by Whitman · Cluster: Vanitas · Contemptus Mundi · Vanity of Worldly Things
Abstract
Satiric meditation on people of high position whose attainments sink away, mocking false realities and rotten core happiness; vanitas, the self, and critique of society.
Connections
Topoi: Vanitas Motifs: Money and Gold, Decay Themes & Concepts: Satire of Society, Self-Knowledge
Testo integrale / Full text
Cluster: AUTUMN RIVULETS
Of persons arrived at high positions, ceremonies, wealth, scholarships, and the like; (To me all that those persons have arrived at sinks away from them, except as it results to their bodies and souls, So that often to me they appear gaunt and naked, And often to me each one mocks the others, and mocks himself or herself, And of each one the core of life, namely happiness, is full of the rotten excrement of maggots, And often to me those men and women pass unwittingly the true realities of life, and go toward false realities, And often to me they are alive after what custom has served them, but nothing more, And often to me they are sad, hasty, unwaked sonnambules walking the dusk.)