Walt Whitman's Relation to the Romantic Period Essay
The time of Romanticism brought upon many trends extending from the idea of individualism as a rebellious separation from the classics, an idealistic outlook and finally to a strong religious base. Most of the writers of the Romantic period followed Pantheism "God is everything and everything is God ... the world is either identical with God or in some way a self–expression of his nature" (Owen 1971: 74). The idea of Pantheism was that everything in the world worked in unity. In some of the works of the Romantic period the expression of nature and humans are not separate entities, but one in the same. Even though in reality it did not work this way Pantheism was the ideal of most these writers and idealism in itself was yet another trend ... Show more content on Helpwriting.net ...In the poem he veers from any pattern and words like, "abject louse," and "maggot," followed his reputation of having an angry diction. His work is completely impulsive which was seen as exotic and passionate, which certainly reflected the period. In his poetry he was said by Norton to stay away from, "making any sense or reason," (Saintsbury, 50).
Walt Whitman also had a strong emphasis on religion as well. In most of his poetry, including `Faces' Whitman tended to speak of sprits and in this particular poem; the Lord and the soul.
The Lord advances, and yet advances;
Always the shadow in front–always the reach'd hand bringing up the laggards.
(Whitman, `Faces')
The soul is also mentioned earlier in the poem as beautiful, despite the faces he sees which are at most "despising," (Whitman, `Faces'). Whitman was apparently very much intrigued by the soul, he tried to find a "path," to the soul even though he admits that he was not sure what the soul was. However, he was determined he would find a "path between reality and their souls," (Allen, 192). Like most of the pantheists of his time he wanted to connect many things, reality and the soul; even individualism and the nation. Whitman quoted, "The empowerments of each element of the country individually but at the same time their merger in the collective empowerment of the nation
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