O love!
In the 1867 edition of Leaves of Grass, Whitman titled this poem “O Living Always, Always Dying” and deleted the first line – thus removing any mention of love from the poem, and in the 1881 edition he moved it to the Whispers of Heavenly Death section. For readers of the 1860 edition, the poem presents two puzzles: why does Whitman start a poem about dying with “O love;” and what kind of dying is he talking about?
Whitman may be addressing the poem to a specific lover, or he may be addressing love itself. In either case, by opening the poem, “O love!/O dying – always dying,” he suggests a close relationship between loving and dying. After the burials, the poet strides ahead, apparently alone. Perhaps the love itself has died, and the self that is buried is the self that was in love. Or perhaps love has transformed the poet into a new man, starting a vita nuova.
Whitman portrays his past selves as plural, with “corpses” and “burials,” but he also refers to “what I was for years, now dead,” suggesting one past self that he particularly needs to transcend. This resonates with other Calamus poems in which he announces a new start, as when, in “In paths untrodden,” he escapes from the “life that exhibits itself.” Perhaps the past selves are corpses because they are too conventional, particularly in matters of gender and sexuality – because they have not openly embraced Calamus love.
The past selves may also be corpses because they are embodied in published works: the first two editions of Leaves of Grass. For Whitman (or any poet), past success can be imprisoning. Having found forms and themes that work, he naturally wants to return to them, but in repeating past strategies, he loses the element of surprise. In addition, once a poem is published, it is detached from the writer and belongs to the public; in this sense, too, it is “dead” to him.
Nothing suggests that the past selves are sinful, necessitating a Christian-style rebirth. The problem, Whitman emphasizes with his repetitions, is simply that they are dead, as all past selves must be, for someone who aspires to be living, always living. To “cast” a self means to discard it, but “cast” also means to send forth; put forth; assign a role to; give shape to; twist or warp; transmit the sound or image of. Whitman tries to discard a past self but finds that, in casting himself in the part of “poet,” he is casting a spell on others and himself; and he is casting a durable object, a beautiful poem or book, that is not easy to toss off.
The word “loving” sounds like “living,” and loving is in many ways how we keep ourselves and our gene pool living, but loving, in Whitman’s work, is also like dying (always dying). Does freedom mean to disengage from love and stride ahead, imperious and alone, or does it mean to disengage from timid models and embrace adhesive love? Love may be the force that allows him to free himself from past selves, the spell that binds him to them, or both.