Whitman also backs away from his early contention that these cosmic
truths may be accessed by the broad masses—the “super¤cial observer,”
proposing instead that they are revealed only through the superior in-
sights of poet and sage.
Whitman’s self-esteem as a poet of the soul is clearly stated in an un-
published letter of 1874. Speaking of himself through a ¤ctitious third
person, he says, “Out of [Whitman’s] apparent materialism, an unerr-
ing spirituality always & certainly emerges. A distinguished scientist in
Washington told me not long since, that, in its tally & spirit, Whitman’s
was the only poetry he could mention that is thoroughly consistent with
modern science & philosophy, & that does not infringe upon them in a
single line.”^13 His intent to focus now on the soul is articulated in “Preface
1876 —Leaves of Grass and Two Rivulets,” in which he proposes “a fur-
ther Volume” that features “the unseen Soul” as the earlier editions had
featured “the Body and Existence”—a volume “which would be based on
those convictions of perpetuity and conservation, which, enveloping all
precedents, make the unseen Soul govern absolutely at last” and show the
soul as it enters “the sphere of the resistless gravitation of Spiritual Law.”
Using a photographic metaphor, he proposed to “shift the slides [from his
previous volumes] and exhibit the problem and paradox of the same ar-
dent and fully appointed Personality entering the sphere of the resistless
gravitation of Spiritual Law, and with cheerful face estimating Death, not
at all as the cessation, but as somehow what I feel it must be, the entrance
upon by far the greatest part of existence, and something that Life is at
least as much for, as it is for itself.” “[T]he last enclosing sublimation of
Race or Poem” he declares, “is, What it thinks of death... in my opinion
it is no less than this idea of immortality, above all other ideas, that is to
enter into, and vivify, and give crowning religious stamp, to democracy in
the New World.” Death had become for him “the crowning fact of physi-
cal existence” and the primary focus of its American poet:
I am not sure but the last enclosing sublimation of Race or
Poem is, What it thinks of Death..... .[sic] After the rest has
been comprehended and said, even the grandest—After those
contributions to mightiest Nationality, or to sweetest Song, or
to the best Personalism, male or female, have been glean’d from
the rich and varied themes of tangible life, and have been fully
accepted and sung, and the pervading fact of physical existence,Introduction / 11