the persona ‘‘Walt Whitman,’’ absorbs and cele-
brates the world.
But in section 3 Whitman strikes his most
original concept of faith by including Satan as a
necessary fourth ‘‘side’’ in his refashioning of a
conventional trinity. Whitman’s language in this
part of the poem presents an aspect of the spiri-
tual life that is proud and resolute, refusing to be
‘‘rule[d],’’ a ‘‘comrade of criminals, brother of
slaves,’’ a role again recalling the empathetic
position of the poet in so many earlier poems in
Leaves of Grass. Within the context of Whit-
man’s evolving spiritual vision, the notion of
an ‘‘aloof,’’ ‘‘defiant’’ deity is less revolutionary
than it seems. This is the nonconforming, ever-
questing spirit that has always been a necessary
part of the poet’s conception of faith, American
democracy, and American character. Whitman’s
Satan is the vital, energetic, crafty, and creative
God inherent in the most complete human soul,
as well as the prideful and nonconforming spirit
that he envisions as the new American spirit, the
dynamic world citizens he posits in ‘‘Democratic
Vistas’’ and in poems that celebrate the inde-
pendent, free-thinking America.
Whitman brings the different sides of human
concepts of the divine together in section 4
with ‘‘Santa Spirita’’ or the Holy Spirit, merging
the previous Gods into a harmonious entity
‘‘beyond’’ both heaven and hell, ‘‘lighter than
light.’’ Whitman deviates from the traditional
masculine phrasing of the Italian (Spirito Santo)
and Latin (Spiritus Sanctus) in his naming of
the unifying spirit, thereby emphasizing the uni-
versality of his vision of deity. In closing the
poem, Whitman again returns the focus to the
connection between the divine and his own poetic
endeavor, having Santa Spirita declare that it is
her breath that gives life to ‘‘these songs.’’ All
along, language and poetry have been closely
tied to the spiritual quest, and even in an attempt
at an all-encompassing summation of spiritual
conceptions, the poet is unable to disassociate
divinity from his own enterprise.
The ‘‘Whispers’’ cluster reaches its culmina-
tion in one of Whitman’s greatest achievements
in the short form, ‘‘A Noiseless Patient Spider.’’
Ten lines in length, the poem compares the quest
of the soul to that of an ‘‘isolated’’ spider seeking
to ‘‘explore the vacant vast surroundings.’’ In the
first five lines Whitman offers an observation of
the spider’s efforts as it launches ‘‘filament’’ after
filament into the void, and then in the second
half of the poem he turns to directly address
his soul, similarly ‘‘detached’’ yet seeking con-
nection. Again, as with most of the poems in
the ‘‘Whispers’’ sequence, it is striking that the
poet who found so many connections—with
other human beings, physical phenomena, and
himself—in the poems of tire 1850s and early
1860s should at this late stage present himself
as solitary and still optimistically seeking con-
nections amidst an unknown and mysterious
universe. But the willingness to exist ‘‘in meas-
ureless oceans of space, / Ceaselessly musing,
venturing, throwing’’ remains as much a part of
Whitman’s essential being as in the early poems
of more intense, ecstatic psychological explora-
tion. What has changed is the poet’s stance, his
attitude toward his endeavor. More patient,
more musing, he is in his late phase less urgent
and more persistent in his questing and question-
ing than in his longer poems of the 1850s such as
‘‘The Sleepers’’ and ‘‘Out of the Cradle Endlessly
Rocking.’’...
Source:Ernest Smith, ‘‘‘Restless Explorations’: Whit-
man’s Evolving Spiritual Vision inLeaves of Grass,’’ in
Papers on Language and Literature, Vol. 43, No. 3,
Summer 2007, pp. 227–63.Mary Oliver
In the following excerpt, poet Oliver discusses the
impact of Whitman and the subjects of his poetry,
including the spider, on her life.MY FRIEND WALT WHITMAN
In Ohio, in the 1950’s, I had a few friends
who kept me sane, alert, and loyal to my own best
and wildest inclinations. My town was no more
or less congenial to the fact of poetry than any
other small town in America—I make no special
case of a solitary childhood. Estrangement from
the mainstream of that time and place was an
unavoidable precondition, no doubt, to the life
I was choosing from among all the lives possible
to me.
I never met any of my friends, of course, in a
usual way—they were strangers, and lived only
in their writings. But if they were only shadow-
companions, still they were constant, and power-
ful, and amazing. That is, they said amazing
things, and for me it changed the world.
This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody but I will tell you.
Whitman was the brother I did not have. I
did have an uncle, whom I loved, but he killed
himself one rainy fall day; Whitman remained,A Noiseless Patient Spider