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***

5 CONCLUSION (Part 21)

From “The Sleepers” we bring the passage that is mentioned in section 2.5.2, which depicts a swimmer’s death by sea water. As we have explained in that section, Whitman was a swimmer himself, and this scene portrays the death of a swimmer that is similar to the death of Carpus in the myth when competing with his friend Calamus, who died shortly after this event (2.5.1). As Whitman saw himself in everyone, it could be argued that the swimmer described in the scene is also a manifestation or projection of his own self, since the swimmer in the passage below is big, like him, and middle-aged. Although Whitman was thirty-seven years old at that time (“The Sleepers” was part of the 1855 edition, in which the poet sings in part 1 of “Song of Myself”: “I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin”), he was prematurely aged enough to look forty-five. As for the poem, it describes Whitman’s vision in his dream, in which he can see the dreams of the other dreamers. However, he also wanders during the day in the light. He is conscious of light and dark, life and death, and is content with both. He always accepts everything and everybody and excludes nothing.

.

WHITMAN:

3
I see a beautiful gigantic swimmer swimming naked through the eddies of           the sea,
His brown hair lies close and even to his head, he strikes out with            courageous arms, he urges himself with his legs,
I see his white body, I see his undaunted eyes,
I hate the swift-running eddies that would dash him head-foremost on the           rocks.
.

What are you doing you ruffianly red-trickled waves?
Will you kill the courageous giant? will you kill him in the prime of his   middle age?
.

Steady and long he struggles,
He is baffled, bang’d, bruis’d, he holds out while his strength holds out,
The slapping eddies are spotted with his blood, they bear him away, they            roll him, swing him, turn him,

His beautiful body is borne in the circling eddies, it is continually bruis’d on       rocks,
Swiftly and out of sight is borne the brave corpse.

.

OUR RE-CREATION:

3

Vejo um belo gigantesco nadador nadando nu pelos torvelinhos do mar,

Seu cabelo castanho jaz rente e liso em sua cabeça, ele golpeia com braços corajosos, ele se impele com suas pernas,

Vejo seu corpo alvo, vejo seus olhos destemidos,

Odeio os torvelinhos rápido-correntes que o arrojariam totalmente de cabeça nas pedras.

.

O que estais fazendo ondas desordeiras gotejadas de vermelho?

Matareis o gigante corajoso? o matareis no auge de sua meia-idade?

.

Firme e longamente ele luta,

Ele está confuso, detonado, contundido, ele resiste enquanto sua força resiste,

Os estapeantes torvelinhos estão manchados com seu sangue, eles o ganham, eles o rolam, o balançam, o giram,

Seu belo corpo é carregado nos circundantes torvelinhos, é continuamente contundido nas rochas,

Rápido e longe da vista é carregado o valente cadáver.

.

LOPES:

Vejo um nadador gigante e bonito nadando nu pelos redemoinhos do mar,

Seu cabelo castanho colado rente à testa….bate na água com braçadas corajosas….acelera com suas próprias pernas.

.

Vejo seu corpo branco….seus olhos destemidos;

Odeio os rápidos redemoinhos que ameaçam arremessar sua cabeça contra as rochas.

.

O que estão fazendo, ondas cafetinas e sanguinolentas?

Vão matar o corajoso gigante? Vão matá-lo no auge da meia-idade?

.

Por muito tempo ele luta e insiste;

Elas o socam o estapeiam o espancam….ele agüenta enquanto suas forças agüentam,

Os rápidos redemoinhos se tingem com seu sangue….elas o levam embora….o viram e reviram e o balançam:

Seu corpo bonito emerge nos redemoinhos….continuamente ferido pelas rochas,

Rapidamente e em outro lugar nasce seu bravo cadáver.

(WHITMAN, 2005, p.165; pontuação de acordo com a edição de 1855)

***

2.5.4 Calamus: the political meaning

After this discussion about water, swimmers and relationships, let us again look at the reed, which is the result of the metamorphosis of Calamus after he dies. Although Whitman does not explicitly sing the myth of Calamus and Carpus, verses such as these, from the poem “Italian Music in Dakota” (“Autumn Rivulets”), show that this natural connection is possible in his poetry:

While Nature, sovereign of this gnarl’d realm,

Lurking in hidden barbaric grim recesses,

Acknowledging rapport however far remov’d,

(As some old root or soil of earth its last-born flower or fruit,)

Listens well pleas’d. (WHITMAN, 1996, p.523)

The “rapport” acknowledged by “Nature”, as “far removed” as it can be, and as a “root” is linked to its “fruit”, indicates the holism of Nature, in which no part is separated from the whole. In this case, the connection between a plant and a fruit in the unity of nature lies beyond any formulation. And this is what the poet is doing in his works: creating a link between everything, trying to encompass the whole in a volume, so that when a person follows his tracks they will see the whole. In particular, he uses the calamus plant as a symbol of this unity. He does not need to be direct, that is, to mention the myths openly in the poems for us to understand the messages he is conveying. Therefore, even if the use of Calamus as a symbol in the Leaves was not consciously based on the Greek myth of Calamus and Carpus, the context where it appears is complete enough to create the environment that suggests this type of association.

