Through his poetry, Whitman’s Song of Myself makes the soul sensual and makes divine the flesh. In Whitman’s time, the dichotomy between the soul and the body had been clearly defined by centuries of Western philosophy and theology. Today, the goodness of the soul and the badness of the flesh still remain a significant notion in contemporary thought. Even Whitman’s literary predecessor, Emerson, chose to distinctly differentiate the soul
from all nature. Whitman, however, chooses to reevaluate that relationship.
His exploration of human sensuality, particularly human sexuality, is the
tool with which he integrates the spirit with the flesh.
Key to this integration is Whitman’s notion of the ability of the sexual
self to define itself. This self-definition is derived from the strongly
independent autonomy with which his sexuality speaks in the poem. Much of
the Song of Myself consists of a cacophony of Whitman’s different selves
vying for attention. It follows that Whitman’s sexual self would likewise
find itself a voice. A number of passages strongly resonate with Whitman’s
sexuality in their strongly pleasurable sensualities. The thoroughly
intimate encounter with another individual in section five particularly
expresses Whitman as a being of desire and libido.
Whitman begins his synthesis of the soul and body through sexuality by
establishing a relative equality between the two. He pronounces in previous
stanzas, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself, and,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less
familiar than the rest. Here, he lays foundation for the basic
egalitarianism with which he treats all aspects of his being for the rest of
the poem. This equality includes not only his sexuality, but in broader
terms, his soul and body. In the opening to section five, Whitman
explicitly articulates that equality in the context of the body and soul: I
believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you, And you
must not be abased to the other. He refutes the moral superiority of the
soul over the flesh historically prevalent throughout Western thought. With
that level groundwork established, he is free to pursue the relationship
between the soul and the body on equal footing.
The mechanism of this integration may be one of a number of possibilities
included in Whitman’s work. Whitman’s notion that All truths wait in all
things very broadly defines the scope of his desire to distill truth from
his surroundings. He indicates that …all the men ever born are also my
brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers, suggesting that perhaps
sensual understanding of the interconnectedness of man bridges the spiritual
to the corporal. Within the context of the passage, the cause/effect
relationship between sensual contact and transcendent understanding becomes
clear. His declaration that I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles reinforces the concept that truth is
directly discerned through the union of the spirit and the senses.
Human sensuality thus becomes the conduit that bridges the spirit and the
flesh. Whitman demonstrates the result of that synthesis to be peace and
knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth. He expands this
revelation of truth and understanding as the passage continues, linking it
to divinity as he invokes the image of the hand of God and the spirit of
God. The union of the spirit with the body thus becomes a natural, common
pathway to divinity. This association to the cosmos, facilitated by a union
of the spiritual and the corporal, is then a direct result of the expression
of the sexual self.
Whitman’s choice of the word reached in …And reach’d till you felt my
beard, and reach’d till you held my feet, is a powerful image. It connotes
not only a physical bridging, which Whitman establishes as a elemental force
in its sensual nature, but also a direct application of the will. In this
context, this passage echoes Whitman’s earlier Urge and urge and urge,
always the procreant urge of the world, in its hunger and desire. Both
words reached and urge indicate willed effort, revolving around the
basic function of human nature in sexuality. The centralness of the
procreant urge to both these passages makes the sexual act the volta
around which comprehension and truth are achieved.
One of the key truths that Whitman explicitly communicates is the notion of
the interconnectedness of mankind. This theme echoes throughout Song of
Myself in the collection of voices through which Whitman speaks throughout
the poem, voices of his own and of other persons. In celebrating that
diversity among all persons and within himself, Whitman reiterates his use
of the sexuality as an instrument of bridging. Here, the power of the
sensual self binds all persons together through its universality and its
inherence in each human being. In claiming all men ever born are also my
brothers, Whitman associates himself and his sexual being to the whole of
collective human experience. His presumption that all persons are fully
capable of expressing themselves as sexual beings is subtly hinted at in the
uniform hieroglyphic he mentions later. In this instance, Whitman’s
relation between grass, the uniform hieroglyphic; and his catalogue of
different identities, proclaiming, I give them the same, I receive them the
same, marks a commonality in the human experience. This notion of people
as blades of grass, same and equal yet distinctly individual, can be
extended to encompass Whitman’s notion of the sexual self.
As Whitman’s transcendental experience continues, the scope of his
understanding seems to continue outward. The exponential growth of his
knowledge through his sensual experience claims: And limitless are leaves
stiff or drooping in the fields, And brown ants in the little wells beneath
them. The breadth of his comprehension increases profoundly on both
macroscopic and microscopic levels. In contemplating the nature of grass in
the next section, Whitman echoes this notion of infinities giving way to
infinities: All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses.
When taken into consideration with his later declaration, Walt Whitman, a
kosmos, the concept of the sexual self as part of an external infinity must
also be weighed against the notion of the sexual self as an integral part of
an internal infinity. In Whitman’s enumerations of different types of
persons throughout the poem, he strongly suggests that these people are also
voices manifested in his own being. He later proclaims, In the faces of
men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass. This line near
the end of the poem strongly ties the sense of externally infinite being to
Whitman’s sense of internal boundlessness. These two otherwise separate
domains of the external and the internal are thus coupled, completing the
cycle of the theme of union that Whitman imbues Song of Myself.
By projecting his sexual self against such broad parameters, Whitman
generates a decidedly transcendental experience. With such vivid imagery in
his celebration of the sensual, he elevates the limited faculties of man to
being capable of limitless understanding. The role of the sexual in his
work is integral to this sense of active, individual discovery. Whitman’s
notion of sexuality acknowledges it as one of the highest forms of sensual
pleasure, and one of great personal and communicative importance.
Poetry Essays
