I Sing the Body Electric

Since I was quite young, I've hated Walt Whitman. I think I have at least marginally better reasons than I did when I was young (when I could only prudishly object to the sensuality of his poems). There is a sense to Whitman that he sees himself as embodying the whole tradition and all of humanity that proceeds him, and yet not embodying and passing it down in its particularity, but rather in its lowest common denominator--the body. Okay, I admit, there is more than Whitman than this--bodies, in their flourishing, are passionate, active, strong bodies. Consider this poem:

As Adam, Early In The Morning

AS Adam, early in the morning,

Walking forth from the bower, refresh'd with sleep;

Behold me where I pass--hear my voice--approach,

Touch me--touch the palm of your hand to my

Body as I pass;

Be not afraid of my Body.

What does he do? He sets himself within the tradition of humanity that started with Adam. There is a sense in which he puts himself back in the Garden--back at a time of innocence. And then he asks for a unification of all of humanity in a way that hearkens back to the way in which people might have responded to Christ when He walked among them, touching Him as He passed. Ending his poem with the word, "Body," brings to mind Christ emphasis on His own body in the Eucharist and also Whitman's own focus on the body. Christ and Whitman go about this in two very different ways, however. While Whitman's invocation of body is done in such a way that it masks differences among people and appeals to an amorphous understanding of humanity, Christ's concern with the body and with the physical world shows that redemption comes only through and to particular persons, who do not lose their particularity by seeking union with the divine.

This is strikingly in accord with Tocqueville's assertion in Democracy in America that in the democratic age, the sources of inspiration for poetry will no longer be in particular men, but rather will be in "passions and ideas." Furthermore, poets will not "traverse earth and sky to find a wondrous object full of contrasts of infinite greatness and littleness," but rather "contemplate myself; man comes from nothing, passes through time, and disappears forever in the bosom of God."