To expand our research on the reed a little further, we will see how it appears in the Bible[1] and how it connects to Leaves of Grass. In fact, the calamus plant appears three times in the Bible, but in different contexts. Although the other passages are as important as the passage quoted below from Exodus[2], we will only discuss this one. In Exodus, Chapter XXX: 22-33, the calamus plant is used as a spice, yet its meaning is wider than that. It is important to observe the significance of calamus in this passage because it shows traces of what Whitman said about the meaning of this plant, that is, the “sweet-flag” as a token of “manly attachment”:

The holy anoynting oyle

22 Moreover the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,
23 Take thou also unto thee principall spices, of pure myrrhe five hundred shekels [ancient unit of weight equal to about a half ounce; around 15 grams], and of sweet cinnamon halfe so much, even two hundred and fifty shekels, and of sweet calamus two hundred and fifty shekels,
24 And of Cassia [a tree or shrub] five hundred shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary, and of oyle olive an Hin [about 5 liters].
25 And thou shalt make it an oyle of holy oyntment, an oyntment compound after the arte of the Apothecarie: it shallbe an holy anointing oyle.
26 And thou shalt anoint the Tabernacle of the Congregation therewith, and the Arke of the Testimonie,
27 And the Table and all his vessels, and the Candlesticke and his vessels, and the Altar of incense:
28 And the Altar of burnt offering with all his vessels, and the Laver [basin] and his foot.
29 And thou shalt sanctifie them, that they may bee most holy: whatsoever toucheth them shall be holy,

30 And thou shalt anoint Aaron and his sonnes, and consecrate them, that they may minister unto mee in the priests office.

31 And thou shalt speake unto the children of Israel, saying, This shall bee an holy anointing oile unto mee, throughout your generations.

32 Upon mans flesh shall it not bee powred, neither shall ye make any other like it, after the composition of it: it is holy, and it shall be holy unto you.

33 Whosoever compoundeth any like it, or whosoever putteth any of it upon a stranger, shall even be cut off from his people.

As we can see in the passage above, the calamus, together with other spices, is used to make a holy ointment that will be used to sanctify the place of worship so much that only by touching them “whatsoever […] shall be holy”. As a reader of the Bible himself, the poet did know about these passages, which he naturally adapted to his own purpose, as is the case in this verse from section 24 of “Song of Myself”: “Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch’d from;”. However, Whitman respected what the Lord advised Moses to do: that the oil should be used strictly as recommended. For this reason, the poet inserts the calamus root in the Leaves as a sacred symbol of attachment, but the religious rule is maintained: he does not use it as a source of ointment. His ability to merge information retained from varied sources into his poetry is described by him in the poem “There was a Child Went Forth” (from “Autumn Rivulets”), in which he describes what happens to a child who became everything he saw, including what he read or heard, for example, “The family usages, the language […]” (WHITMAN, 1996, p.492). He absorbed everything to use later in his poetry[3]. Naturally, he did that with the Bible too, the basic reading of the Americans in the nineteenth century, which was necessarily his own textbook as a youth. Again Canby writes about the poet, on how Whitman acquired his biblical diction (the influence of the Bible on Whitman also appears in poetical features, such as catalogues, enumerations and figures of speech, which are discussed in chapter 3, section 3.4):

Walt, in truth, was very much like the Quakers of his youth, who had a definite diction and a style (bad singsong usually) when they were moved by inner voice, which was utterly different from their usual speech. These rhythms in both poetic prose and in poetry, these rhythms of passion, mysticism, exaltation, of deep emotion whether religious or not, were, in their ultimate source, the rhythms of the English Bible. This was natural in a country where simple people, like his family, usually had only one book, and all the people were nourished upon, or at least were familiar with, the sound of that book. I do not say that Whitman’s poetical style is imitated from Job or Isaiah. […] The point to be emphasized is that free rhythms, in no tight pattern, yet able to lift and discharge imagination (which is the function of poetry), were natural, inescapable for the American masses. Free verse of the Biblical kind was their emotionalized speech.

(CANBY, 1943, p.309)

These memories from childhood and youth were re-worked to fit into his poetry, as well as his memories from books read, and the “free rhythms […] to lift and discharge imagination” (discussed in chapter 3). The ideas remained in his mind and later reappeared in a different form, in the poet’s own personal style and diction. Therefore, the calamus of the Bible, which served to sanctify the “children of Israel”, as is shown in the passage above, for generations to come, is now, in a different context, chosen to be the token of “fervent […] comradeship”, of personal affection, which will be the basis for a national union of America, as he expresses in the “Calamus” cluster. Here is his poetic genius at work: he takes an element from a reliable source which is common to all, regardless of social, economic or political groups, and applies it to a new context, while maintaining features of its previous context, especially its sacred characteristics. He uses something which is already in the hearts and minds of the people as a device to create a new reality, in which it becomes a common tie between them by renewing the meaning of an existing element and bringing it into circulation, as he does in the poems of “Calamus”.

