This post is actually the result of our peer readings of the explications. In reading a poem and analysis of “As at Thy Portals Also Death” I began to see Whitman’s poetry differently. I had  been researching death and darkness as major themes in his late poetry but this poem seems to be more centrally focused on the image of the woman (his mother) as opposed to her death.

As at thy portals also death,
Entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable grounds,
To memories of my mother, to the divine blending, maternity,
To her, buried and gone, yet buried not, gone not from me,
(I see again the calm benignant face fresh and beautiful still,
I sit by the form in the coffin,
I kiss and kiss convulsively again the sweet old lips, the cheeks,
the closed eyes in the coffin;)
To her, the ideal woman, practical, spiritual, of all of earth,
life, love, to me the best,
I grave a monumental line, before I go, amid these songs,
And set a tombstone here.

The poem presents a frame in which the woman is glorified with words like “soverign, divine, and maternity” at the beginning of the poem which links the image of his dead mother to holiness and the idea of motherhood in general as powerful. The middle of the poem presents a physical discussion of the corpse which if relatively nondescript. The final lines in the poem return to the idealization of the mother or woman, broadening the scope of the subject again. Whitman literally insets the perfected image of the woman into the text: “the ideal woman, practical, spiritual, of all of earth, life, love, to me the best.”

It seems that in the context of this poem Whitman’s focus was not on death explicitly, but on the legacy of the dead. In specific he sees his mother, even in death, as perfected in her womanhood.

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. New York, NY: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1993.

In researching Walt Whitman’s Camden years I was interested in the literary companions he kept. He formed an interesting relationship with Bram Stoker and the two exchanged letters while Stoker was composing Dracula. In Reynold’s biography he discusses their relationship and the high level of respect they had for one another (Reynolds). Stoker even seems to have based his famous character, Dracula, on the poet. Stoker is quoted: “Dracula represented the quintessential male which, to Stoker, was Whitman” (Nuzum 144). It’s a strange context for me to consider Whitman as “the quintessential male” becasue he seems so highly anti-masculine in his adoration of woman and his questionable sexuality. But in the larger frame of Stoker’s work, Dracula represents a dying age and a dying breed of the liberated man sacrificed to the Victorian Age. In that regard, Dracula and Whitman seem more alike since the strict religious regulations of the Victorians would have offended Whitman’s spiritually free stance on faith, sexuality, and nature. Is it a compliment to Whitman’s character that he inspired the character of Dracula, or is it a commentary on the state of the aging poet?

Nuzum, Eric. The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula. Thomas Dunne Books, 2007: 141–147.

Reynolds, David S. Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography. New York: Vintage, 1995.

Whitman uses the term hieroglyphic once in “Song of Myself” in a section where he is examining the blade of grass. The Merriam Webster Dictionary presents two distinct definitions for the term: “Of, relating to, or being a system of writing, such as that of ancient Egypt, in which pictorial symbols are used to represent meaning or sounds or a combination of meaning and sound” and “Difficult to read or decipher.” Both definitions seem to indicate the grass is symbolic to Whitman, yet he is unable to overcome the mystery surrounding the grass and the ultimate definition remains illusive.

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. New York, NY: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1993.

http://iamjwal.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/egyptian-hieroglyphics-louvre.jpg JWAL: JWAL Blog Website, 2009.

I too am not a but tamed, I too am untranslatable,                                                                                                                                           

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,

It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,

It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

After spending nearly 2 hours figuring out how to post my first blog entry I could release only a barabric yawp of relief, much like Whitman at the conclusion of Song of Myself.

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. New York, NY: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1993.