In his critical article “Self, Soul, and God in ‘Passage to India,’” Som P. Sharma dissects Whitman’s presentation of his relation to self in “Passage to India” as three separate and simultaneously harmonious parts–self, the soul, and God. He relates this view of self to Hindu metaphysics, a parallel that grounds his critique of the poem. In order to create the context out of which the self, the soul, and God will join and become one, Sharma details how Whitman speaks of each of these entities separately in “Passage.” Whitman first speaks as self to the soul, announcing his desire to “go voyaging with the soul” (395). As the poem progresses, self and soul become one, which Sharma connects with Whitman’s new use of the inclusive “we” pronoun. Then Sharma documents how Whitman’s self/soul wish to travel towards and eventually merge into God.
Sharma associates the idea of God in “Passage” not with the God of the Abrahamic religions, but to the Hindu Brahman. This “Transcendent and Nameless” force is all-encompassing, infinite, and incomprehensible, and an encounter with it leads to “the realization of the limitedness of one’s perception” (397). However, Sharma then claims that Whitman has “realized the paradox at the heart of self-realization that self and soul have to cooperate together in their venture towards God-realization” (397). In other words, Whitman must try to identify with his Actual Me as much as possible in order to merge with God. “Passage to India” is then, asserts Sharma, Whitman’s attempt to self-realize while recognizing that his perception of his existence and the universe is indeed limited.
In relating the ideas of “Passage to India,” such as God, to Hindu metaphysics, Sharma also provides a lens outside of Western ideas of self through which to view Whitmans’s own relation to his self. Sharma insists that Western ideas of self are material, grounded in and driven by earthly and physical satisfaction thanks to our attempt to balance our id, ego, and superego. Whitman transcends this physical and psychological idea of self. His Actual Me is, according to Sharma, therefore not attached to, defined by, or driven by personality and temperament but ultimately serves to facilitate recognition of God as both “transcendent and immanent” on the way to God-realization (397).
However, Sharma is quick to point out that Whitman is under no pretense of being able to ditch the ego entirely on this journey of self-realization. Whitman’s ego, a familiar character by now, is in this poem firmly attached his Actual Me, and Whitman sings his own praises by recognizing how powerful he is when his soul joins his self to create his Actual Me. Indeed, Sharma argues, the Whitman that readers know is not the Actual Me of Whitman, since that is a spiritual concept that does not operate in the material world. The Whitman we read is “immersed in the times he lives in and is powerfully suffused with his hankering, gross sensuality” (397). However, Whitman is aware of that divide in “Passage”–though, interestingly, Sharma argues that he was not able to distinguish between his phenomenal self and his Actual Me in “Song of Myself”. Sharma points out that in “Passage,” Whitman is not attempting to define his contact with God so much as he means to convey the impact of this contact on him. The result of this is that the reader feels that we have shared with Whitman this journey towards self-realization.
I feel that this reading of “Passage to India” is especially effective thanks to its use of Eastern metaphysics as a lens through which to interpret Whitman’s self, soul, and the God figure. It helped me to appreciate the poem a lot more, since in my original reads of it I focused more on the actual journey and locales mentioned in the poem, with the spiritual journey that the speaker/Whitman is traveling through not being wholly obvious to me. It also helped me to see Whitman’s spiritual growth from “Song of Myself”–like Sharma alluded to, the Whitman of “Song of Myself” can come off as naive in his insistence on how enlightened he is, therefore alienating the reader instead of inviting them to enlighten themselves similarly. “Passage to India” is different because Whitman more or less admits to not knowing: he is overwhelmed by God at the same time as he recognizes God in himself, and he is conscious of his earthly self instead of trying all the time to rise above it and dismiss its importance. Overall, Sharma’s concise reading of “Passage” in relation to the three entities of self, soul, and God, offers careful analysis of Whitman’s journey to self-realization.
Great summary! I agree that reading the poem through Eastern metaphysics helps make sense of this more, especially the clear balance of soul and self. Whereas in earlier poems like “Song of Myself,” the soul was infused, often erotically, in and with the body–with the body taking priority–here, there is a more fluid union. I like how you sense a kind of humility in that union, something different from earlier versions of Whitman’s alternating confidence and despair when faced with the soul. We sense this even on the level of syntax: “O soul, repressless, I with thee and thou with me,” Whitman writes in section 7. In the next section he repeats a version of the phrase “O sould thou pleasest me, I thee” (537). Whereas before the “real” or “actual” me seemed to hound Whitman and throw him off course, in this poem, the actual me is inhabited in a more authentic way. It reminds me of a great line from “Thou Mother with They Equal Brood”: The soul, its destinies, the real real.”
I love that you chose a summary that brings so much clarity to a poem that my seem lofty and hard to discern. I find it interesting that you referenced Whitman’s ego as a “character,” because it kind of makes his poetry easier to understand. On one hand there’s good old Walt, the other hand is the speaker of his poems, and somewhere in between those two forces is the force of his ego. Another concept you introduced me to in this summary is the idea of Whitman’s spiritual journey within the poem as well as the journey he must have gone on to get to writing that poem. I agree with you when you say that “Passage” represents the ‘spiritual growth’ that needed to take place after “Song Of Myself.”I admire the fact that in this class we can see so many sides of Whitman as an intellectual, but also as a growing and learning and reflective human.