The question then is about his specific use of the calamus plant in his poetry, his intention with it. The answer comes from his own words quoted below, a passage from his notes to the “Preface 1876—Leaves of Grass and Two Rivulets”, where he presented what he intended with his Leaves and particularly with “Calamus”:

Something more may be added—for, while I am about it, I would make a full confession. I also sent out LEAVES OF GRASS to arouse and set flowing in men’s and women’s hearts, young and old, (my present and future readers,) endless streams of living, pulsating love and friendship, directly from them to myself, now and ever. […] I say, the subtlest, sweetest, surest tie between me and Him or Her, who, in the pages of Calamus and other pieces realizes me—though we never see each other, or though ages and ages hence—must, in this way, be personal affection. […]

Besides, important as they are in my purpose as emotional expressions for humanity, the special meaning of the Calamus cluster of LEAVES OF GRASS […] mainly resides in its Political significance. In my opinion, it is by a fervent, accepted development of Comradeship, the beautiful and sane affection of man for man, latent in all the young fellows, North and South, East and West—it is by this, I say, and by what goes directly and indirectly along with it, that the United States of the future, (I cannot too often repeat,) are to be most effectually welded together, intercalated, anneal’d into a living union.

Then, for enclosing clue of all, it is imperatively and ever to be borne in mind that LEAVES OF GRASS entire is not to be construed as an intellectual or scholastic effort or Poem mainly, but more as a radical utterance out of the abysms of the Soul […], the Emotions and the Physique—an utterance adjusted to, perhaps born of, Democracy and Modern Science […], and in its very nature regardless of the old conventions, and, under the great Laws, following only its own impulses.

(WHITMAN, 2002, p.657)

Whitman had seen the failure of the American political system, in which he had been previously involved, both as a journalist and supporter.[4] In fact, he was disappointed in the political system as a provider of concrete solutions to real problems, especially slavery, a canker that had infected the life of the nation and was bringing it to a state of moral decay.  He was a personal witness to this, for he had belonged to political parties; he had been a “successful professional writer of competent journalism” as well as a “Democrat” (CANBY, 1943, pp.72; 88), and he knew the politicians of his time and their affairs. Although he was against slavery, he was also against dividing the country and its people, and he respected the Constitution[5]. This is why he is sometimes criticized for not being a radical abolitionist. He deprecated slavery, but he felt that a nation divided would be much worse than that. Allen helps us with a brief comment on this attitude of the poet:

To Whitman the Constitution was sacred and every section must be observed “in spirit and in letter.” He regarded slavery as wrong, but until abolished by the action or consent of the states, the Constitution must not be violated even to combat slavery. (1955, p.198)

He had then this terrible dilemma tearing his mind and heart apart. So, he decided to abandon professional politics in favor of a greater purpose: to create a work that would do what politics could not, namely, to unite the country, to make a nation, which could not be achieved by materialistic ideas and actions only. He totally believed that there must be something beyond the materialistic view of the world that dominated the American scene that could be used for this greater purpose, and that was love from person to person, affection, equality, comradeship, amativeness, adhesiveness[6], the themes that he chanted in the Leaves. As he stated in the 1876 Preface, there is a political significance in his poetry, and the reed, calamus or sweet-flag, is the symbol that represents the political meaning of the “fervent comradeship”, the element that links the personal affection to its political application. It is the transformation of something that is individual into something that is collective. Thus, Whitman abandoned professional politics, but not a political attitude as we will see in the following passage from Walt Whitman, An American, which gives an accurate description of his thoughts and feelings in the period previous to the publication of Leaves of Grass:

[…] In September of 1849, he resigned with a bitter farewell to his enemies, and ‘old Hunkers generally,’ by which he meant conservative Democrats ready to sacrifice free soil in order to keep the party in power.

This – and I feel sure that Walt realized it – was the end of his career as political editor. Walt was not only a Free-Soiler like his friend Bryant, he was a ‘Barnburner’, willing to sacrifice patronage and power to principles, and ready to split the party if necessary. And like many leading members of this faction, he later deserted the Democrats entirely and went over to the new Republican Party, where, however, he never functioned as a politician or editor. His journalistic career had many years to go; he was, as we shall see, to hold another editorship, though not a political one; but, from this crucial year of 1849, he becomes more and more distrustful of American politics, more and more resolved to speak for himself. (CANBY, 1943, p.79)

Free-Soilers were members of the Free Soil Party, a political party in the United States which acted in the 1848 and 1852 presidential elections, and in some state elections. It was a breakaway section of the Democratic Party and was later integrated into the Republican Party in 1854. Its principal aim was to oppose the establishment of slavery in the new territories, and they defended the idea that free men working on free soil was a morally and economically superior system to slavery. Basically, they wanted to keep the new states created in the west free of slaves, although they were not against slavery itself in the states where it already existed. Whitman was put in charge of their newspaper, The Freeman, in 1848, but the newspaper was burned out in a fire after one number and only resumed activities two months later. However, Whitman was “determined to keep slavery out of the new lands west of the Mississippi, though he was still in no sense an Abolitionist. He was certainly becoming more radical, too radical for The Freeman” (CANBY, 1943, p.78-9). Consequently, in 1849, he gave up the job.

