86
PARTISAN REVIEW
Pier that I saw dimly last night when I lookedfrom the
windows
Pier outfrom the main, let me catch myselfwith you and
stay .
. . .
I wtll not chafe you;
Ifeel ashamedto go nakedabout the world,
Andam cun'ous to know where my feet stand.
...
and
what is this flooding me, chtldhoodormanhood.
. . . .
and the hunger that crosses the bndge between.
The cloth laps afirst sweet eating anddn'nking,
Laps Itle-swelling yolks.
...
laps ear ofrose-corn, mtlky
andjust npened:
The white teeth stay, and the boss-tooth advances in darkness,
Andliquor is spilledon Itps andbosoms by touching
glasses, andthe best liquorafterward.
Miller manages to see vaginal imagery here, but I do not see it.
It
seems clear to
me that what is being depicted is the act known politely as fellatio-the penis
protrudes from the foreskin, the balls are sucked, the penis is sucked, and
finally there is ejaculation in the mouth. The sexual experience is the starting
place for the poem, and the poet begins his vision with the second section,
after the orgasm when "my sinews are flaccid/Perfume and youth course
through me, and I am their wake. " The physical experience leads toward the
spiritual experience which is the dream, and which is also in its turn physical
and sexual.
The third section brings a fantasy of the destruction of the "beautiful
gigantic swimmer," a warning in dream terms of the dangers in the
unconscious world of the sea with its' 'swift-running eddies." The swimmer
seems
to
be a sexual object, but is also an ideal presentation of the self. The
d~eam
of the third section is a dream of the destruction of the self-the clue
lies in Whitman's surprising line' 'will you kill him in the prime of his middle
age?" (Whitman was 35 at the time) and in the transition to the next section
through its first line, "I turn but do not extricate myself." The poet-dreamer
wants
to
escape from his dream, but the nightmare is not yet over. In another
key passage that was omitted from later editions Whitman introduces his con–
flict with the Satanic through the figure of Lucifer (whom Whitman seems
perhaps to have taken in his literal sense as light-bearer, for it is the coming of
dawn that will destroy the dream and take away the lover, real or imaginary).
The theme ofslavery is linked to the sexual by the sequence of the poem,
where the poet moves from the mother's vision of the "red squaw" :
My motherlookedin delight andamazement at the stranger,
She lookedat the beauty ofher tallborne face and
foil
afJd
pliant limbs,
The more she lookedupon her she lovedher
