That shadow, my likeness, that goes to and fro
In “The terrible question of appearances” it is one lover who restores Whitman’s sense of reality, but here it is plural lovers who make him feel real. The lovers may be sequential or simultaneous; in other words, he may be talking about the experience of loving one person, perhaps passionately, or he may be talking about the experience of having many comrades or a circle of friends.
Throughout his writings, Whitman identifies his self as double or triple in nature. Sometimes that multiplicity is a source of joy, but sometimes it makes the poet get dejected, doubt himself, and warn potential admirers that his heroic self might be an illusion. There are subtle hints of darkness in “That shadow.” The most famous “going to and fro” is in the Book of Job, when God asks Satan from whence he came, and Satan answers, “From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.”
Moreover, shadows are dark, and “shade” is a synonym for “ghost.” In seeking a “livelihood,” the shadow self is like a ghost, or someone dead-in-life, seeking to be truly “lively.” In some ways, the shadow self seems relatively innocuous: it seeks a job, not the devil. But for Whitman in the late 1850s, working as a newspaper editor or recently fired from being one, seeking a livelihood meant using his verbal talents for commerce rather than prophetic art. It meant to “chaffer” (haggle) and “chatter” (utter rapid, inarticulate sounds like a squirrel). It meant to “flit:” to move erratically and transiently instead of marching steadfastly toward his grand goals.
The threat posed by the double is not demonic possession but triviality. Whitman worries about the self gliding as a scared ghost through life. Emerson writes in “Self-Reliance,” as if predicting Whitman’s blades of grass: “Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose.” Emerson and Whitman share Wordsworth’s sense of the danger that, as industrial capitalism becomes dominant, and religious dogmas ossify, the soul is being wasted – “getting and spending” and “going to and fro” in the marketplace. They seek to recover the soul’s power in writing and ardent friendship. For Whitman, the more eroticized that friendship becomes, the more regenerative it is, until he finds in it the salvation of America and democracy.