Whitman, late in his life, comments briefly on Emerson’s failing memory. As observed and recorded by Theodore F. Wolfe in Literary Shrines: The Haunts of Some Famous American Authors (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1895). The observation is made in the final chapter, “A Day with the Good Gray Poet.”
Whitman had seen Emerson for the last time when the philosopher’s memory had failed and all his powers were weakening; inste of being shocked by this condition, Whitman thinks it fit and natural, “nature gradually reclaiming the elements she had lent, work all nobly done, soul and senses preparing for rest.” [210]
Emerson’s memory thus circles back; the metonymy of his memory, part of the nature it records and represents. His memory condition (aphasia, possibly alzheimer’s?) for Whitman marks a natural return–this is the metonymic (not really ironic, therefore) fate for the writer of nature and the intellect’s natural history: the loss of the ability to communicate.
[...] the condition of his old age) and as an important concept in that writing. Something close is how Whitman views it: the loss of memory is a return to its nature; thus the failure (and the ironies) is [...]
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