Passage to India

by Walt Whitman

Whitman's famous poem-sequence, now back in print after many years. THIS TITLE IS CITED AND RECOMMENDED Books for College Libraries.

Genres: Poetry

120 pages, Library Binding

First published March 1, 1992

About the author

Walter Whitman Jr. was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature. Whitman incorporated both transcendentalism and realism in his writings and is often called the father of free verse. His work was controversial in his time, particularly his 1855 poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described by some as obscene for its overt sensuality.
Whitman was born in Huntington on Long Island, and lived in Brooklyn as a child and through much of his career. At the age of 11, he left formal schooling to go to work. He worked as a journalist, a teacher, and a government clerk. Whitman's major poetry collection, Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855, was financed with his own money and became well known. The work was an attempt to reach out to the common person with an American epic. Whitman continued expanding and revising Leaves of Grass until his death in 1892.
During the American Civil War, he went to Washington, D.C., and worked in hospitals caring for the wounded. His poetry often focused on both loss and healing. On the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, whom Whitman greatly admired, he authored two poems, "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", and gave a series of lectures on Lincoln. After suffering a stroke towards the end of his life, Whitman moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declined. When he died at the age of 72, his funeral was a public event.
Whitman's influence on poetry remains strong. Art historian Mary Berenson wrote, "You cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman, without Leaves of Grass... He has expressed that civilization, 'up to date,' as he would say, and no student of the philosophy of history can do without him." Modernist poet Ezra Pound called Whitman "America's poet... He is America."

Reviews

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This long poem in nine sections has, as its prevailing theme mysticism, and hence its appeal has been universal.

Sections 1-3 deal with journeys through space, the investigation of the physical environment by explorers, navigators and adventurers; Sections 4-6 deal with a journey through time. The past, the growth of man’s culture and civilisation and spirit is explored, and the past is fused with the present, and the future; Sections 7-8 further expand the theme and deal with the exploration of the divine, and the mystic merger of the human soul with the over-soul, which can be accomplished only after death. Section 9 is in the form of a fervent appeal by the poet to his soul to sail out and achieve that spiritual union for which the rounding of the globe has been but a preparation.

Hence Whitman’s passage is, “passage to more than India”, it is a passage to the divine Himself.

Three important events of 1869 and 1870 fired Whitman’s imagination and inspired the poem –
1) The completion of a railroad across North America from East to West;
2) The laying of the transatlantic cable; and
3) The opening of the Suez Canal

These achievements of science and technology made the world closer, and more compact. Reflections on these achievements form the background to the poem.

Whitman felt convinced that the historic progression of events has a spiritual meaning. He seeks to harmonise the past with the present, and show that the past is a part of the present. He is sure of the permanence of the past and the present, as well as of the future. But this unity can be grasped and explained by the mystic poets alone.

The poet must give a new faith, a new light, for the future generations:

The Past—the dark unfathomed retrospect!
The seeming gulf—the sleepers and the shadows
The past—the infinite greatness of the past
For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past.

To get into the past one must know the heart of Asia in general and of India in particular. Therefore, he wants to understand the, “myths and fables of old, Asia’s, Africa’s fables.”

There in Asia are the, “deep-diving bibles and the legends,” the “temples fairer than lilies,” and the “lofty and dazzling towers burnished with gold.”The spirit of man in the past, eluded the holds of the known and mounted to heaven,

Down from the gardens of Asia, descending radiating,
Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad progeny after them
Wandering, yearning, curious, with restless explorations,
With questionings baffled, formless, feverish, with never-happy hearts.

Union of all is the quest of the human soul and purpose of God. “Oneness of all” is the law of nature.

A part of the divine purpose is fulfilled in history when the world is brought into the oneness of the “vast Rondure; swimming in space’ Union is an “inscrutable purpose, some hidden prophetic intention.”

The poet understands God’s purpose:

The earth to be spanned, connected by network,
The races, neighbours, to marry and be given in marriage.
The oceans to be crossed, the distant brought near
The lands to be welded together

This quest for unity has brought forth many struggles. Yet there has been an unending march forward. Knowledge has been gained, “lands found and nation bora.”

For purpose vast, man’s long pro bationfilled,
Thou rondure of the world at last accomplished.

The seas are crossed. Physical unity has been achieved, but the great spiritual problem remains:

And who shall soothe iMse feverish children?
Who jushfy their restless explorations?
Who speak the secret of the impassive earth?
Who bind it to us?

But Whitman is optimistic of the future, he has full hope and confidence of the necessary spiritual unity, for there,

Shall come the poet worthy that name,
The true son of God shall come singing his songs.

This true poet shall soothe the hearts of the “fretted children,” respond to their affection, understand the secret, and link together “all these separations and gaps.” He will justify the earth, and accomplish gloriously the “Trinitas divine”.

Then,

Nature and Man shall be disjoined and dffused no more,
The true son of God shall absolutely fuse them.

The spiritual union can be accomplished by the future poet alone, who is “the true son of God.”

Man will then find his relation to God,

As filled with friendship, love complete, the Elder Brother found,
The younger melts in fondness in his arm.

Man must resolve to undertake this voyage. He should not stop, “like trees on the ground.” He must move:

O daring joy, but safe are they not all the seas of God?
Farther farther sail

The poet invokes his soul to sail even, “farther than India’ and achieve the mystic union with the divine which is the ultimate goal or purpose of human life, and without which the soul is unhappy and dissatisfied.

Thus the poem at once brings out the poet’ spirituality, his mystic faith in the “oneness of all”, his glorifications of, and pride in, the achievements of modern science and technology, as well as his high conception of his own calling.

Complexity and richness has been achieved by the use of a number of complex, growing and evolving symbols.

First, there is India which in the beginning symbolises the geographical east, the east of the Suez, the east beyond the “mighty railroad”. Then it symbolises man’s past rich in religions, Bibles, legends, fables, etc., which themselves symbolise spirituality, or the quest of the soul for the divine, and then the Garden of Eden from which Adam and Eve descended and they and their children began their feverish spiritual quest.

It also symbolises the place where man can achieve serenity of soul, his quest, and live a life of innocence in harmony with nature.

The passage symbolises –

1) the physical exploration carried on by sailors and navigators, adventurers and explorers through railroad and steamship;
2) man’s exploration of his past, his journey to the past of religion and fable;
3) it symbolises his intellectual exploration to unite the past, the present and the future, i.e. to understand space-time continuance.
4) it symbolises spiritual exploration leading to a merger of the individual soul with the divine

Water symbols and figures contribute much to the unity of the poem— the voyages of the explorers, Columbus and Vasco de Gama, the earth “Swimming in space”, the “flowing literatures” of the east, the sailing of the poet and the soul upon uncharted seas, and finally God, the all-absorbing ocean, “spiritual fountain—affection’s source—thou reservoir”

[Ulysses · Rating 3 out of 5]

O my brave soul!
O farther farther sail!
O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God?
O farther, farther, farther sail!