So Long! Walt Whitman's Poetry of Death
improvement in the human condition as the generations succeed one an- other or to the continued existence, in some other form, o ...
His spirit appears to be impelled on its perpetual journey to divinity by an urge that is reminiscent of Saint Augustine’s dictu ...
5 In sections 47 through 52 the persona takes his ceremonial leave of the reader and prepares for his death. In these closing se ...
Clarke Wright wrote in 1863, “human nature!... stands out in the very front of the great picture of creation, as the most beauti ...
The imagery of birthing in these lines implies that the soul is reborn—or rebirthed—through death. In what appears to be a delib ...
landscape. In a bizarre example of synesthesia, the twilight seems to be “soughing,” or mumbling, its unintelligible secrets. In ...
nity. Leaves of Grass, too, is such a springboard from which emanations from the poet’s soul will forever be launched into the h ...
terms in Whitman’s writings), maintaining that the “in¤nite process” of immortality “is possible only if we presuppose that the ...
tener up there” (perhaps one born generations later) to accompany him or to surpass him. Before visibly departing he waits “on t ...
is only his corruptible body that is mortal, and therefore expendable; it is his body that must be abandoned to facilitate the s ...
remain alive in you as a vital—perhaps sentient—force. As Jacques Der- rida explains, it is only “ ‘in us’ that the dead may spe ...
1 The closing lines of “Song of Myself,” which describe the imagined dif- fusion of the dying persona into air and earth and con ...
love—can the vision [of immortality] be clear to a use the most sublime.” And these qualities certainly characterize the Whitman ...
poses three critical questions by which to measure one’s fear of the grave, addressed as much to himself as to the reader: Have ...
but they only helped the deceased’s family in their task, they did not do it for them.” In our era, when dying has become increa ...
(ectoplasmic?) state in which their new insubstantial “body” could even pass through the physical bodies of living persons.^3 Th ...
by their sexual allure. Cataloging the harsh work routine of the poem’s stage driver in the driver’s own jargon, Whitman makes h ...
Here the reader is challenged to identify both the “we” who will “lie be- yond the difference” and the nature of that “differenc ...
do-gooders” but also the “drunkards and informants and mean persons.” “All is procession,” the poet af¤rms in “I Sing the Body E ...
a cadre of physically developed moral exemplars and visionaries—what he calls a “breed of the best”—who will inspire the masses ...
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