Uploaded March 2015 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Here's a virtual movie of the great Walt Whitman reading one of his post American civil war poems "Reconciliation" The poem is about cleansing the soul and expresses a hope that from the barbarism of the civil war that old enemies could become friends and in death old enmities be forgotten and cleansed .
The "Word" Whitman refers to in the first line is the poem's title "reconciliation". He draws on natural imagery ("beautiful as the sky"), he plays at oxymorons ("beautiful that war") to get at the healing power of reconciliation. But what does he mean my reconciliation? At first, he seems to be talking about natural forces - death, night, time - that cleanse ("wash again, and ever agin this soil'd world"). These natural elements seem to negate man's unnatural acts ("war," "deeds of carnage").
In the last three lines, he redefines "reconciliation" in personal, human terms. Whitman locates the poem in a specific time and place: a funeral. And he identifies the speaker as an agent in the drama - perhaps a soldier, perhaps the dead man's killer - and not the omniscient narrator he seemed to be in the first lines.
And suddenly the poem is littered with first-person words ("my, myself, I,"). The speaker identifies with the dead man ("divine as myself"). And we see a different sort of reconciliation - the gentle kiss of apology/forgiveness that a soldier places on the cheek of his vanquished foe.
So the reconciliation is the coming together of enemies. Whether he's the "divine as myself" or "evil as myself" and whether the speaker is the subject, the man in the coffin, or the one doing the kissing, the concepts of war as "enemy" and "ally" as both language, the word, and psychologically are dissolved.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2015
Here's a virtual movie of the great Walt Whitman reading one of his post American civil war poems "Reconciliation" The poem is about cleansing the soul and expresses a hope that from the barbarism of the civil war that old enemies could become friends and in death old enmities be forgotten and cleansed .
The "Word" Whitman refers to in the first line is the poem's title "reconciliation". He draws on natural imagery ("beautiful as the sky"), he plays at oxymorons ("beautiful that war") to get at the healing power of reconciliation. But what does he mean my reconciliation? At first, he seems to be talking about natural forces - death, night, time - that cleanse ("wash again, and ever agin this soil'd world"). These natural elements seem to negate man's unnatural acts ("war," "deeds of carnage").
In the last three lines, he redefines "reconciliation" in personal, human terms. Whitman locates the poem in a specific time and place: a funeral. And he identifies the speaker as an agent in the drama - perhaps a soldier, perhaps the dead man's killer - and not the omniscient narrator he seemed to be in the first lines.
And suddenly the poem is littered with first-person words ("my, myself, I,"). The speaker identifies with the dead man ("divine as myself"). And we see a different sort of reconciliation - the gentle kiss of apology/forgiveness that a soldier places on the cheek of his vanquished foe.
So the reconciliation is the coming together of enemies. Whether he's the "divine as myself" or "evil as myself" and whether the speaker is the subject, the man in the coffin, or the one doing the kissing, the concepts of war as "enemy" and "ally" as both language, the word, and psychologically are dissolved.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2015