Thus, it is quite plausible that a total political disillusionment is a strong enough motivation to make someone with artistic urge to shift from politics to literature, especially because this literary gift had been present already throughout his career as a journalist, while reviewing books and meeting writers personally, such as Edgar Alan Poe[7] and William Cullent Bryant[8] (American poet, critic, and editor, 1794-1878). In “Song of Myself”, section 24, there is a verse with the word “afflatus” (Whitman enjoyed using the word “afflatus” to describe a strong creative impulse or divine inspiration): “Through me the afflatus surging and surging […]”. It is interesting to note that the verb “to surge”, to explain his “afflatus”, his divine inspiration, means to rise and move in a billowing or swelling manner,  to roll or be tossed about on waves, as a boat and also to move like advancing waves. That means that not only he poured forth his ocean of love,“[…] the measureless ocean of love within him […]”, as he did in “Recorders Ages Hence”, from “Calamus”, but also his creative impulse, which practically took control of him, and he had to surrender to its  “large imperious waves” (“In Cabin’d Ships at Sea”, from “INSCRIPTIONS”). Politics was not an appropriate means of conveying this “ocean of love” to the public. Thus, at the time of the harsh ideological crisis faced by him in the late 1840’s, when he saw corruption taking over all the three spheres of political government (municipal, state and federal), all he wanted was to flee from professional politics. As Canby describes his mood in those days:

His first reaction to political disillusion was into violent distaste for the whole business of party politics. Like many another idealist who has been disappointed in the machinery by which life in society is carried on, he wanted to smash all machines. […] Whitman is fed up with practical politics. The time has come for men to count, not parties. Party machines are run by office-seekers and creatures of the President. […] Walt […] has lost faith, for a while, in the democratic system, though not in democracy. His political-editorial days are over […], his interest in getting out of the vote has been swallowed up by his interest in giving ideals to his country. (1943, pp.131-2)

Then, there was no salvation for him or for the nation in politics. How could the nation’s unity be maintained by a corrupt State? How could a corrupt government keep free work and slavery in peace in a country if it was this very corrupt government that traded personal interests to maintain this same state of affairs? Surely any honest citizen would agree that it is not necessary to be inspired to perceive that there is no solution in dishonest politicians who try to convince the population that slavery is good for slaves (to make them accept it and not fight for freedom) and also good for free workers, who are losing jobs because there are slaves available to do work for free.

Some critics suggest that Whitman’s change of mind in this period was due to some kind of illumination, which would have driven him towards poetry. As no one seems to accept that a “creative genius” might begin work at an older age, as the poet himself sings in “Song of Myself”, section 1: “I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, / Hoping to cease not till death.”, Canby says that “The Whitman legend takes charge of Walt’s biography in these years. Says that Walt dropped from the journalistic world. Says that he had mystical experiences” (1943, p.82). Simply because no one can explain how “[…] from the pen of a political editor and literary dilettante, appeared the first radical, revolutionary, egotistic, powerful poems of the ‘Leaves of Grass’” (1943, p.82).

Therefore, instead of thinking of an illumination[9] which could never be proved, although we can never deny Whitman’s lucidity and brilliancy, we had better think of a man, a person, who indeed loved his fellow citizens with all his heart, who loved them so much that he would give up his journalistic career to do what his heart commanded him to do: sing his people, his nation, a unity which could be achieved by the all-embracing, “all-inclusive”[10] heart of a poet. A poet who wanted to spread his love around as much as the sea would do with its water, a poet “who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of love within him—and freely pour’d it forth” for the sake of his dear comrades, the true friends who would build a nation together. And this poet found the calamus, the reed, to be the symbol that could represent this unifying energy connecting person to person, or more specifically, man to man.

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[1] We are using The Holy Bible: King James Version, a reprint of the edition of 1611, Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2005, as the source of our quotations.

[2] The other two passages are: 1) in the “Song of Solomon”, Chapter IV:14, it is used to describe the spouse of the singer, that is, to describe how good she smells, because she is like a garden containing fruits and all spices: “Spikenard and Saffron; Calamus and Cynamom, with all trees of Frankincense, Mirrhe and Aloes, with all the chiefe spices.”; and 2) in Ezekiel, Chapter XXVII:19, it is used to describe the “rich supply of Tyrus”, because there are merchants trading calamus there,: “Dan also and Iauan going to and fro, occupyed in thy faires: bright yron, Cassia and Calamus were in thy market.”.

[3] Canby remarks on Whitman (1943, p.15): “His whole life, with the exception of his activities as printer, carpenter, political worker, and hospital visitor, may be summed up in two functions: absorption and communication. […] Whitman’s own reminiscences of his childhood are records of absorption […]”

[4] In “Origins of Attempted Secession”, added as an annex to this work, the poet gives a description of his political activities as a “close observer” and “voter” for around twenty years (1840-1860).

