Whitman As A Representative & Democratic Poet

Walt Whitman is America’s world poet—a latter-day successor to Homer, Virgil,

Dante, and Shakespeare. In Leaves of Grass (1855, 1891-2), he celebrated
democracy, nature, love, and friendship. This monumental work chanted praises
to the body as well as to the soul, and found beauty and reassurance even in
death. Along with Emily Dickinson, Whitman is regarded as one of America’s most
significant 19th-century poets and would influence later many poets, including
Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Simon Ortiz, C.K. Williams,
and Martín Espada.
During the Civil War, Whitman worked as a clerk in Washington, DC. For three
years, he visited soldiers during his spare time, dressing wounds and giving solace
to the injured. These experiences led to the poems in his 1865 publication, Drum-
Taps, which includes, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” Whitman’s
elegy for President Lincoln.

 Democracy As a Way of Life

Whitman envisioned democracy not just as a political system but as a way of
experiencing the world. In the early nineteenth century, people still harbored
many doubts about whether the United States could survive as a country and
about whether democracy could thrive as a political system. To allay those fears
and to praise democracy, Whitman tried to be democratic in both life and poetry.
He imagined democracy as a way of interpersonal interaction and as a way for
individuals to integrate their beliefs into their everyday lives. “Song of Myself”
notes that democracy must include all individuals equally, or else it will fail.

In his poetry, Whitman widened the possibilities of Poeticdiction by including

slang, colloquialisms, and regional dialects, rather than employing the stiff,
erudite language so often found in nineteenth-century verse. Similarly, he
broadened the possibilities of subject matter by describing myriad people and
places. Like William Wordsworth, Whitman believed that everyday life and
everyday people were fit subjects for poetry. Although much of Whitman’s work
does not explicitly discuss politics, most of it implicitly deals with democracy: it
describes communities of people coming together, and it imagines many voices
pouring into a unified whole. For Whitman, democracy was an idea that could and
should permeate the world beyond politics, making itself felt in the ways we
think, speak, work, fight, and even make art.

 The cycle of Growth and death

Whitman’s poetry reflects the vitality and growth of the early United States.
During the nineteenth century, America expanded at a tremendous rate, and its
growth and potential seemed limitless. But sectionalism and the violence of the
Civil War threatened to break apart and destroy the boundless possibilities of the
United States. As a way of dealing with both the population growth and the
massive deaths during the Civil War, Whitman focused on the life cycles of
individuals: people are born, they age and reproduce, and they die. Such poems
as “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” imagine death as an integral part
of life. The Speaker of “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” realizes that
flowers die in the winter, but they rebloom in the springtime, and he vows to
mourn his fallen friends every year just as new buds are appearing. Describing the
life cycle of nature helped Whitman contextualize the severe injuries and trauma
he witnessed during the Civil War—linking death to life helped give the deaths of
so many soldiers meaning.

 The Beauty of the Individual

Throughout his poetry, Whitman praised the individual. He imagined a democratic
nation as a unified whole composed of unique but equal individuals. “Song of
Myself” opens in a triumphant paean to the individual: “I celebrate myself, and
sing myself” (1). Elsewhere the speaker of that exuberant poem identifies himself
as Walt Whitman and claims that, through him, the voices of many will speak. In
this way, many individuals make up the individual democracy, a single entity
composed of myriad parts. Every voice and every part will carry the same weight
within the single democracy—and thus every voice and every individual is equally
beautiful. Despite this pluralist view, Whitman still singled out specific individuals
for praise in his poetry, particularly Abraham Lincoln. In 1865, Lincoln was
assassinated, and Whitman began composing several Elegies, including “O
Captain! My Captain!” Although all individuals were beautiful and worthy of
praise, some individuals merited their own poems because of their contributions
to society and democracy.

 The Democratic Self

Whitman celebrates the common man by creating a unified, overarching concept
of the self that applies to individuals as well. Whitman often casts himself as the
main character in his poems, but the Walt Whitman he refers to is only partially
representative of Whitman’s own opinions and experiences. He also uses “I” (or
himself) to represent the archetypal American man. This technique, known as “an
all-powerful I,” allows Whitman to draw all Americans into a unified identity with
the poet himself as the figurehead. The idea of the Democratic Self is common in
the work of Transcendentalist writers like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo
Emerson.

 Individualism
The ideology of individualism is very prevalent in Whitman’s work. This concept
thrived in America during the early nineteenth century – a democratic response
to the new class of industrial wage-workers. Like Whitman, many powerful
thinkers, politicians, and writers encouraged everyday Americans to exercise self-
ownership and value original thought. Whitman’s poetry often addresses the role
of the individual within a collective society while simultaneously emphasizing the
importance of self expression.

 Democratic Nature of Poetry

Whitman saw his poems as more than words on a page – he frequently points out
the democratic power of poetry. He felt that form called for vocalization and
sharing rather than private, silent consumption of the words – he wrote poetry
that he intended to be spoken aloud. In addition to writing inherently communal
poetry, he used the medium to celebrate the struggles of the common man. He
felt that both the form and the content of his work could sow the democratic
spirit in his readers’ hearts and minds.

1) The Body and Soul

Whitman emphasizes the connection between the body and the soul repeatedly
in his poetry. According to Whitman, the human soul consists of two parts – mind
and body. The body is the vessel through which the soul experiences the world,
and is therefore sacred. Whitman does not search for divinity within abstract
concepts but rather, he finds God in nature and in the human body.

2) The Natural World

Walt Whitman often draws his readers’ attention to the everyday miracles of the
natural world. He believed that nature facilitated connections between human
beings over time, distance, and superficial differences. All human beings, no
matter who they are or where they are from, interact with the same elements of
nature – the water under a boat or the grass growing around a grave. Whitman
portrays nature as all powerful because it can form a uniting bridge across any
chasm – ideological or physical.

3) War
Whitman’s career coincided with the Civil War. Therefore, many of his poems
address themes of war and the loss of humanity that results from physical
conflict. Although Whitman was a patriotic man, he was also a pacifist. He
believed that war was useless and that fighting was never an effective solution.
He worked as a nurse during the Civil War and during that time, he developed
many personal relationships with wounded soldiers. He felt that it was his
personal responsibility to humanize these brave individuals and honor their
sacrifice. “Ashes of Soldiers,” in particular, was inspired by soldiers that Whitman
met during the war. Though the war was over, he wanted his readers to pause
their celebrations and remember the individuals who enabled the victory.

4) Eroticism
Whitman’s fascination with the human body drove him to explore themes of both
romantic and sexual love in his poetry. Whitman believed that humans should
never be ashamed of their physical desires, because the human body is a sacred
vessel of the soul. Whitman wrote more freely about eroticism and sex than most
of his contemporaries. As a result, poems like “I Sing the Body Electric” sparked
controversy within the public and some of the more conservative literary critics of
Whitman’s era.

Conclusion
I Sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world,
and upon all Oppression and shame
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men
at anguish with Themselves, remorseful after deeds done,
The poet is confined to the four-walls of his house. He looks out and finds that the
world is full of sorrows. He is pained to find that some people are shamefully
oppressing others. Some young men commit shameful deeds and then repent
after the deeds are done. They are remorseful thereafter and sob convulsively in
secret. They behave like this because they listen to the prick of their conscience
secretly. He observes with disappointment the miserable plight of the poor
mothers who are neglected by their children and consequently they become
desperate and die.
He observes that the poor, the labourers, and Negroes are humiliated and
insulted by the powerful arrogant people. The powerful people enslave the
Negroes. The poet looks at this sad spectacle of life and remains silent.
“All these – All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon,
See, hear, and am silent”.