Whitman and Dickinson and Whitman:

Whitman and Dickinson Dickinson and Whitman: The Greater and the Lesser Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are two very different 19th century American poets. While the former rose to literary significance on the strength of Ralph Waldo Emerson's encouragement and the massive "Song of Myself" of Leaves of Grass, the latter maintained a diminutive stature, wrote her poems in obscurity, and shared them with only a small handful of people in her lifetime.

Whereas Whitman became known as the "father of free verse," Dickinson became known as the "Belle of Amherst." Whereas Whitman's poetry was unrestrained and humanist, Dickinson's verse was rhyming, measured (if spasmodic), structured, unconventional -- and yet more alive to traditional religious doctrines than Whitman's was. Although Whitman's poetry certainly captures the essence of an era of American literary history, Dickinson's poetry seems to have been written for all ages and truly seems to transcend both her surroundings and her age to probe the great mysteries of life.

Therefore, this paper will show why Dickinson may be considered a greater American poet than Whitman. While Walt Whitman's poetry is probing, its delight is less in the contemplation of the Deity whom Whitman acknowledged and more in the contemplation and celebration of himself.

The celebration of self can be seen in much of Whitman's work, from "Song of Myself to "Passage to India." Walt Whitman's Son of God is not Christ, as it is for Dickinson, but rather the poet who is the poet of Nature -- the poet who "fuses" together both "Nature and Man" (116) in "Passage to India." In other words, the Son of God, according to Whitman, is Whitman himself.

The poem is meant to be an exercise in transcendence -- but it comes off as more of a self-promotion than a self-searching investigation. Whitman's transcendent poetry is more visceral than intellectual. "Passage to more than India!" is the cry of Whitman's Poet of Nature, who yearns for the Mysterious and the Eternal.

But Whitman's poet of nature is so full of egoism and posturing that his reflections, while tending away from the incipient and modern and toward the natural and masculine, actually invoke a kind of Hemingway-ish sense of pride and self-worth that is undaunted -- unlike Dickinson's poetry, which is somewhat haunted by the mystery of the spirit and the world outside herself.

In this sense it may be argued that while Whitman expands himself (as in "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking"), Dickinson humbles herself and makes herself small (as in "I heard a Fly Buzz"). Whitman wants to embrace greatness. Dickinson merely wants to be embraced.

In relation to the modern world and technology, Whitman's "Passage" is an act of contemplation inspired by the "Past," but deprived of the foundations of Western civilization, which Francis Thompson described as being the mainstay of the soul of the poet: "The Church, which was once the mother of poets no less than of saints, during the last two centuries has relinquished to aliens the chief glories of poetry, if the chief glories of holiness she has preserved for her own" (Thompson 17).

Whitman's pursuit of the glory is apparent -- but, separated by birth from the birthright of the "age of faith" of which David, Dante, Chaucer, and Shakespeare were part, Whitman (like Hemingway) pursues greatness without holiness per se. This holiness can be defined in another way -- as Fulton Sheen states: it is the pursuit of greatness through the spirit of humility: "to a child everything seems big" (Sheen 3). It is the spirit of childlikeness that Sheen states is necessary in the pursuit of transcendence.

Whitman embraces a kind of childlike spirit -- but a degree of pride also threatens to overwhelm the balance and turn the pursuit of a greater ideal into an Ode to Self, re-directing the journey upward inward.

Whitman's contemplations serve not to humble but to project his own greatness: rather than marvel upon the greatness or the glories of the past, he sees the same greatness and glory in himself: "O my brave soul!" (253) he cries beckoning it to go farther in time and space than God Himself -- "O farther, father, farther sail!" (256). Dickinson, however, approaches art and nature in a much different way. She does not attempt to assert herself or set herself up as "Amerian Poet" the way that Whitman does.

Instead she wrote her poetry without ever once doing so for fame or fortune. She meditated on her relationship to her surroundings, her understanding of beauty, her admiration for truth, her appreciation of the essence of things. "The Sailor cannot see the North, but knows the Needle can," she wrote in 1862. She considered Death and Judgment as actual realities, doorways to Eternity, rather than the ending of existence. Dickinson looked beyond the here and now, beyond the fleeting feelings of transcendental poetry, to the Infinite.

Her fascination with mortality produced vivid images and verses: "Because I could not stop for Death, / He kindly stopped for me; / the carriage held but just ourselves / and Immortality." Because she made herself small, as Fulton Sheen suggests, she was able to see how big everything else was. By being a humble poet, she made herself into the greatest American poet. Whitman, on the other hand, by being a "great" American poet, failed to confine himself to a single frame of reference.

Instead, his vision swooped and soared over terrains, landscapes, thoughts and feelings, always falling back to earth with a thud before whirling off again. There is little stillness in Whitman's verse. Whitman could not be as great as Dickinson because he placed his faith in himself and in a spirit that he himself created. Dickinson, however, placed her faith in Christ -- not the Christ of New England Calvinism, which like Whitman's spirit was the mere fancy of a generation.

Likewise, Dickinson was not deceived by the eloquence or naturalistic faith of her period. Her religious views were tempered by a cold skepticism, which kept her grounded in reality. The conflicting dogmas of her age were a source of confusion for her, unlike Whitman who simply rejected them and asserted his own. Dickinson writes, "I don't know why it is but it does not seem to me that I shall ever cease to live on earth" (28).

Perhaps for this reason, what she discovers in Eternity is never stated: rather, the journey itself is recounted, and the fact that "centuries" in Eternity are nothing compared to a day of mortal living: "Since then -- 'tis Centuries -- and yet / Feels shorter than the Day / I first surmised.