Walt Whitman's Concept of Death
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This paper is an analysis of Walt Whitman's concept of death, through the study of two of his best-known poems. For him, death was not a melancholy, romantic figure lingering in the shadows, but an integral, vital, necessary force and part of the full cycle of life. "Song of Myself" formed the centerpiece for the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855 and established Whitman's reputation immediately, while generating considerable controversy within the literary world; sections 20-25 bring the reader closest to the poet himself. Death is more a part of the canvas of this self-portrait than a separate issue or a personified being. A comparison between the earliest version of these sections and the "death-bed edition" gives insight into the poet's view of death as his own approached. "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" appeared in the 1860 edition and continues to be regarded as one of Whitman's masterpieces. Both poems show the poet's striking skill with language and demonstrate his fascination with his own mortality and with the universality of human experience. Leo Spitzer describes Whitman as "a nameless American boy, a solitary listener and singer on a little-known Long Island shore who, having met with nature and with his own heart, becomes the American national poet" (227). Randall Jarrell writes, "He is the rashest, the most inexplicable and unlikely - the most impossible, one wants to say - of poets" (242). "Song of Myself" offers a glimpse into the work
. . .
tic baffling wonder" as a distinct hallmark of the poet: "He shares with Dante the conviction that the Here and the Hereafter collaborate toward his poetry, and as with Dante this attitude is not one of boastfulness" (219).
Whitman also crystallized his characterization of the real world (reworking his spelling and punctuation at the same time). In the original, he speaks of "A word of reality . . . materialism first and last imbueing" (49). By the final version, he has affirmed, "I accept Reality and dare not question it,/Materialism first and last imbuing" (210).
He salutes the scientists, map makers, and others who chart and manipulate the material world. In the first version, this salute reads:
Gentlemen I receive you, and attach and clasp hands with you,
The facts are useful and real . . . and they are not my dwelling . . . I enter by them to an area of the dwelling (49).
In revised form, he clarifies his separation from their work:
Gentlemen, to you the first honors always!
Your facts are useful, and yet they are not my dwelling,
But I enter by them to an area of my dwelling (210).
He goes on to rewrite "I am less the reminder of property or qualities, and more the reminder of life,/And go on the square f
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Approximate Word count = 3255
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)
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