ABSTRACT
Walt Whitman in his essay thinks first of the task of the poet to provide unifying identities. It is not surprising that Whitman acknowledged a theme of contradiction. He said that democracy found its idea of origin in conceiving the "singleness of man." The strongest source of vitality in Whitman is erotic; his theme is communication and his metaphors are sexual. This enables him to express life as action and at the same time point to its unassailable, biological source of unity. Two stanzas from "Song of Myself" offer the clearest example of the sexual metaphor in this use. A somewhat different tone is available to Whitman when he writes his elegy for President Lincoln. The death of Lincoln aroused a poignancy of feeling which clarified the naturalist doctrine. It called forth in Whitman the strongest part of his sensibility, which clung so firmly to the immanence of life.
