Walt Whitman makes frequent use of antithesis in his poetry, including “Song of Myself.” You can even go so far as to say that it is a cornerstone of the writer’s rhetorical style. One of the most famous quotes in Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” (1855) is contained in Part 51:
The past and present wilt—I have fill'd them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.
Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?
Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?
“I am large, I contain multitudes” is a declaration of Whitman’s ambitious and mystical attempt to reconcile contradictions that he saw in American life, politics, and society. Antithesis is a literary device that he uses quite liberally in his attempt to do so.
What is antithesis?
Before we proceed with explaining how Whitman uses antithesis in “Song of Myself,” let’s first define it. Antithesis is a literary device that refers to a close juxtaposition of ideas for either contrast or comparison. A famous example is JFK’s inaugural speech (1961): “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
The literary device is also frequently used in Shakespeare.
Julius Caesar, Act 3 Scene 2:
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar.
We have two examples of antithesis being used here. They are both full of irony. Antony is laying a trap for the conspirators who murdered Caesar by using antithetical phrasing to show how absurd it is to speak ill of a man at his funeral. This is a jab at Brutus who gave a speech before Antony justifying the murder of Caesar.
This is sharply different from how Whitman uses the device. We will take a look at one more classical example of antithesis from Milton before we go on to examine how Walt Whitman employs the device.
Example of antithesis: Milton’s Paradise Lost
John Milton in his Biblical epic Paradise Lost makes frequent use of antithesis. I have chosen a passage that is famous for its eloquence:
Milton, Paradise Lost (1667):
He called so loud, that all the hollow Deep
Of Hell resounded. “Princes, Potentates,
Warriors, the Flowr of Heav'n, once yours, now lost,
If such astonishment as this can seize
Eternal spirits; or have ye chosen this place
After the toil of Battle to repose
Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find
To slumber here, as in the Vales of Heaven?
Or in this abject posture have ye sworn
To adore the Conqueror? who now beholds
Cherub and Seraph rowling in the Flood
With scattered Arms and Ensigns, till anon
His swift pursuers from Heav'n Gates discern
The advantage, and descending tread us down
Thus drooping, or with linked Thunderbolts
Transfix us to the bottom of this Gulf.
Awake, arise, or be for ever fall'n.”
This is no one less than Satan himself rousing his troops of fallen angels to steel themselves for more battles after being cast down from Heaven into the fiery pits of Hell by God and his Heavenly Host.
The speech is beautifully balanced using antithetical phrasing. It begins with an efficiently phrased antithetical phrase: “The flower of Heaven, once yours, now lost.” It perfectly captures matter-of-factly their awful defeat, which their leader does not want to waste time dwelling on.
Erotema or rhetorical questions are used over thirteen lines to heap lighthearted mockery on the fallen angels to show that staying fallen will only invite further or even more complete defeat.
The speech ends as it begins: With a straightforward and efficiently phrased anthetical juxtaposition that calls for his troops to “Awake, arise, or be forever fall’n.” Satan says so much by saying so little.
For example, let’s look at “If such astonishment as this can seize / Eternal spirits.” He tells his infernal troops that they are better than despairing or giving up over losing a single battle. No one would ever think that the Devil himself could give such an inspiring and motivational speech.
Antithesis as used here by Milton represents the best of the classical tradition. Walt Whitman, who was responsible for initiating the free verse revolution in Western poetic tradition, uses a quite different approach.
Song of Myself: Poem Analysis
Walt Whitman in “Song of Myself” does a lot, and he uses antithesis to do it. The poem is seen as a celebration of the poet himself and a kind of universal brotherhood with his fellow Americans. He highlights contradictions that he attempts to take in with his “large self.”
Whitman, “Song of Myself” (1892):
“Song of Myself” begins thus:
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
Here, Whitman is describing his ambitions in the poem. He hopes to engage in a kind of mystic communion and union with his readers. Whitman uses symploce that borders on antithetical framing in phrases like “And what I assume you shall assume.”
The poem is sensual and vaguely sexual. This is a form of spiritual mysticism that is not at all ascetic or Christian. Whitman is promising to reconcile contradictions and opposites.
He wants to reconcile his lone and individual self with others and with nature. The poet recognizes himself as being borne from the earth and air and has a mystical desire to rejoin nature:
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Soon after this passage, we see him doing what can only be described as making love to nature:
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,
The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.
In this mystical attempt to become one with nature, Whitman juxtaposes opposites. We see this in lines such as “The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hillsides” This is a layered antithesis.
The first part of the line contrasts walking an empty street alone with walking a crowded street. The second compares walking along the fields with walking the hill-sides. The two juxtapositions placed alongside each other create a wider contrast between an urban environment and natural settings.
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This type of antithesis isn't as careful and well-thought-out as Milton’s example in Paradise Lost. However, when used in combination with the rhetorical repetition (i.e., symploce) and erotema that Whitman frequently employs in his free verse, it works quite well, as seen in the following:
Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.
Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.
Whitman doesn’t simply use the device for its mystical effects. He uses it quite frequently for sexual innuendo and suggestion as in Part 11, where he describes a woman staring at male bathers from behind the curtains of her home:
Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,
Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;
Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.
The poet contrasts the woman’s 28 years of unmarried life with the 28 men bathing. There is probably no truth to these numbers. There were probably not 28 men bathing. The poet is simply using the number 28 to describe the bathers as it gives him a chance to create a juxtaposition against the woman’s age. It works quite well, the antithesis and repetition giving the three lines a song-like and mysterious quality.
Cite this EminentEdit article |
Antoine, M. (2024, December 7). Antithesis in Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself. EminentEdit. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/antithesis-in-walt-whitman-s-song-of-myself |
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