Walt Whitman: May 31, 1819 to March 26, 1892

From Song of Myself, Stanza 50


There is that in me--I do not know what it is--but I know it is in me.

Wrench'd and sweaty--calm and cool then my body becomes,
I sleep--I sleep long.

I do not know it--it is without name--it is a word unsaid,
It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.

Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,
To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.

Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters.

Do you see O my brothers and sisters?
It is not chaos or death--it is form, union, plan-- it is eternal life--it is Happiness.



From China, over 2000 years ago:

The Tao that can be told of
Is not the Absolute Tao;
The Names that cannot be given
Are not Absolute Names.

The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth;
The Named is the Mother of all Things.

From The Wisdom of Laotse (The Tao Te Ching)
Trans. Lin Yutang


Some ideas don't arise and die out; they linger, perhaps ignored for centuries, but they arise here and there sporadically. I think Laotse and Walt Whitman might well understand each other, far more than I can understand each. At best I get a glimpse of what they are hinting at, but only a glimpse, and also the feeling that I'm missing something here.

Whitman, of course, contradicts himself, as most do when they attempt to speak of that which cannot be spoken of. He says that there is something within him that is unknowable, save for its existence, and without name. And, then the last line:

It is not chaos or death--it is form, union, plan-- it is eternal life--it is Happiness.

Perhaps through writing about it, he is able to give it a name?

Walt Whitman: May 31, 1819--March 26, 1892

From "Song Of Myself," Stanza 32:

This stanza incorporates the range of responses that I have toward Whitman's poetry: some parts I agree with, some I don't, and some I don't understand.

His brief description of the stallion at the end of this stanza is one of the finest I can remember reading. I see the stallion before me as I read--"Eyes full of sparkling wickedness . . ."


32

I think I could turn and live with animals, they're so placid and self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
No one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

So they show their relations to me and I accept them,
They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession.

I wonder where they get those tokens,
Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them?

Myself moving forward then and now and forever,
Gathering and showing more always and with velocity,
Infinite and omnigenous, and the like of these among them,
Not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrancers,
Picking out here one that I love, and now go with him on brotherly terms.

A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses
Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears,
Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground,
Eyes full of sparkling wickedness, ears finely cut, flexibly moving.

His nostrils dilate as my heels embrace him,
His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure as we race around and return.
I but use you a minute, then I resign you, stallion,
Why do I need your paces when I myself out-gallop them?
Even as I stand or sit passing faster than you.

Any thoughts?