Visualizing Eternity in Walt Whitmans Song of Myself Essay

Visualizing Eternity in Walt Whitmans Song of Myself Whitmans poem Song of Myself #44 stands as a confession and testaments of not only who he is and what he is, but also as who we are, we being people in general. The poem is not about a self-idolizing author claiming to be the greatest being of all time. Instead it paints a picture for all mankind alike to relate to. It puts a mirror in front of the world and presents an angle of an image that, though familiar, we have never seen or realized before. In the very beginning of the poem, Whitman addresses the world upon a pedestal, asking them to stand and explore with him the unknown. And what is unknown is eternity and the meaning of life. From this beginning there†¦show more content†¦He indicates that all people are equal; no one is better or worse than the other, as eternity and time, the ever-present force, makes us all equal. Whitman continues this idea in the following lines with Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you my brother or my sister?(1144). He is addressing his fellow man, whether man or woman, almost as if they are dead, having already lived their lives and now reflecting upon it, perhaps in some sort of afterlife. He sympathizes with those that suffer through the world under heavy, unnecessary grief and pain, like the scorn from others as well as the loss of loved ones, but he himself cannot share their pain, having never experienced these hardships. Line 1148 presents an interesting perspective, that which I had not thought of before. At first glance it can sound like Whitman is suffering from a messianic complex of some sort, which maybe he was, one can never say. But upon further and deeper reading, it came to mean something else. At every moment in our lives, we make the future. The future is constantly ahead of us, and we fill its existence with our life and time, making it the present, then it ultimately fades into the past. Here Whitman says I am an acme of things accomplished, and I am encloser of things to be./ My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,(1148-9). He says that we are the culmination of time.