[5] As we are discussing about Whitman’s belief in the integrity of the nation, through his faithfulness to the Constitution, it seems appropriate to mention that Hölderlin, on commenting on Sophocles’ representation of the State in Oedipus Rex and Antigone, says that the “patriotic forms” of the poets are “preferable”, for these forms are able to grasp the “the spirit of the times”, in order for it to be understood, since poets have this ability to apprehend it (ROSENFIELD, 2000, p.408).

[6] Whitman’s interest in phrenology, the science of mind that states that mental faculties are indicated by the conformation of the skull and thus can be analyzed and improved, made him visit the office of the Fowler brothers for an examination. Ed Folsom and Kenneth M. Price give an account of this visit in their biography of Whitman on their “The Walt Whitman Archive” website: “On July 16, 1849, the publisher, health guru, and social reformer Lorenzo Fowler confirmed Whitman’s growing sense of personal capacity when his phrenological analysis of the poet’s head led to a flattering—and in some ways quite accurate—description of his character. In addition to bolstering Whitman’s confidence, the reading of the “bumps” on his skull gave him some key vocabulary (like “amativeness” and “adhesiveness,” phrenological terms delineating affections between and among the sexes) for Leaves of Grass. Whitman’s association with Lorenzo Fowler and his brother Orson would prove to be of continuing importance well into the 1850s. The Fowler brothers distributed the first edition of Leaves of Grass, published the second anonymously, and provided a venue in their firm’s magazine for one of Whitman’s self-reviews.”

Available at http://www.whitmanarchive.org/biography/biographymainindex.html. Accessed on July 21, 2007.

[7] Canby (1943, p.61) quotes a passage from Whitman where he describes his meeting Poe and other writers: “[…] I knew and frequented Broadway […] Here I saw, during those times, … [William Cullent] Bryant, [...] I also remember seeing Edgar A. Poe, and having a short interview with him, […] in his office. […] Poe was very cordial, in a quiet way, appear’d well in person, dress, etc. I have a distinct and pleasing remembrance of his looks, voice, manner and matter; very kindly and human, but subdued, perhaps a little jaded ….”

[8] Canby (1943, p.65) describes why this friend left Whitman: “They rambled together for miles in the Brooklyn countryside where Bryant joined him, talking about Europe, and doubtless, also about New York politics. And it was only the violent unrestraint of the “Leaves” when it was published which caused them to drift apart.”

[9] Canby again helps us in this matter (1943, p.86): “The legend describes some mystical illumination of the consciousness, or sudden outrush of genius in the 1850’s, to account for the unexpected birth of a savage masterpiece in the thirty-sixth year of Whitman’s age. Great conceptions, novel methods, original poetry do not happen that way.” Richard Maurice Bucke, referred to in section 2.4 for his biography of Whitman and his book Cosmic Consciousness (1991), is one of the authors who helped to build Whitman’s reputation as a mystical and enlightened being. Whitman himself helped to write and revise his biography in an attempt to present the readers a more human and less messianic view of himself.

[10] Bloom speaks of this “all-inclusive” personality of Whitman in The Western Canon (1995, p.259), faithfully quoted here: “In his old age, nursing his memories of his mentor, Whitman reported a consoling remark made to him by Emerson, that in the end the world would come round to the poet of Leaves of Grass because it would have to, because it was indebted to him.  Whatever the later misunderstandings  between Emerson and Whitman – and they were many – we remember that accurate prophecy, even as we remember Whitman’s remark at Emerson’s grave: “A just man, poised on himself, all-loving, all-inclusive, and sane and clear as the sun.” What links Whitman and Emerson is far more vital than what divides them, and Whitman caught it in that “all-inclusive,” the image of the sun as a self-sufficient orb.”

2.5.1 The myth of calamus

There is a network of interconnections in Leaves of Grass around the word calamus, or reed. It points to several myths, meanings and details that lead us to many directions; however, they are all related in some way to this plant. It is as though the reed were a tree with various branches. We shall seek here to try and follow these branches to find the   flowers and fruits they might give us. First, it is necessary to go back in time to the account of the myth of calamus (or kalamos, in Greek), which will take us to the Greek mythological figure that bears this name:

Calamus, the son of the river-god Meander, his name means ‘reed’. He was in love with a youth named Carpus [Karpos, in Greek]. One day they were both bathing in the Meander and Calamus wanted to show his friend that he was the better swimmer, but in the competition that ensued Carpus was drowned. In his grief Calamus withered to such extent that he became a reed by the river bank. (GRIMAL, 1991, p.80)

From the start, we have an allusion both to male love and antiquity, that is, to a mythological past, the past that Whitman did not want to “repel”, as he stated in the first sentence of his Preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. We can see in this very brief record of the myth the summary of what the poet wanted to express by the “Calamus” cluster: manly attachment, comradeship, “unphysical” or disembodied love between men, union, nationality. Certainly the title of this cluster was not chosen at random, for Whitman was an expert on inventing titles for poems and books. As indicated by the manly attachment of the myth, the “Calamus” poems are widely recognized as homage to male love, as is stated by Canby (1943, p.176) in his Walt Whitman, An American, “A Study in Biography” of the America bard:

In 1860, the central theme is love – between the sexes in Children of Adam, and the love of male comrades in Calamus. It was the centrality of a love which was sexual as well as spiritual, that Walt could not successfully explain to Emerson, and so kept silent.

