Whitman
Dickinson Blog
Walt
Whitman is a writer who is all about the interconnectedness of things. He sees
a world where things are all good. Nature is good, animals are good, and even
death is good. He comes from the tradition of transcendentalists and it shows.
Dickinson
is more in the strain as Poe. Anything that could end badly will. Where Whitman
sees death as part of the grand cycle, Dickinson has a preoccupation with the
idea of immortality. Death is “the stillness in the room,” as she writes in “I
heard a Fly buzz -- when I died –“
Walt
Whitman and Emily Dickinson share a fascination of three major themes. The first is nature. Both writers have references to animals in
their poetry. In fact, both mention the same animal: the horse. But while Dickinson
uses the image horses pulling a carriage, Whitman uses the image of “A gigantic beauty of a stallion.” His vision of
nature sees something full of life and freedom while Dickinson is more
concerned with the march towards death.
Which leads to the second
preoccupation that both writers share: death. The pair responds to the idea of
dying in different ways, with Whitman not only accepting, but openly being
ecstatic of the opportunity to become part of the earth. Life and death form a
cycle. He takes a materialist view where nothing is created or destroyed. Death
is just another change.
The
third is that both writers are concerned with the place humans have in the
universe. Whitman loves that the universe is expansive, endless even. In “Song
of Myself” Whitman writes: “I am large, I contain multitudes.” This famous line goes to the
heart of how Whitman perceives the world around him. The world is part of him.
He cannot be cut off from the world because he is the world, in microcosm. But
for Dickinson, the idea of the universe is daunting: “So huge, so hopeless to
conceive” the universe is overwhelming. Whitman and Dickinson see the same
world, but she shrinks from it while Whitman wants to encompass the whole of
everything in this person and in his writing.
I think its important that you begin by interpreting the poets’ style and what themes or concepts are most relevant/important to their works. Whitman indeed is the more visibly transcendentalist of the two. Perhaps Dickinson’s religious background offers her the tendency towards the preoccupation with immortality—this seems both important to her and difficult for her to fully conceptualize. You continue to analyze the symbol of the horse keeping in mind these important differences between the authors’ perspectives. Whereas Whitman’s stallion evokes the unbridled spiritual freedom of his poetry, Dickinson’s work horse is tacked and toiling, locked into its fate. Whitman dances towards his death, what he might see as a regeneration of sorts—returning to the Earth. Dickinson, on the other hand, is more reserved, uncertain, yet certainly curious of the concept of death which Whitman exuberantly celebrates.
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