CHAPTER 11 Whitman, Death, and Democracy Jack Turner ONE OF TH E MOST striking moments in Plato's Apology is when Socrates declares, "To fear death, gentlemen, is lIO other than to think oneself wise when one is not. to think one knows what one does not know.'" Fear of death is intellectually presumptuous; it implies that one knows for certain that death is bad. Yet as limited mortals, we cannot know the nature of (it'ath in its entirety, or what-if anything-comes afterward. The corollary of Socrates' startling suggestion is that-by embodying illtellectual humility-indifference toward death is wise. But this stance seems astonishingly bloodless. One of humanity's defining features is con- sciollsness of mortality. Given the human animal's self-reflective nature, curiosityabout-kath isttftderstandable. Ourpenchant-for wonder de- fit's imlifferenee toward death. Perhaps this is why, later in the Apology, Socrates vent lITes guesses as to what death is; death, he speeulates. is either (l) reunion with "all who have died" or (2) "dreamless sleep."2 In the end, however, Socrates recommits himself to agnosticism about death: "I go to die. you go to live. Whieh of-us goes to the better lot is known to no one, {'xcept the god.":! Socrates' coolness ill the face of death has a nineteenth-century American heir in the antebellum Walt Whitman. 4 Given that Socrates' serenity about mortality left a long legacy in the Western philosophiC'al tra- dition-helped along by Epicurus, Lueretius, Cicero, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius-that fact itselfis unremarkable. s What is remarkable, however, is the way Whitman revealed affinities between eoolness in the face of death and the character dispositions and sensibilities most ,"'Onducive to democ- Whitman. Death, and Dl"mocroc'Y 2i3 racy. Whitman articulated three visions of death in his antebellum work: the first and second sought to allay readers' mortal anxiety by intimating the self's material immortality; the third sought to enL'Ollrage affirmation of death. even in the absence of spiritual or material immortality. All three were intended to promote affirmation of the self and the world as they are, and therefore rejection of the idea that the self and the world are fallen and need supernatural redemption. Affirmation of the self and the world as they are both Signals and L'Ompounds the generosity of perception and spirit necessary for democratic culture, a culture wherein every individual regards every other individual as beautiful and sublime. While George Kateb, Morton Schoohnan, and Jason Frank have helpfully elaborated this idea of democratic culture in Whitman,6 none has analyz.ed Whitman's tri- partite poetics of death and explained their crucial role in Whitman's quest to inspire democratic culture. This essay takes up this task, in the hope it can enhance our appreciation of the radicalism of Whitman's democratic theory, a theory that not only acknowledges but also celebrates human finitude. The First Vision: Organic Transformation Whitman's best-known view of death is that of organic transformation. The axial imagery of "Song of Myselr (1855) is of corpses sinking into the ground and returning as grass: The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceased the moment life appeared. All goes onward and outward .... nothing collapses, And to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier.7 Characterizing the grass as both "the beautiful Ullcut hair of graves" and "the produ(:ed babe of the vegetation,"'1l Whitman illustrates how the bodies of the dead nourish new life. Human decomposition enriches the soil and gives rise to flora that then cycles through nature. The imagery on its own is neat, suggestive, and deSigned to console those anxious about death. But 272