John Smith
Intro. to Poetry
Dr. Naccarato
Walt Whitman's poem "One Hour to Madness and Joy" is a piece that celebrates the wonder of erotic passion and discovery and the exhilarating ability of unbridled love to change a person for their entire life. The poem's tone shifts from an almost introspective cry for release to a reflection on the power of rebellious love to a cry for liberty from the clutches of societal sensibilities.
The first stanza contains a reference to the speaker's state of mind, of his desire to express his thoughts while awash in a sea of emotions. To accomplish this, in lines 2-3 Whitman brings the reader into the speaker's mind with the use of parentheses as an aside. He uses the metaphor of the storm, raging, loud and violent, to represent the torrential power of his emotional state, wherein his conscious mind shouts against the "lightning and raging winds".
The second stanza uses fabulous imagery, "to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man", to demonstrate the speaker's longings for physical pleasure with, one would assume, his lover. He continues to explain his "savage and tender achings", a great double play on "achings" that really better explains his inner turmoil.
There he again pauses for another aside, a bit more deceptive this time:
I bequeath them to you my children,
I tell them to you, for reasons, O bridegroom and bride.
This is one of the more subtle and difficult lines in the poem to follow, but it can be understood really in both the literal sense as well as the figurative sense. Whitman speaks to those inexperienced in love, in passion, so that they might know these achings, both savage and tender.
Line seven tells us that the physical joy between the two is a discovery, as they give themselves to one another, "yielding" themselves against what is apparently the wishes of the world. It's as though, and perhaps meant to be so, they are Romeo and Juliet, and the entire world that they know, all their loved ones, are against their romance, against their love. Also, it's interesting to note the use of the word "whoever", which makes it clear that he really hasn't gotten to know the inner self of his lover, but is learning in the rebellious passion of their love.
The second stanza closes with a biblical reference to Eden, to a "return to Paradise! O bashful and feminine." Whitman is comparing the speaker's relationship to that of Adam and Eve, the original lovers, and the originality and innocence of that time. Our speaker talks of kissing his love with "for the first time the lips of a determined man," proving his intention to make his true feelings completely obvious.
After that line the tone shifts from what was a reflection on the wantings and cravings of the speaker, to a defiant cry for freedom from the bonds of previous relationships and society's expectations. In stanza 3, line 10, Whitman presents the revelation that has come clear in the speaker's mind, as what was a mystery is now solved, and makes sense in his own mind. The puzzle has been solved, the tightly bound knot has been undone, now that the speaker has found what they've been looking for (these metaphors work well to describe what the speaker feels his situation is like). The speaker searches to reach a higher state of being, "where there is space enough and air enough at last!", saying that Earth's mortal coils prevent him from expressing precisely how much he feels inside. He also seeks freedom not only from this world's limits, but from the restrictions placed upon him and his lover through "previous ties and connections" (line 12).
On the other hand, he also seeks, through the love he has, to be more one with the world and to take relaxed comfort, "a new unthought-of nonchalance" with the natural world, with Nature being capitalized, personifying it as a unit, a collective presented as a whole.
He then brings to mind what is actually a violent image, of a gag being removed from someone's mouth, as though they were kidnapped or tied up or placed in bounds for any which reason. Either way, Whitman means it to say that while he was unable to speak openly before, now he can be free to expound on what he feels, to be in love, and to be pleased with his relationship and himself. The last line in the 3rd stanza talks about his own pride, and how he now feels proud to be himself, "sufficient as I am", and be able to be open about to someone. These feelings are probably placed on the lover, who to the speaker accepts him no matter what, and considers him sufficient- good enough. This also is an allusion as to what might have been problems being in love with someone from a higher class, but it's not followed up upon from there.
Whitman's speaker gets downright defiant in his affair, according to the fourth stanza. He knows that what he has isn 't assured of success, and is an idealistic fantasy to some (represented by "something in a trance" simile), but he seeks to get away from all that holds him back, the "anchors and holds" that people place upon him. He wishes to be bold, to be free with his love and affection, and not have to worry about the thoughts and opinions of others and just love truly and completely. Whitman's speaker is bold- he knows the chances are against him, but still he plans to "court destruction with taunts, with invitations!" He's inviting the hand of fate to break his love apart, to drive the two of them away from one another. Yet he believes there is much to come for his lover and he, a "leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me!", where he can achieve real paradise on Earth, to rise there with his tired soul (the word inebriate I believe is used to say that his soul, his mind, is tired and perhaps pained, as opposed to drunken as is the first and obvious guess).
The speaker doesn't care what has to happen. According to him, if he loses himself, gets lost in the emotion of it all, then that is what has to happen. Then comes the payoff, as the poem is summed up in two lines:
To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and freedom!
With one brief hour of madness and joy!
The poem seems to be functioning as a long, extravagant way of explaining the power of a deep, sexual relationship, and what that physical oneness can be for some people. Erotic hints are dropped throughout the work, whether they be "to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man" or "to plant on you for the first time the lips??p;quot;, but in the end Whitman tells us how one brief hour of madness and joy can affect someone's life forever, and fill it with "fulness and freedom." Just one hour of love can be enough to enrich someone for all time, according to him, which brings the poem nicely to a close. The tone worked along with the theme, that being of the effect of love and the price you have to pay for the real thing, and the tone morphed throughout, from Whitman's exhortation to young people to learn of rebellious passion, to a wish for an escape from societal norms. This poem sounds, at it's heart, inspired by Romeo and Juliet, for at it's heart it features a true, boundless love that cared not for what was expected of it. Whitman's work, however, leaves one with more of a positive reaction.
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