Walt Whitman Group
Question:
tunka1968
Student
College - Senior
Explain the nature of the bond between the poet Walt Whitman and the stranger in the poem, "To a Stranger".
Answers:
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lit24 Teacher
DoctorateeNotes Editor
Posted by lit24 on Thursday February 12, 2009 at 5:48 AMIn Walt Whitman’s “The Leaves of Grass” there is cluster of a series of 45 poems called Calamus, which work to celebrate and promote a theme of love. Out of that cluster, in “To a Stranger” by Walt Whitman, Whitman expresses a general sense of longing directed at the world in general. Whitman’s nostalgia for past relationships and his consciousness of having his feelings of affection reciprocated by everyone he walks past allows him to know that ultimately he will find love: "I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall'd as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate,
chaste, matured."In “To A Stranger”, Whitman not only alludes to the love between a man and a woman but to the beautiful and sane affection between a man and a man. Through the motif of genders, sexual innuendos, the repetition of “I am” and the overall sense of secrecy throughout the poem, reveals Whitman’s inner conflicts with his sexuality and his yearning to want to tell and express his sexuality openly without restrictions imposed by society.
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