The Idea of Music in "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking"

Abstract

Reads Whitman\u27s "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" in terms of the poem\u27s indebtedness to music, especially Italian Opera, arguing that music plays "not only a structural role, but a symbolic one," and that the "solution (\u27clew\u27) to the ultimate mystery of being is, for Whitman, an essentially musical solution.