Merging! And Death! Which is the final merge.
And after that, the merge of comrades: man-for-man love.
And almost immediately with this, death, the final merge of death.
There you have the progression of merging. For the great mergers, woman at last becomes inadequate. For those who love to extremes. Woman is inadequate for the last merging. So the next step is the merging of man-for-man love. And this is on the brink of death. It slides over into death.
David and Jonathan. And the death of Jonathan.
So that if the new Democracy is to be based on the love of comrades, it will be based on death too. It will slip so soon into death.
The last merging. The last Democracy. The last love. The love of comrades.
Whitman would not have been the great poet he is if he had not taken the last steps and looked over into death. Death, the last merging, that was the goal of his manhood.
To the mergers, there remains the brief love of comrades, and then Death.
"Whereto answering, the sea Delaying not, hurrying not Whispered me through the night, very plainly before daybreak, Lisp'd to me the low and delicious word death. And again death, death, death, death. Hissing melodions, neither like the bird nor like my arous'd child's heart, But edging near as privately for me rustling at my feet, Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and laving me softly all over, Death, death, death, death, death----"
Whitman is a very great poet, of the end of life. A very great post mortem poet, of the transitions of the soul as it loses its integrity. The poet of the soul's last shout and shriek, on the confines of death. _Après moi le déluge._
But we have all got to die, and disintegrate.
We have got to die in life, too, and disintegrate while we live.
We've got to die first, anyhow. And disintegrate while we still live.
Only we know this much. Death is not the _goal._ And Love, and merging, are now only part of the death-process. Comradeship--part of the death-process. Democracy--part of the death-process. The new Democracy--the brink of death. One Identity--death itself.
We have died, and we are still disintegrating.
Whitman, the great poet, has meant so much to me. Whitman, the one man breaking a way ahead. Whitman, the one pioneer. And only Whitman. No English pioneers, no French. No European pioneer-poets. In Europe the would-be pioneers are mere innovators. The same in America. Ahead of Whitman, nothing. Ahead of all poets, pioneering into the wilderness of unopened life, Whitman. Beyond him, none. His wide, strange camp at the end of the great high-road. And lots of new little poets camping on Whitman's camping ground now. But none going really beyond. Because Whitman's camp is at the end of the road, and on the edge of a great precipice. Over the precipice, blue distances, and the blue hollow of the future. But there is no way down. It is a dead end.