Emily Dickinson & Walt Whitman
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This paper will explore the similarities and the differences between selected poems of Emily Dickinson and of Walt Whitman, poets who wrote during the same turbulent decades in AmericaÆs late 19th century. These two were very different kinds of people, and perhaps we would not expect them to be interested in similar themes. Dickinson is famous for her homebound ways, was apparently strongly introverted, had a narrow field of acquaintances, and never traveled far from home. Whitman, on the other hand, was a worldly New Yorker, a man interested in politics who lived the life of a journalist, a traveler, an altruist, and a man-about-town. However, the poems of Dickinson and Whitman share an important concern with the nature of the human spirit and the quest to know the Self as spirit. In Dickinson, the quest for comprehending the nature of things spiritual in her distinctly modern voice is played out again and again in the poems that will be analyzed here. In Whitman, a very different kind of narrative voice explores these same issues. The thesis in this essay is, then, that both of these poets explore the ôtranscendentalö nature of human consciousness and write poems to educate us in the nature of the human spirit. This involves several separate ôlessons.ö First, both poets are interested in how they might immerse themselves so wholly in the ônowö that it becomes a ôforever.ö Secondly, both poets concern themselves with the nature of death and the possibility of imm
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mporary dwelling, an experience we both can and cannot understand, for our ôimmortalityö beckons to us from beyond the grave. These ôtranscendentalö concerns make WhitmanÆs poetry rhapsodic and inviting. It carries us away to a place where we can contemplate, along with the poet, what the nature of death is, itself. In Whitman, mortality is contrasted to immortality, but they are not held in opposition. In fact, they exist simultaneously, and are, finally, one and the same.
DickinsonÆs view of death is probably more down to earth, as suggested above in the analysis of ôI like the look of Agony.ô But, like Whitman, Dickinson focuses us on the unfolding moments of ônow.ö Thus, again and again, she wants to explore, through the metaphors she uses, the nature of human consciousness, and how perceptions are shaped by opposing realities, including the realities that go beyond the physical. Another example of how Dickinson uses opposition to explore spiritual life is in ôMuch Madness is divinest sense,ö (#435), where she says:
Much Madness is divinest Senseù
To a discerning Eyeù
Much Senseùthe starkest Madnessù
Tis the Majority
In this, as All prevailù
Assentùand you are saneù
DemurùyouÆre straightaway dangerous
And handled with a
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Approximate Word count = 2473
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)
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