PASSAGE TO MORE THAN INDIA

A Note on Walt Whitman's Poetry

 

DR. K. CHAKRAWARTHY

 

            Walt Whitman reposed his trust on the posterity for proper understanding and appreciation of his poetic achievement.

 

            He wrote:

 

            “Poets to come! Orators, singers, musicians come!

            Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,

            But you, a new broad, native athletic, continental,

            greater than before known.

            Arouse! For you must justify me.”

 

            It was his fond hope and ambition that even after his death if he could return invisibly to a distant land,

 

            “there to some group of mates the chants resuming,

            Ever which pleased smile         

            I may keep on.”

 

            It seems that Whitman could do no better than to have faith on the future generation. In this lifetime, which was con­siderably long – he lived to be a septuagenarian – he never got the deserved fame and financial independence from his poetical works. It is true that two of his greatly talented readers – Emer­son and Thoreau – recognized his poetic attainment; but most of his readers remained unaware of his great poetic talent throughout his life.

 

            S. Bradley, in his brilliant introduction to the Mentor edition of “Leaves of Grass”, informs us that “Whitman’s actual sales were never sufficient to support him in poverty. The common man of whom Whitman wrote, if he read poetry at all, preferred Whittier and Longfellow.”

 

            From the same source, we come to know that when Osgood and Company launched an ambitious edition of Whitman’s poetry, a notification of an impending suit on charges of obscenity was made to the publisher. And so the publication could not materialise. Walt Whitman is a poet of liberty, equality and fraternity. Since he finds that all these ideals are enshrined in the ideal form of democracy, he is also a poet of democracy. But his idea of demo­cracy is not what we usually understand by the term. He firmly believes that constitutional from of government, however demo­cratic, can never usher in real democracy. His recipe for the same is simple and he says simply: “Produce great persons, the rest follows.”

 

            Whitman is also an ideal singer of total living. He always sings of full immersion in the richness and pride of life.

 

            In “Song of Myself” Whitman tells us: “I have no chair, no church, no philosophy”. We need not, however, take his words literally. Admittedly, poets are hardly systematic philosophers. In the case of a poet, poetry and philosophy are inextricably woven together. Whitman’s philosophy, epitomized in his unforgettable utterances, has all symbolic significance. He is essentially a poet who seeks mystical identity of the self with the world of his fellowmen. He is always in search of a unique and mystical identity of all men and women of the world. That he places the “self” above everything else can be seen from the following well known lines of his opening inscription:

 

            “One’s self I sing, a simple separate person, yet the word Democratic, the word En-masse”.

 

            The second poem or his “Inscriptions” may strike one as the poetic testament of Walt Whitman. As the poet ponders in silence, menacing voice accosts him:

 

            “What singest thou?

            Knowest thou not there is but one theme

            for ever enduring bard?”

            And that is the theme of War,

            the fortune of battles,

            The making of perfect soldiers.”

 

            The poet answers the “haughty shade” that he also sings of war. He sings about the fight for a better life, for free and unfettered communion between the diverse races and nations of the world. His fight is:

 

            “For life and death, for the Body and for the eternal Soul,

            Lo, I too am come, chanting the chant of battles,

            I above all promote brave soldiers”

 

            Undoubtedly, Walt Whitman carried on a life-long crusade against all fissiparous tendencies that make cleavages among men and give birth to hatred, jealousy and misunderstanding.

 

            Walt Whitman described himself thus:

 

            “Walt Whitman, a Kosmos, a Manhattan, the son,

            Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking, and breeding,

            No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or

            apart from them.”

 

            This individual self, an emblem of the conception of Com­mon man, who “does not stand above men or women or apart from them”, has, however, a notable distinguishing quality. This individual self of the poet is constantly in search of communion with other souls, therefore he sings songs of identification with them. He can proudly and sincerely proclaim:

 

            “I am the actor, the actress, the voter, the politician,

            The emigrant and the exile, the criminal that stood in the box,

            He who has been famous and he who shall be famous after to-day,

            ...My hands are spread forth, I pass them in all directions,

            I would sound up the shadowy shore to which you are journeying.”

 

            Two important incidents during the lifetime of the poet in­spired him to write his great poem “A Passage to India.” These Two occasions were, the spanning of the whole of America by rail and the linking of Europe and India made possible by the opening of the Suez canal.

 

            These epoch-making events kindled the poet’s imagination as well as provided him with a means to make rapport between his own self and hitherto unexplored worlds abroad. The poet is thrilled to think of future when free and unfettered communion between the new continent and the old (signifying India, in the main) would be possible. The aforesaid epoch-making events, the poet fondly hopes, would bring a new era of hope and confidence. God ordains that men of different nations and races would ultimately merge and mingle to bring forth a new generation of supermen

 

            “Passage to India!

            La, soul, seest thou not God’s purpose from the first?

            The races, neighbours, to marry and be given in marriage,

            The oceans to be cross’d, the distant trough near,

            The lands to be welded together.”

 

            The poem under review is very rich in texture and various levels of meaning can be found in it. The poem is a vision of history, starting with the dawn of civilization in the East and coming up to the modern railway train thundering across the American continent. The poet gives new meanings to the old myths. He brings himself into contact with history, geography and society of India. But the poet is not satisfied with only a passage to India. He wants something more – and therefore he cries in passionate intensity:

 

            “Passages to more than India!

            O secret of the earth and sky!

            Of you, a waters of the sea!

            O winding creeks and rivers!

            Of you, a woods and fields! of you

            strong mountains of my land!

            Of you, a prairies! of you gray rocks!”

 

            We remember in this connection that it was this aspect of the poem which probably prompted E.M. Forster to borrow the name of his most famous novel. Moreover, Forster’s belief that the world “is a globe of men trying to reach one another” is very similar to Whitman’s belief.

 

            Through his poems, Whitman constantly sought to teach the new religion, which to his mind, had a great relevance in the context of the modern age. This was the religion of life which could embrace all people.

 

            Whitman’s faith in the posterity has been partly vindicated. His books have been, and still are read extensively throughout the world. But time is perhaps not yet ripe for the emergence of the type of reading public that he envisaged in his poetry. In this strife-torn world full of violence, the voice of the brotherhood of man and idealistic internationalism may appear to the young readers naive and unconvincing. Yet perhaps it would be profitable to note that a glorious future cannot be envisaged without some touch of the vision shaped by Walt Whitman. Even while living and breathing in an atmosphere of accute dejection and dilemma, one still fondly hopes that the bridge that Whitman built has not yet broken and the future quivers with expectation for the materialisation of his broad and healthy and optimistic vision of life.

 

            A perusal of his poems raises some questions in our mind. Is the reconciliation envisaged by Whitman possible? Without realising the true self, shall we go on making our old mistakes­ political, social and domestic? When would it be possible for us to integrate ourselves? When, in the words of the poet:

 

            All these hearts as of fretted children shall be sooth’d,

            All affection shall be fully responded to,

            The secret shall be told,

            ...Nature and man shall be disjointed, diffused no more,

            The true son of God shall absolutely fuse them?

 

            To some of us these questions may seem much too other­worldly and ethereal to be worried about. But in all fairness, can we deny that on the satisfactory answers to these pertinent questions lie the hope and ambition of the posterity?

 

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