In the Northern hemisphere, Tuesday, December 21, 2021 was the winter solstice, the longest night of the year. I meant to take the event’s opportunity to talk about a “darker” moment in Whitman’s history, one that is of central importance to my work.

In all of its incarnations, Leaves of Grass is nothing if not a celebration of life: our poet makes it a point to exalt the world, yawping its praises from on high. Yet this belies several devastating moments in the poem. What follows is from section 9 of “Calamus,” which first appeared in the 1860 edition of Leaves:

HOURS continuing long, sore and heavy-hearted,
Hours of the dusk, when I withdraw to a lonesome
   and unfrequented spot, seating myself, leaning
   my face in my hands;
Hours sleepless, deep in the night, when I go forth,
   speeding swiftly the country roads, or through
   the city streets, or pacing miles and miles, sti-
   fling plaintive cries;
Hours discouraged, distracted—for the one I cannot
   content myself without, soon I saw him content
   himself without me;

In my dissertation, I argue that this moment of desperate longing represents a “dark night of the soul.” The poet goes on to ponder:

Does he too harbor his friendship silent and endless?
   harbor his anguish and passion?
Does some stray reminder, or the casual mention of a
   name, bring the fit back upon him, taciturn and
   deprest?
Does he see himself reflected in me? In these hours,
   does he see the face of his hours reflected?

The question remains why this “dark night” would appear in this queer ode to adhesiveness. I believe that the answer goes something like this: Separateness is, as we know, a component of togetherness. So as Whitman’s poet must go through the dark night, so too does the mystic crawl through the desert to meet their maker in a state of ecstasy. Which is to say, mystical union. I will say more about this in a future post about another poet of the dark night, John of the Cross (the one from whom we have the idiom to thank). The good news is that the days are getting longer; the light is coming back.