Structuring the Matrix of Mourning: Walt Whitman’s Quaternity Tribute to Abraham Lincoln

Abstract

In 1865, Walt Whitman commemorated the American Civil War with a slim poetry collection, Drum-Taps, but before he could distribute the book, it became “incomplete” when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in April of that year. Whitman knew that he could not honor the war’s legacy without recognizing the sacrifice of the Commander-in-Chief, and so retained the books until he could print Sequel to Drum-Taps and sew in these final pages to round out the volume. As in Drum-Taps, not all the poems in Sequel relate battles or muse on militaristic themes; one such poem is “Chanting the Square Deific,” a surprising broadening of Trinitarian theology by the introduction of Satan as third person of a Quaternity and the gender inversion of the Holy Spirit as “Santa Spirita,” thereby introducing femininity into the traditionally masculine triad. Reading the poem in dialogue with his more famous Lincoln elegy, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” reveals a condensed theology and its application: Whitman’s theological “Squaring” of Father, Son, Satan, and Santa Spirita, reinforcing the quaternity of lilac, star, hermit thrush, and memory that helps him articulate his—and his nation’s—grief over its loss.