When death approaches : study of Whitman’s growing spiritual consciousness

Abstract EN

This study traces the successive change and revisions Walt Whitman made in Sections 20-25 of the long poem, “Song of Myself” which formed the centerpiece for the first edition of the volume Leaves of Grass, Published in 1855.

The changes Whitman made in these sections between the first version and the “death-bed edition” give insight into the poet’s changing perspective as his own death approached.

The second poem to be dealt with in this paper to trace these changes is “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” which appeared in the 1860 edition.

The comparison between the “death-bed -edition” and the earlier editions reveals the poet’s developing maturity as a man and as an artist, and his philosophical and religious views of death and immortality.