We often mourn the loss of an other, but how does one mourn the losses on such a scale as we see in war? Whitman is perhaps the quintessential poet of crisis and recovery: his catalogues hold the world in all of its diversity together; his acts of poetic and personal sacrifice suggest that union must prevail over death and divisions; his theories of brotherly love and comradeship as binding a nation together make a case for a prosperous democratic future despite present difficulties.
In this sense, Whitman accomplishes what Freud would later describe as the productive work of mourning: he is able to translate loss into some horizon of recovery. For Freud, when the work of mourning failed, what was left was a festering melancholia–an enduring remnant of loss that one cannot simply resolve or move beyond.
The poems “Reconciliation,” “Turn O Libertad,” the great Lincoln elegy “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” and the prose “A Million Dead…” all try to accomplish the important work of mourning and memorialization. Where in the poems mentioned above do you find Whitman most convincing in enacting the successful work of mourning? And where do you see signs that this loss may be too great, that a sense of recovery might be, after all, illusory?
I feel as if “Reconciliation” best exemplifies this feeling of illusory recovery and mourning in Whitman’s Post-War poetry. The word itself conjures a feeling of desperation, trying to piece back together the disjointed America after so brutal and horrific a war. There is so much to dissect from this short poem. First, Whitman begins with “Word over all,” which I believe to be Whitman’s belief that the written word, and more specifically poetry, stands above the physical world and the destructiveness and divisiveness of war (453). That poetry and the written word is the best method towards uniting the world. In continuing this dissection of his poetry, Whitman calls war “beautiful” but at the same time says that it “must” be forgotten and cast away in time. I believe that his demand for it to be forgotten is reflective of this reconciliatory attitude and that the only way to piece back the disjointed states is to throw the war out of our memory. In the end, however, the poem conjures this feeling of an illusory reconciliation as the speaker, presumably Whitman, bends down and kisses his enemy, “a man divine as myself” (453). What I gather from this ending of the poem is that although Whitman is trying to get himself and his readers to move on, he can’t help but see the fallen soldier and remember how “soil’d” this world has become since the war ended.
I completely agree with Dan that Whitman’s “Reconciliation” is “trying to piece back together the disjointed America,” and I think that is a beautiful way to word it. I enjoy how Dan brought up Whitman’s juxtaposing portrayals of war. He often marvels at it and then other times calls for a cease fire. It is a bit confusing but interesting to dissect. The end of this poem is extremely strong, and I believe Dan does a great job in accurately discussing what it means.
In Whitman’s poem “Reconciliation,” he definitely uses mourning as a driving force throughout. He writes lines like, “That the hands of the sisters if Death and Night incessantly/ softly wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world” (453). By personifying death, Whitman is giving power back to the morbid topic. He also talks about death as something that comes back again, something that remains consistent always. It’s interesting that he pairs death with the act of “softly washing” as if it’s something that happens lightly. War is not something light at all – it is full of tragedy and mourning and inevitable pain – it does not softly wash. In this sense, I see “Reconciliation” as a bit illusory. However, Whitman does a good job in describing the loss that war creates. He writes, “For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead” (453). This is true in war – both good men and women and bad men and women are killed and sacrificed at the hands of war. In this sense, Whitman is abundantly accurate.
Great discussion here of the possibly “illusory” work of mourning. Whitman seems to want to wash the ills of war away with that “word” over all–reconciliation–but he struggles to move beyond when confronted with the man in the coffin, the emblem of loss. The poem ends with deepening attachment, with bending down rather than rising up. The poem seems to sink deeper into loss even as that kiss seals something like “reconciliation.” Perhaps Abrie puts it best: it’s a bit confusing and beguiling.
Scholars have made much of the racial dynamic here–especially the emphasis on the whiteness of the southern enemy, as though the racial bonds of whiteness trump the divisions of north and south. Still others have noted that this might actually be a poem written in or for a black voice, as blacks were often given the horrible task of burying the bodies of the war dead. That makes this a very different kind of reconciliation–one no less clear, but fascinating indeed.