Whitman-Christ wearing a two-thousand-year-old blossom in his hat as
he passes the “boundary lines” of life and death is an effective symbol of
resurrection. In the context of the above passage, those “blossoms” are the
growths, or outgrowths, of the tomb of Christ—¤rst among the persona’s
principal avatars. Whitman had used the image of “tomb-blossoms” in a
prose sketch a decade earlier, and he would use it affectingly a few years
later in “Scented Herbage of My Breast,” where the grave-herbage once
again becomes the symbol of resurrection. With deliberate ambiguity, the
above poetic lines speak of “our swift ordinances,” as though Christ and
the Whitman persona (the two are pictured as spermatic buddies in the
1860 lyric “To Him Who Was Cruci¤ed”) had in unison annunciated the
“law” of self-ful¤llment, universal progress, and transcendence. By alter-
ing the age of those hat blossoms in 1867 from the original “two thousand
years” to “thousands of years” Whitman muted the speci¤cally Christian
context of the passage.
4
The more than three hundred lines that follow in sections 39 through 48
compose the ideological core of “Song of Myself.” They portray a mythic
hero modeled on Walt Whitman but raised to the level of a “teacher-
redeemer,”^58 who attracts lovers and disciples. His words, “simple as
grass,” appeal to the noblest intuitions of the democratic masses. His
spiritual essence is projected by his presence and even by his glances. And,
like the hands of a deity or a mesmeric therapist, the touch of his ¤nger-
tips appears to cure the sick. The “magnetic healer” J. R. Newton, whom
Mark Twain credited with having cured his future wife of her chronic
neurasthenia, made just such claims for his healing powers, and Whit-
man himself suggested that his presence and his touch had bene¤ted the
sick and dying in the Civil War hospitals.^59 The persona now attracts
people by his “charm” (a term used by mesmerists to designate personal
magnetism and hypnotic powers) and—like an Egyptian deity—by the
fragrance that exudes from his body. He is characterized by his “adhesive-
ness” and his “®uid and attaching character”—sticky terminology that
implies bonding with his fellows. In this connection it may be observed
that the author of a religious medical text that Whitman apparently read
maintains that human sweat is a medium that can transmit one’s spiri-
tual essence to others.^60 The extraordinary persona even demonstrates
62 / “Triumphal Drums for the Dead”