Walt Whitman - an Affair with Life

"Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again,
and ever again, this soil'd world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin - I draw near,
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.
-Walt Whitman, 'Reconciliation'

Walt Whitman had a love of life that reaches our hearts today. His passion and insightfulness into life and love helps us understands our lives and ourselves better. Even in his darkest and most depressing poems, there is a sense of life and love in them. In his poem, 'Reconciliation' (seen above), he expresses grief at the loss of even his enemy's life. Life is precious to Walt Whitman, even the life of the enemy.

No poem shows this love of life better than 'Live Oak, with Moss'. In the first stanza alone, Whitman greets life with a fiery passion. The first line grabs you. "Not the heat flames up and consumes,..." Heat. Passion. Love. Life. In seven words, Walt Whitman grabs the reader and launches him/her into a world of passion and life. You can feel the heat on your face. You can hear the waves crashing on the shore. (As in the second line.) You can taste the summer on your tongue and see the seeds blowing in the breeze. And then he goes on to say that none of these are as consuming, as "burning for his love whom I love...." He loves this unnamed man with so much passion you can still feel it almost 150 years later. In 'Once I Pass'd through a Populous City', you see the same passion (though clearly only for a short time) as in 'Live Oak', only this time for a young woman.

At the same time that 'Live Oak' shows you passion in love, 'Trickle Drops' shows you passion in loss. 'Trickle Drops' can be taken several different ways. If you take the literal sense, the poem is all about blood. "Trickle drops! my blue veins leaving! O drops of me! trickle, slow drops,..." But taken in the figurative sense, it's about the loss of someone you love, about letting them go free. It has to be someone you love, not like. For someone you just liked, you wouldn't shed blood to free them, but for someone you love, you would. "...From wounds made to free you whence you were prison'd, From my face, from my forehead and lips, From my breast, from within where I was conceal'd, press forth red drops, confession drops, Stain every page, stain every song I sing, every word I say, bloody drops,..." To give up so much of your self, to have another stain so much of you life that it affects everything you do, it has to be love, a passionate love.

The third way you can read 'Trickle Drops' is sexual. Blood is an aphrodisiac to some in sex. It is also another way of saying passion. If you read between the lines (and you can do this in just about any of Whitman's poems), you can feel the sexual passion that Whitman has for the person for which this poem was written. "...Let them know you scarlet heat, let them glisten, Saturate them with yourself all ashamed and wet, Glow upon all I have written or shall write, bleeding drops, Let it all be seen in your light, blushing drops." Anyway you look at this poem; Whitman has a passion for life.

"A noiseless patient spider,
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark's how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul."
-Walt Whitman, 'A Noiseless Patient Spider'

Walt Whitman's love affair with life was not only shown in his passionate poems about love, life and loss, but also in a poem about a spider. He takes the daily life of a spider and compares it to his life. He talks about how he is always trying to make a connection with people, always trying to find that one person to love for the rest of his life, be they man or woman. As the spider connects the filament of threads to make a web, Whitman connects the treads of friendships, seeking a hold into the one that would be his soul mate.

And although he is seeking the "love of a lifetime", he feels used by the ones around him. This to is a component of life. In 'Whoever You Are Holding Me Now In Hand', Whitman flat out says that those around him do not know him and that he is selfish in his loving another. "Whoever you are holding me now in hand, Without one thing all will be useless, I give you fair warning before you attempt me further, I am not what you suppose but far different,..." The way is suspicious, the results uncertain, perhaps destructive, You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be your sole and exclusive standard,..." In this Walt Whitman is like most romantics, everything is about him and only him. Anything coming from outside would mar the romanticism of the relationship. In this, his life, love, passion, lust is the most important thing in the universe.

Sources:

Baym, Nina (et. al.) The Norton Anthology of American Literature - Volume One. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998.

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. New York: The Viking Press, 1959.