Walt Whitman’s “Reconciliation” [ by John Brehm]

At the height of the American Civil War, Walt Whitman spent three years visiting wounded and dying soldiers in the hospitals in and around Washington, D.C. He would bring them small gifts, whatever they most needed or wanted—a pair of socks, some rice pudding, a shot of brandy—and wrote letters home for those who were unable to write themselves, too sick or in many cases illiterate. Most importantly, he sat and talked with them, sharing with all who desired it the healing power of his presence. Whitman admired the stoicism with which the soldiers bore their suffering—many of them were as young as 15 and 16, with no friends or family near—and often held vigil until they died. By his own estimate, he visited between eighty to a hundred thousand of the wounded and sick. These visits lasted from an hour or two to all day and night. In critical cases he would sometimes take up quarters in the hospital and keep watch several nights in a row.

          Conditions in the overcrowded wards were ghastly—gangrene and other infections killed more soldiers than their injuries—and the long hours Whitman spent there nearly ruined his own health. And yet he considered those three years “the greatest privilege and satisfaction, (with all their feverish excitements and physical deprivations and lamentable sights,) and, of course, the most profound lesson of my life.” The compassion he brought to these soldiers opened him to “undream’d-of depths of emotion.” Nor did he discriminate between Union and Confederate, or between black and white. “I can say that in my ministerings I comprehended all, whoever came in my way, northern or southern, and slighted none…. I was with many rebel officers and men among our wounded, and gave them always what I had, and tried to cheer them the same as any.”

          Among the many remarkable aspects of Whitman’s wartime service, perhaps most remarkable is this willingness to tend to Confederate as well as Union soldiers, even though his own brother had been wounded at Fredericksburg, and would later nearly die of starvation in a Confederate prison. Whitman’s compassion made no distinctions, and that generosity of spirit informs one of his great short lyrics about the war, published in 1865, after the fighting had ended.

Reconciliation

 Word over all, beautiful as the sky! 
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost;
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly softly wash again,
           and ever again, this soil’d world:
For my enemy is dead—a man divine as myself is dead;
I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin—I draw near; 
I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

          Whitman places the hoped-for reconciliation between North and South within larger cycles destruction and purification, where Death and Night are personified as sisters who “incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world.” (The repetition of soft “s” sounds reinforces the soothing, restorative quality of the process Whitman describes). He may have been thinking of the women who served as volunteer nurses during the war, the way they would have bathed the soldiers, cleaned their wounds, endlessly it must have seemed. But from witnessing such specific acts of care, Whitman creates an image of cosmic cleansing, a sense that the masculine forces of war and violence will always be met and transformed by the feminine energies of compassion and renewal.

          In the second part of the poem, Whitman gives us a specific act of earthly reconciliation, as he bends down and kisses his “enemy” where he lies “white-faced and still, in the coffin.” He calls this fallen Confederate solider “my enemy” but recognizes that ultimately he is “divine as myself”; that there is no difference, no separation, between them; that their shared divinity—in Buddhist terms, we might say their basic goodness—is vastly more important, more real, than their allegiance to opposing sides of the conflict. But what an extraordinary thing to say, and to do. Whether or not Whitman actually kissed a Confederate solider in his coffin—it’s quite possible he may have done so—or simply imagined it, the gesture, the willingness to make contact, to bridge the physical space between them, represents an act of reverence that transcends all boundaries.

          “Reconciliation” embodies the truth of non-separation; we see that truth not only described but acted out before us. As such, the poem models a quality of loving awareness and compassionate behavior we might aspire to ourselves. Can we see the divinity in those we regard as enemies? Can we connect with the basic goodness that exists undisturbed below whatever harmful mind-states we encounter in another? Can we act with gentleness and kindness even in the midst of hatred and violence? No doubt we will often fail, but reading deeply and holding in mind poems like Whitman’s “Reconciliation” can help keep the aspiration alive.

from The Dharma of Poetry by John Brehm (c)2021. Reprinted by Wisdom Publications. www.wisdomexperience.org 
This is the first half of Brehm’s opening chapter, “Wisdom and Compassion: Walt Whitman.”
https://wisdomexperience.org/product/dharma-poetry/

Comments

[Kat]

This beautiful passage from John Brehmn's new book is a relevant and poignant reminder of the interconnected nature of the human experience and the compassion we can have towards one another when we take a moment to consider the world through someone else's eyes. Thanks for sharing!

[Tony Paris]

Wonderful piece, moving and timely. Thank you.