E Pluribus Unum: Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Constitutional Paradox

2. “A Religion Which Is No Religion” Walt Whitman and the Writing of a New American Bible

We too must write Bibles, to unite again the heavens and the earthly world.—Emerson, Representative Men1 Leaves of Grass represents a lifelong endeavor.Between 1855 and 1892 Whitman produced nine editions of Leaves, not simply expandingitbyincorporatingnewpoemsbutextensivelyrevisingand rearranging the predecessor text.2 Considering the differences between editions in format,typography,and content,and the changes in tone and subject matter introduced by new clusters as diverse as Calamus,Sea-Drift,Drum-Taps,andAutumnRivulets,onemightbe led to argue that Whitman’s compositional “theory” changed just as often (pw 2: 739).3 On the other hand,it would be difficult to dispute thefactthat,whatevermotiveonecanascribetoanyparticularedition, Whitman remains faithful throughout to at least one “object” (pw 2: 738).4 In his own words, that object is the “combin[ation of] these Forty-Four United States into One Identity, fused, equal, and independent ” (pw 2: 738).5 To resolve the paradox of this chain of adjectives — how disparates can be at once “fused, equal, and independent ” — wouldbetoworkouttheone-and-the-manyproblemdifferentlythanthefederalmodel (asepitomizedbyepluribusunumand the founding documents), to conceive of unity neither as the relation of an abstract (Union) to particulars (states) nor as a structural compromisebetweencentralization (Congress)anddecentralization(state legislatures), but instead as a relation of pluralization whereby integrity,identity,and differentiation are guaranteed.6 The difference pluralization makes — its advantage over decentralization — is that it neverrisks,astheArticlesofConfederationhaddonefornationalgovernment , subjugating the good of the one to particular wills, never allows the horizontal elaboration of structure (democratization) to overreach the capacity of management (totality). It also permits, as Chapter Two ★ “A Religion Which Is No Religion” Walt Whitman & the Writing of a New American Bible centralization does not, some independence of operation, a certain capacity for interference with hegemony’s singular imperatives. Indeed,itturnsouttobethecase,inthethirdeditionofLeaves(1860), that, as long as the overarching commitment to totality, to the one, is maintained,ancillary,more sublunary commitments are permissible. In terms which emphasize the continuity of Whitman’s work with that of Poe and Melville, Whitman’s object is the resolution by literary means of the problematic of the many and the one as it impinges on identity and state formation. What Whitman is seeking,poetically as well as politically, is an answer to the problematicity of unity. His project, which his language presents as a continuation of the federal project,is the unification of disparates,the forging of compositional, political,and social unities that manage to preserve the identities and autonomies of their constituents. Without the allegory of either Poe or Melville, Whitman presents his writing as an explicit modeling of American social formation, a response in kind to the contemporary debateovertherelativepoliticalandsocialvalueofpersons.Whereas Poe and Melville offer a critique of relations between persons as they currently stand,Whitman offers Leaves of Grass as a praxis,a manual for their transformation. This chapter explores the poetic means by which he is able to make that offer, specifically, (1) the tropes of pluralization and fragmentation that act as remedy for what Whitman sees as the essentially distributive problem of the one and the many, and (2) the acts of mediation and translation by which Whitman represents hierarchy as ineluctable on some level, as the sacrifice, the death of the organic, required for the attainment of symbolic life.7 Following the development of this remedy through the early editions of Leaves allows us to compile an inventory of the alternative models of social formation by which Whitman seeks,in turn,to actualize fantasies of unmediated relation, to extend representation to the previously unrepresented, and finally, when confronted with the inexorableness of hierarchy as a precondition of unity,to secure integration by the only available means. For Whitman, as for Lincoln, that means is violence: representational violence, for Whitman; actual violence, for Lincoln. The sacri- ficialmodeltowhichthispoetandthispresidentcallusseemsextreme unless we recall that we are dealing with a period in which American politics is dominated by the idealization of union, specifically, the Lincolnian embodiment in the Union of the idea of the one,the priv72 “A Religion Which Is No Religion” ileging of unity at all costs,over which the Civil War was fought.What Lincoln means by union is not unanimity but rather rule by a majority that administers a collective identity for a collective good,and does so on the basis of the sacrifice of equality. Strangely enough, Lincoln and the secessionists are both acting on the conviction that unity and equalityareincompatible;Lincolnoptsexclusivelyfortheformerand the Confederacy for the latter.8...