Whitman's 'Passage to India': Evolution and Cosmic Vision

Publication and Authorial Context. The last major work of Whitman’s career, “Passage to India” (1871) first appeared as the title piece to a volume of poems published in 1871 and was first incorporated in the 1881 Leaves. According to a footnote in the 1876 preface, “Passage to India” was intended to herald a new project and new volume that would sing the “unseen Soul” as Leaves of Grass had sung the “Body and Existence.” Whitman wrote, “Passage to India, and its cluster, are but freer vent and fuller expression to what, from the first, and so throughout, more or less lurks in my writings, underneath every page, every line, everywhere.” To Horace Traubel Whitman said, “There’s more of me, the essential ultimate me, in that than in any of the poems. There is no philosophy . . . in that poem . . . but the burden of it is evolution . . . the unfolding of cosmic purposes” (Traubel 1:156–157).

Technological Achievements as Spiritual Symbols. “Passage to India” begins by celebrating three technological achievements of 1866 and 1869, which joined distant parts of the world: the completion of the Suez Canal, the laying of the transatlantic cable, and the completion of the American transcontinental railroad. Whitman perceived these technological linkages of distant peoples and places as a symbol and mark of a coming spiritual brotherhood throughout the world. He acknowledges the achievements of the past, the fables, myths, and wonders of Asia and Africa and the Mediterranean as harbingers of these greater wonders ahead. In them he finds “God’s purpose from the first . . . / the earth to be spann’d, connected by network, / The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage” (ll. 31–33).

The poem then telescopes to a detailed description of the completion of the Suez Canal and the transcontinental railroad, as Whitman places himself in the scenes, witnessing the events. In sections 4 and 5 he asserts that the history of the world has a purpose, which has sometimes lain hidden and sometimes heroically marched forward embodied by discoverers and voyagers. In section 5 he admits that the impulse of this march has often been a feverish restlessness in the human race, a frustrated yearning and unsatisfied want in the soul. But he announces that there will be one who shall come to soothe “these feverish children.” This healer shall be the poet, “the true son of God,” who shall join race to race, human to human, and nature to humanity (ll. 104–105, 115).

The Poet-Healer and the Soul’s Voyage. Section 6 then reviews the entire history of the human race and notes again how the “seed,” the hidden purpose, has lain buried and in “God’s due occasion” shall sprout and bloom (ll. 162–163). Then in section 7 the poet turns to address his soul, and the poem shifts from the physical to the transcendental: “O soul, repressless, I with thee and thou with me, / Thy circumnavigation of the world begin” (ll. 169–170). The poet and his Soul launch forth, no longer merely circumnavigating the world, but now sailing out onto the ecstatic seas of God, until they find the “Comrade perfect.”

Reckoning head, O soul, when thou, the time achiev’d,
The seas all cross’d, weather’d the capes, the voyage done,
Surrounded, copest, frontest God, yieldest, the aim attain’d,
As fill’d with friendship, love complete, the Elder Brother found
The Younger melts in fondness in his arms. (ll. 219–223)

Note how this language parallels that of section 45 of “Song of Myself.” Section 9, the concluding section, is an ecstatic call of the soul to launch ever forth onto those unknown, endless seas: “Are they not all the seas of God? / O farther, farther, farther sail!” (ll. 254–255). The poem thus culminates in a transcendental voyage rather than a material arrival.

International Origins and Spiritual Vision. One of the remarkable aspects of “Passage to India” is the way the technological wonders Whitman celebrates reflect the international origins of his spiritual vision. The circling of the globe connected America to India, West to East, present to ancient past—Columbus’s dream on the material level. This connection serves as a perfect vehicle for Whitman’s cosmic vision of a universe permeated by a universal soul or self, into which the individual soul launches forth to “fillest, swellest full the vastness of Space” to become united with the transcendental. This religious vision originated in, or at a minimum mirrors, the cosmology of Hinduism, the religion of India. Thus, as the technological accomplishments celebrated returned the Western world to its ancient Eastern roots, so Whitman’s spiritual vision found its roots in India, the very continent Columbus had sought to reach in his own setting out.

Critical Reception and Controversies. Surprisingly in spite of Whitman’s own comments on the poem noted earlier, comments that place the poem centrally in his work, many critics, perhaps uneasy with the poem’s religious elements, have downplayed its importance and achievement. Some have found the poem too abstract, lacking the physicality and particularity of Whitman’s early poems, even of those with a transcendental theme, such as “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” Others bemoan the lack of Whitman’s trademark gestures of intimacy with the reader. These are legitimate complaints; on a political level, some have lamented the poem’s celebration of industrial capitalism and nascent American globalization, while others have found the poem’s embrace of transcendental values to be a rejection of the materialist features of that globalization and the culture of America’s Gilded Age. But to those philosophically and spiritually receptive to its message, “Passage to India” remains an ecstatic hymn of transcendental vision unmatched in American poetry.

For Discussion or Writing.
1. Unlike many of his critics, Whitman considered this one of his most important poems. Do you find the poem successful in your reading experience? Explain why or why not.

2. Most readers of previous generations of Americans had a positive image of Columbus as a great explorer and discoverer. Today many see him in a more compromised light. How do you think this changed perception of Columbus affects the reading of the poem today?
3. Compare and contrast the representations of science in this poem with those in “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer.”