For example, in “Calamus”, Whitman sings how the attraction from man to man can be acknowledged as the real love that will unite the nation. His best known poem on this subject is “For You O Democracy”, whose first stanza presents the “life-long love of comrades” as the foundation of the indissolubility of the future continent:

Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,
I will make divine magnetic lands,

With the love of comrades,

With the life-long love of comrades.

I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of     America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the   prairies,
I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other’s necks,

By the love of comrades,

By the manly love of comrades.

For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme!
For you, for you I am trilling these songs.

The poet sings that everything will be done with and by “manly love”, especially to serve Democracy, the mother of all the children of the nation. These are the children who will be employed later, in the American Civil War (1861-1865), to protect the Union fighting against the Confederate States of America, the eleven Southern slave states, which did not agree with the Union politics of preventing the expansion of slavery into new territories of the United States and decided to secede. The fact is that Whitman was against slavery, but he was in favor of the unity of the country and of the Constitution, which is similar to the position withheld by the Union. Even though he suffered a lot and did what he could to help relieve Northern and Southern soldiers’ suffering, he knew that, given the political and economic situation of the United States[1], the only possible solution to maintain the union as such was the war. His love for his country as a unity made him support the leader of the nation, Abraham Lincoln[2], whom he admired personally. This attitude is coherent with what he had sung in his belief in inseparability. Later, during the war, while in daily contact with soldiers, he verified that what he had written was true, for what he had felt about his countrymen before, that they were comrades capable of love and friendship and of a magnetic energy that “will make divine […] lands”, was something real. When he was close to them, those simple affectionate people, who were the basis of the nation, lived up to his expectations. For these simple men were also capable of heroic deeds, of giving their lives to maintain the union of their homeland, even though there were those for whom North-America was a forced or new homeland (African Americans and immigrants). Whitman recorded this deep human experience in Drum-Taps (1865), “Sequel” to Drum-Taps (1866) and Specimen Days and Collect, published in 1882-3 by Rees Welsh and Co., and later included in his Complete Prose Works, 1892, published by David Mckay. As written above in section 2.1, the “Sequel” is the supplement that contains the poet’s meditation on the death of Abraham Lincoln, his “Memories of President Lincoln”. There are other poems as well in this edition, such as “O Captain! My Captain!”, a beautiful and sad lament because the captain “does not answer” any more; “Hushed Be the Camps Today”, the quiet song of the poet on the “dear commander’s death”, speaking for those who were silent; and “By Blue Ontario’s Shore”, the poem that he was asked to sing by a “Phantom gigantic superb” that said to him:

Chant me the poem, it said, that comes from the soul of America, chant me the carol of victory,

And strike up the marches of Libertad, marches more powerful yet,

And sing me before you go the song of the throes of Democracy. (WHITMAN, 1996, p.469)

Here is the poet singing Democracy, comradeship, heroism, but never forgetting the pain that was in everybody’s soul and in many people’s bodies. This is why we mentioned unphysical love. Whitman was describing a type of love that is beyond pure physical love, or sex. He was talking about something greater, something that continues after the death of the physical bodies, or something one feels for their homeland, their country, because while the country does have a concrete existence, it also exists as a mental concept and a sentiment. They are all related to create the sense of being, the spirit of the nation. And this is beyond bodily attraction. In this sense, the myth of Calamus illustrates this type of love, because their love remains in a different form.

In this manner, Whitman sings a complex form of love that goes beyond homo-erotic sex, although it might include that: the myth tells the story of two youths that end up dying. One is called Carpus (the fruit of the vegetation) and the other becomes a reed, which is a kind of tall grass. The myth tells us that when the two young men die, they continue to live in new and different bodies, but as transformed parts of nature that can live near each other. That signifies that the poet is depicting a kind of love that transcends the physical bodies and even a form of life. It is really a metamorphosis, a transformation, but a natural one, as it happens when a caterpillar changes into a butterfly, a process which is common in nature and is assimilated into ancient mythology[3]. Which means that this kind of love the poet is portraying is long lasting, not to say eternal, and also that our spirits are undying, and may continue living in a different way.

