of death is borne out by an intriguing notebook entry: “A Cluster of Po-
ems, Sonnets expressing the thoughts, pictures, aspirations, &c / To be
perused during the days of the approach of Death.” A basic assumption
of the “Calamus” poems is that the love of comrades—which Whitman
also calls “fraternite” or “adhesive” love—will somehow bridge the gap
between the present life and the unknown and wished-for life. “Adhesive”
love implies a blending of brotherhood, (male) sexual love, and pure af-
fection, often culminating (for the persona, at least) in a mystic experi-
ence.^38 Whitman’s pairing of love and death in a vague ambiance of spiri-
tuality has obvious af¤nities to certain tendencies in Romantic literature
or opera. However, unlike these art forms, in which the object of the
persona’s desire is some well-de¤ned man or woman, “Calamus” portrays
the persona’s love perturbations without once describing a lover or “sig-
ni¤cant other” and rarely hinting at the lover’s response to the persona’s
overtures. Some “Calamus” poems record the persona’s attempts to re-
solve his recurring doubts about immortality by linking love and death.
Always reluctant to concede that death could mean spiritual extinction,
he again invokes the tautological argument that immortality must exist
because he and so many of his fellow humans yearn for it. Had not
Immanuel Kant proposed that God offers immortality to mankind in
order “to secure the happiness which their moral nature demands,” and
that the great moral law—Kant’s categorical imperative—demands im-
mortality for its proper ful¤llment?^39 Still, despite its af¤rmations, “Cala-
mus” also depicts several crises of faith. For example, the crisis described
in “Calamus 7” (“Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances”) is comparable
to that in “As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life” in which the persona
acknowledges that from his “present point of view” he can see “only ap-
paritions and the real something has yet to be known.” “Calamus 7” ex-
presses his fear that the ever-shifting nature of appearances threatens to
destroy his faith:
... the uncertainties after all,
That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all,
That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only.
But rather than address this crisis of faith in ideological terms, the per-
sona bypasses any theoretical discussion by declaring himself “indiffer-
ent” to death and “satis¤ed” with things as they are because “He ahold of
146 / “So Long!”