thy bliss O death : Eros and Thanatos in Whitman and Wagner

“But for the opera I could never have written Leaves of Grass,” Walt Whitman in his later years remarked to a close friend. It is well known that Whitman was an opera-goer and loved Italian opera especially and that operatic elements exist in Leaves of Grass. The powerful influence of operatic music awakened him to his poet’s “destiny,” as expressed in “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”（1860）, which is a rapturous lyric in which death is comprehended as the climax of “love.” “Out of the Cradle,” though it employs the structure of Italian opera, evokes the music of Richard Wagner, especially, Tristan und Isolde（1859）. The aim of my paper is to demonstrate the similarities between Whitman and Wagner, and clarify the meaning of the joyful death represented in their works. Whitman and Wagner were contemporaries: a poet and a composer - cum-poet, who sought a new form of art which would transcend traditional forms. The theme of “love and death” is common in both and the setting for the work which features this theme is the sea. Imagery of waves and water play an important part in evoking the sensuality and feeling of joy that derives from the affirmation of death. The voluptuousness in “Out of the Cradle,” is close to the love and death motif in Tristan und lsolde, especially in the prelude, which grows and melts restlessly like a rushing wave, and in Isolde’s final aria. The heavy use of present participles - the “- ing form” - contributes to the construction of a harmonious world with various sounds and voices developing simultaneously. All of the sounds and voices blend and evoke an infinite melody, in the words of Wagner, “unendliche Melodie.” The melody produces an ecstatic moment in the poet’s sensation, which is similar to Isolde’s aria in the last scene of Tristan und Isolde. This scene stirs up sensuality by using voices and symphonic elements entwining and ascending together. “Out of the Cradle,” with the word “death” whispered by the sea as well as the horizontal movement of the sound of waves, resulting in vertical movements as if the waves are rising up in the body, strengthens the sexual impression by stimulating the tactile sense of the readers. What is the joyful death proposed by Whitman and Wagner? The ecstasy felt by being engulfed with the word “death” whispered by the sea in the “Out of the Cradle” is very close to the feeling where “sweet breath” of Tristan engulfs Isolde like a huge wave. This is the same as the ecstasy where Eros and Thanatos unite. Life and death are the two sides of a coin. One recognizes death within life when experience is at its most intense