A scene from “These I Singing in Spring”, from “Calamus”, might be helpful to clarify this point, for in this passage the poet at first thinks that he is alone, but some unexpected visitors show up:

Solitary, smelling the earthy smell, stopping now and then in the silence,
Alone I had thought, yet soon a troop gathers around me,
Some walk by my side and some behind, and some embrace my arms or            neck,

They the spirits of dear friends dead or alive, thicker they come, a great crowd, and I in the middle,
Collecting, dispensing, singing, there I wander with them,
Plucking something for tokens, tossing toward whoever is near me,
Here, lilac, with a branch of pine,
Here, out of my pocket, some moss which I pull’d off a live-oak in Florida         as it hung trailing down,
Here, some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage,
And here what I now draw from the water, wading in the pond-side,
(O here I last saw him that tenderly loves me, and returns again never to separate from me,
And this, O this shall henceforth be the token of comrades, this calamus-            root shall,
Interchange it youths with each other! let none render it back!) (WHITMAN, 1996, p.272-3)

In parenthesis we can see the reference to the scene of Calamus and Carpus, where the poet plays the part of Calamus, walking in the water, recollecting the one who loved him, who now returns never to separate from him in spirit, for the crowd that appeared to accompany him is a crowd of spirits of beloved companions. This poem also presents some elements or symbols that will appear later in the poem mentioned before, the “Lincoln elegy”: the lilac, the pine, the one he loves, nature, dead persons, memory of dear comrades. Allen (1955, pp.329-30) sometimes comments on the poet in his biography of Whitman, The Solitary Singer, that he is many times prophesying. Amazing as it may seem, it is a fact that many items that appeared in the 1860 edition in “Calamus” and “Children of Adam” naturally become part of the elegy on Lincoln’s death.[4] The time, the weather and nature before the assassination of the President were unusually strange. The evening star was brighter than before, the lilacs were blooming everywhere, the sky was clear, but there was a terrible rush at the White House on the day of Lincoln’s inauguration, and Whitman reported that after that, when the President came out of the Capitol portico, there was only one cloud in the sky hovering over the President. The poet was deeply touched by these events. When the one he loved so much was assassinated, his dear comrade, all these elements that were fluttering in his soul were poured into the poems. This shows how the poet is integrated into his surroundings, or environment, living his life and absorbing the life that is taking place around him, in order to put them together in his poetry. We will discuss about this a little more below, where we mention other poets that were able to fuse individual interest with collective action.

Another poem from “Calamus” that deals specifically with the theme of comradeship and love from person to person as the linking element that will sustain the nation, that is, a personal sentiment with a political significance, is “The Base of All Metaphysics”:

[…]
Having studied the new and antique, the Greek and Germanic systems,
Kant having studied and stated, Fichte and Schelling and Hegel,
Stated the lore of Plato, and Socrates greater than Plato,
And greater than Socrates sought and stated, Christ divine having studied            long,
I see reminiscent to-day those Greek and Germanic systems,
See the philosophies all, Christian churches and tenets see,
Yet underneath Socrates clearly see, and underneath Christ the divine I see,
The dear love of man for his comrade, the attraction of friend to friend,
Of the well-married husband and wife, of children and parents,
Of city for city and land for land. (WHITMAN, 1996, p.275)

This “dear love” is also what maintains the “city of Friends”, the “city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth”, the city that is the poet’s dream seen “in a dream” (“I Dream’d in a Dream”, from “Calamus”; WHITMAN, 1996, p.284). In short, the poet was always seeking those whose blood was like his, someone who could become his “eleve”[5] (pupil, student), to learn this kind of love, his capacity to love all, unconditionally. This is what is amazing in Whitman, this broad heart of his, with an ocean of love ready to pour forth as he sings in “Recorders Ages Hence” from “Calamus” (WHITMAN, 1996, p.276). This is his strength, his all-embracing human warmth, showing affection towards everybody and every body, low people, prisoners, soldiers, men, and women, as in “O woman I love! O bride! O wife!”[6].  As he sings in “From Pent-up Aching Rivers”, from “Children of Adam”:

Singing the song of procreation,

Singing the need of superb children and therein superb grown people, Singing the muscular urge and the blending,

Singing the bedfellow’s song, (O resistless yearning!

O for any and each the body correlative attracting!

O for you whoever you are your correlative body!

We can trace the movement of his love, and we can see that it goes from a personal level, in which he speaks of love between comrades, then of friends, from friends to families, and crowds, cities, lands, nations, until it reaches a spiritual level, as at the end of “I Sing the Body Electric”, in which he describes the beauty of bodies and of each part of the bodies, to finally summarize all these bodily expressions in “I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul, / O I say now these are the soul!” (WHITMAN, 1996, p.258). And even then he goes further, for he raises his song to a religious level, for he is the “immortal […] chanter of Adamic songs”, which are bathed “in Sex”[7]. Again, he performs this interpenetration of dimensions, as he asks of his own “children” to interpenetrate with others, the children that he impregnated on women, who are to be “the best-beloved of [him] and America”. He becomes a myth, Adam, re-incarnated and a man, the poet who is singing the songs. He is an archetypal father (like his dear comrade Lincoln) and the man who is on earth singing his days and the life of his land, that is, the present, as he does in “Passage to India” (WHTIMAN, 1996, p.531). He sings a “simple separate person”, yet he sings the democratic “En-Masse”[8]. The first lines of “Song of Myself” describe this whitmanian capacity to synthesize the private and the public, the individual and the community, the physical and the spiritual, body and soul, in a single act of love for all: “I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself, / And what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”.

