the women my sisters and lovers..................”

This knowledge springs spontaneously from the soul. We find the mystic swinging from one pole to the other, till they are firmly rooted in ecstasy. In this way, the mystic seeks to merge his identity in the Absolute which is All.

The mystic is conscious of the unity of the universe. The soul is charged to go beyond the barriers of space and time:

“O soul thou pleasant me, I thee,

Sailing these seas or on the hills, or waking in the night,

Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time and Space, and

Death, like water flowing.....................”

Whitman tries to name the nameless, the transcendent. He succeeds in communicating the experience of union with reality. The spiritual reality is eternal and infinite. Because of its limitlessness, it cannot be defined in terms.

“I see something of God each hour of the twenty

four and each moment then,

In the faces of men and women I see God,

and in my own face in the glass.”

This self-realization is his transcended mysticism. He wants the reader not to be satisfied by merely reading the poems:

“When you read these I that was visible am become invisible,

Now it is you compact, visible, realizing my poems seeking me.”

Whitman is regarded as the poet prophet of Democracy. A Jeffersonian Democrat, an idealist, a violent patriot, a humanitarian, a reformer, an ardent defender of progress, and ‘a fighter for democracy who knows that democracy has to be fought for.’ Whitman’s ideal of democracy is not merely a dream. Democracy for Whitman meant a community in which he felt oneness with the entire humanity. Thus, he was a spiritual democrat who saw in true democracy, possibilities of universal peace, toleration and brotherhood. Therefore no one is to be excluded from God’s grace- the kingdom of Heaven- on the basis of man-made discrimination. Whitman is not an aspirant of any kind of privilege-

“I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy,

By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their

counterpart of on the same terms.”

For Whitman, America symbolized for Democracy and Democracy symbolized for America. He declared that he will ‘report all heroism from an American point of view.’ He says- “In the faces of men and women I see God and in my own face in the glass.”

Whitman follows Goethe’s poetical axiom that the universal is the particular and the particular in Whitman’s poetry is democracy. In Whitman, democracy is not confined to the narrow limits of political democracy. In him, it means liberty. In his preface to The Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth remarks, “The poet is a man speaking to man.” Whitman believes in the dignity of the common man. There is no superman- all are superman. Like the great sages, the poet in Whitman felt that there is a divine spark in everyone. In his poetry, he glorifies every human being. Whitman took up the self-appointed task of singing for all men and women. His Song of Myself does not celebrate merely Whitman’s own self but sings about the self of every other human being. He says-

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I shall assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”

In Crossing Brooklyn Ferry he remarks-

“Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil,

I am he who knew what it was to be evil, ......”

The excessive feeling of democracy consequently leads to contradictions in Whitman. He admits-

“Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

I am large, I contain multitudes.”

In thought as well as in execution, Whitman remains essentially a poet of democracy. Whitman, his poetry, his subject matter, his style- all are democracy!

Whitman is the poet of the Body and the poet of the Soul. He sees the Soul through the body. His treatment of sex shows his strength and weakness as a literary artist.

“The drops I distil upon you shall grow fierce and athletic girls,

new artists, musicians, and singers,

The babies I begot upon you are to beget babes in their turn,

I shall demand perfect men, and women out of my love spendings,

.............................................................

I shall look for loving crops from the birth life, death, immorality,

I plant so lovingly now.”

Whitman’s treatment of sex is not that of a physiologist but of a poet. He voiced the deepest urges of the body in highly suggestive symbols and images. In his sex poems, there are great and fine ideas, moments of inspiration, flashes of beauty, combined with much that is trivial and tiresome.

‘Leave of Grass’ is the embodiment of the American reality and ideal, its superb fulfilment of all the requirements of the national epic. In the preface to the first edition of Leaves, Whitman says, that the old world has had the poems of myths, fictions feudalism, conquest, caste, dynastic wars, and splendid characters of the old-world epics, the new world epic will portray simply-man in the center of all. Whitman thought of his work in epic terms. Every man in America, according to Whitman, is potentially an epic hero, if he is sufficiently aware of the potentiality of his selfhood.