Author(s)

Siyan Liu ^1,2, Pierre Walke ²

Affiliation(s)

¹ Jinling College, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China
² Salem State University, Salem, MA, United States

Corresponding Author

Siyan Liu

ABSTRACT

President Abraham Lincoln's assassination touched the American poet Walt Whitman and inspired him to create the superb elegy "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." While the poem mourns Lincoln's death, Whitman also suggests that death is not something to be afraid of. This paper examines how the poem shows the speaker's change from an intense feeling of grief to a reconciliation with the truths of life and death. Through close analysis of the poem's imagery, and language, it explores how the poet comes to recognize death as a natural process that leads to rebirth and brings hope. Despite the profound loss experienced by the American people, the poet remains optimistic that the country will flourish once again, just as spring follows winter. The poem also emphasizes the importance of welcoming death as a way to connect the soul and body and find relief from suffering. Ultimately, the whole poem conveys a powerful idea of accepting death.

KEYWORDS

Walt Whitman, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", Treatment of death, Elegy

CITE THIS PAPER

Siyan Liu, Pierre Walke, Accepting Death in Whitman's Poem "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd". Lecture Notes on Language and Literature (2023) Vol. 6: 44-48. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/langl.2023.060308.

REFERENCES

[1] Harold Aspiz. 2004. So Long! Walt Whitman's Poetry of Death. Tuscaloosa: University Alabama Press.
[2] Brown Clarence A. "Walt Whitman and Lincoln." Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1908-1984) 47, no. 2 (1954): 176–84. 
[3] Whitman Walt. "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." Leaves of Grass: The Complete 1855 and 1891, 92 Editions, introduction by John Hollander, notes by Justin Kaplan, Library of America, 2011, pp. 459-67.
[4] Adams Richard P. "Whitman's 'Lilacs' and the Tradition of Pastoral Elegy." PMLA 72, no. 3 (1957): 479–87.
[5] Edmundson Mark. " 'Lilacs' : Walt Whitman's American Elegy." Nineteenth-Century Literature 44, no. 4 (1990): 465–91. 
[6] Yongue P. L., (1984) "Violence in Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 1(4), 12-20.

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