This broad gesture of Whitman’s reminds us of other artists who incarnated this same spirit, such as Oswald de Andrade[9], in his “Cântico dos Cânticos Para Flauta e Violão” (“Song of Songs to Flute and Guitar”), in which he abolishes the frontier between individual love and collective love, for he sings his love for his beloved Maria Antonieta d’Alkmin inextricably mingled with his love for humanity, who was at that moment celebrating the victory of Liberty during World War II (ANDRADE, 1991, pp.55-65). His love for one person or for a woman is not separated from his love for all. This is where the personal sphere is linked to the collective sphere, where the specimen meets the species, or is not afraid to surrender to it; by understanding that only as a part of it can he actually exist, for a part can not be greater or larger than the whole. In modern times, this can be said to be the limit of selfishness and the beginning of selflessness, or what we might define as a personal interest surrendering to a collective interest, which becomes stronger by this act, being also a transmutation and integration of the person into his human group.  This is the democratic aim of the poet, which shows the common interest of the whole overcoming the egotistical interest of only one part of it. The fact is that artists, and especially great artists, are able to fuse, to blend, to commingle their personal lives with the collective life of the community they represent.

Haroldo de Campos, in “Lirismo e Participação” (“Lyricism and Participation”; 1992, pp.89-96), describes this blending of the “two spheres”, the personal and the collective, not only in the themes addressed by the artists, but also in the language used by them. He cites Vladímir Maiakóvski, the Russian-Soviet poet (in his poem “Letter to Tatiana Iácovleva”), Oswald de Andrade (in his poem “Song of Songs”), and Alain Resnais, the French film-maker (in his film “Hiroshima”), as examples of artists who were able to mix the two sides of a person’s life into one single motif: love, by which we mean individual love mixed with collective love, to show that one is not separated from the other, and both are different forms of the same feeling.

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[1] We will print as an annex to this work a document called “Origins of Attempted Secession” (WHITMAN, 1996, pp.1018-24; included in “Specimen Days and Collect”), in which Whitman offers his historical, political and economic analysis of the circumstances that led to the American Civil War, where he shows that both North and South were responsible for the fratricidal events that tore the country.

[2] Lincoln (1809-1865) was from Kentucky, which was considered frontier land at the time. He was born from uneducated anti-slavery farming parents. However, he was an avid reader, and self-taught law, which he began to practice in 1837, though having had only eighteen months of formal education. At the same time, he developed his writing and continued his political career, which he had begun in 1832. In 1844, he entered the Republican Party, and was nominated in 1860 for the Presidency, which he won. His main attributes were: being a “western” man, which made him gain support from frontier states and his anti-slavery view, which was not too extremist. In 1864, he was re-elected, for his commitment to winning the war. The fact is that Lincoln’s background fits Whitman’s ideal of a political leader, someone who would come from the multitude of common men.

[3] The Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid [ Publius Ovidius Naso. 43 b.c.-a.d. 17.] is a poem in fifteen books that describes the creation and history of the world in terms according to Greek and Roman points of view. Probably written in 8 BC, it has remained one of the most popular works of mythology, being the Classical work best known to medieval writers and thus having a great deal of influence on medieval poetry. Content: Ovid emphasizes tales of transformation often found in myths, in which a person or lesser deity is permanently transformed into an animal or plant. Available at: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphoses>

Accessed on: March, 14^th 2007.

For Ezra Pound, Arthur Golding’s (1536-1606) translation of the Metamorphoses “is the most beautiful book in the [English] language”, and he said he suspected this would be Shakespeare’s opinion as well. (POUND, 1987, p.58).

[4] Similarly, Drum-Taps, his volume on the American Civil War, was started in 1860, the year before the war, which begun in April, 1861. Coincidentally, the original title for this book was Banner at Day Break. Later it became “Song of the Banner at Daybreak” and was included in Drum-Taps. In reality, “Song of the Banner at Daybreak” (WHITMAN, 1996, p.239-244) is a conversation, or a play, in which the following characters discuss the oncoming war: Poet, Child, Father, Banner and Pennant (types of military flags).

[5] Both references from “To a Western Boy”, in “Calamus” (WHITMAN, 1996, p.285).

[6] “Fast Anchor’d Eternal O Love!”, from “Calamus” (WHITMAN, 1996, p.285).

[7] “Ages and Ages Returning at Intervals”, from “Children of Adam” (WHITMAN, 1996, p.264).

[8] “One’s Self I Sing”, from “Inscriptions” (WHITMAN, 1996, p.165).

[9] There are other aspects that relate Whitman and Oswald, such as their use of free verse and their relationship with nature, which will be dealt with in section 3.5.

2.5 Addressing some themes in Leaves of Grass

This section comprises the following subdivisions: 2.5.1, on the myth of Calamus and Carpus; 2.5.2, on two other elements in the myth, water and swimmers; 2.5.3, on what happens after the death of Carpus; 2.5.4, on the political meaning of Calamus; 2.5.5, on Calamus, Carpus, aulos or ‘reed singers’; and 2.5.6, which discusses about “Language [as] fossil poetry”, the poetic function, Emerson, Blake, mediums, and Adam.