So Long! Walt Whitman's Poetry of Death

(Elle) #1

Matteson, “Liebig, Justus,” in Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J. R. LeMaster and
Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland, 1998), 392.



  1. Cited in Brodsky, On Grief and Reason, 46.
    7. “Ashes of Soldiers” (1865), LG, 490–492; Democratic Vistas, in PW1892, 2:382.

  2. Arthur Wrobel, ed., Pseudo-Science and Society in Nineteenth-Century America
    (Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1987), 6, 229–230.

  3. Stern, Heads and Headlines, 99–123; Harold Aspiz, “Leaves of Grass, 1856 Edi-
    tion,” in Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J. R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kum-
    mings (New York: Garland, 1998), 359–361.

  4. Alfred Still, Soul of Lodestone (New York: Murray Hill Books, 1946), 200–222.
    11.LGVar, 216–217.
    12.LGVar, 248–249.

  5. Holmes, Whitman’s Poetry, 64

  6. D. T. Suzuki, Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism (New York: Schocken, 1963),
    quoted in Reichenbach, “Buddhism, Karma, and Immortality,” 149. Similar ideas can
    be found in “Compensation,” “Fate,” and other essays by Emerson.
    15.LGVar, 241.

  7. R. Laurence Moore, In Search of White Crows: Spiritualism, Parapsychology and
    American Culture (New York: Oxford UP, 1977), 54. See also, Douglas, “Heaven Our
    Home,” 49–68.

  8. George Bush, Mesmer and Swedenborg (New York, 1847), 47, 129, quoted in
    Fuller, “Mesmerism and the Birth of Psychology,” 217.

  9. For Whitman’s borrowings throughout the poem, see Goodale, “Some of
    Walt Whitman’s Borrowings,” 203–213.

  10. The “sabians” (more accurately Sabaeans) were ancient astrologers and star
    worshipers who possessed an elaborate priesthood. The name possibly refers to an
    ancient Arabic people dating back to 1000 b.c. and, less likely, to an early Christian
    sect that accepted John the Baptist rather than Jesus as the true Messiah (see Ency-
    clopedia Americana [1951], 24:76–77).
    Tacitus identi¤ed Mona with the island of Anglesey, located in the Irish Sea
    north of Wales; other ancient writers identi¤ed it with the Isle of Man.

  11. On Whitman and the Thorvaldsen statuary, see Paul Benton, “Whitman,
    Christ, and the Crystal Palace Police: A Manuscript Source Restored,” WWQR 17
    (2000), 136–165.

  12. See Cavitch, “Lament in ‘Song of the Broad-Axe,’” 32–33; Rubin, Historic
    Whitman, 300.

  13. James Bonwick, Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought (Indian Hills, Colo.:
    Falcon Wing Press, 1956), 105–106. The French archaeologist was Theodule Deveria;
    the churchman was Eusebius. Kneph has been associated with various deities and
    assigned various physical attributes and powers.

  14. Kerényi, Hermes Guide of Souls, 74–75, 79, 80, 89, and passim. Goodale, “Some
    of Whitman’s Borrowings,” 202–213, documents the borrowings from Volney con-
    cerning the classic gods (and the Scandinavian “cairns”); Hermes’s impressive plea is
    borrowed from that source almost verbatim.

  15. “Starting from Paumanok,” LG, 27; “By Blue Ontario’s Shore,” LG, 313.


Notes to Pages 101–114 / 257
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