The Lament of the Reeds | Konrad Zaręba

Konrad Zaręba

Acorus Calamus, better known as sweet flag or muskrat root, is a species of water reed found commonly throughout North American wetlands. Although historically it was valued for its medical properties, today it is nothing more than an ordinary weed. And yet somehow, this inconspicuous plant, with its long saber-like leaves, has made its mark on literary history.

In 1860 Walt Whitman, one of the greatest American poets, published a sequence of poems entitled Calamus, now famous for its brave affirmation of homosexual love. There is no consensus among scholars on why Whitman chose the name of a water reed for this particular sequence; however, the most popular theory traces the word Calamus to its ancient Greek origins, Kalamos (Κάλαμος, “reed”), and the myth from which it derives.

Kalamos and Karpos were two young boys in love. One day, as they were having a swimming contest in the Maeander River, Karpos drowned. In despair, incapable of living without his beloved, Kalamos committed suicide by drowning himself in the same river. He was then transformed by gods into reeds growing on the banks, whose rustling in the wind is an immortalized lament of a boy who lost his lover.

Another ancient story which is curiously similar to the myth of Kalamos and Karpos is the story of Roman emperor Hadrian and his lover Antinous. During one of their many travels through the Roman Empire, while they were going up the Nile, Antinous fell into the river and drowned. Heartbroken, Hadrian wanted to commemorate his beloved and ordered the city to be built at the place of his death. He began the process of deification, intent on including Antinous into the pantheon of Roman gods. He also chose the blue lotus (Nymphea nouchali), a water plant growing all over the banks of the Nile, as a symbol of his deified lover, whose divine beauty was henceforth immortalized by a delicate flower native to the river that claimed his life.

The similarities between the myth of Kalamos and the story of Antinous are striking; a lover drowned in the river, great sorrow, and a water plant that becomes the symbol of undying love. The water imagery prevalent throughout both stories is equally prominent in Whitman’s Calamus. There are pond-waters, beaches of the sea, shining and flowing waters, cool waters, the living sea, the bayous of the Mississippi, and many more. The connection between Whitman’s “manly love of comrades” and his reverence for all the waters of the world echoes the stories of those tender lovers who, by a twist of fate, became one with the river.

Whitman’s poems resemble those stories frozen in the moment of absolute pleasure that preceded the tragedy, and maybe that is precisely what they are. Appreciation of love and desire of a man lying naked somewhere along the river, who gazes at the currents, completely content in the moment. But contrary to his ancient predecessors, he is fully aware of the imminent tragedy. In Whitman’s case, it is not the death of the loved one but the realisation of the painful reality of the homophobic society in which he lives. And yet, he somehow always seems unbothered, entirely at peace with himself and the world around him. For him, sexuality is as fluid as a flowing river, and emotions are as wayward as a roaring sea. He perceives love and comradery as a life force akin to water without which everything would perish. Maybe that is why he chooses Calamus to be “the token of comrades” but only for, as he puts it, “them that love as I myself am capable of loving”. In one moment, a common water reed becomes the sacred symbol of homosexuality, and Whitman becomes a wise sage who opens the eyes of his readers to a simple yet often overlooked idea. Time itself is like a river, and every single person becomes a part of the current at some point. Our experiences ripple through time like a stone thrown into the water, becoming a small part of the larger picture. Past events echo one another, constantly influencing the future, and it is up to us to find strength in this endless cycle of experiences just like Whitman found it.

One question then arises. Is the poetry of Walt Whitman an echo of the story of ancient lovers, or can we hear the story of Whitman echoed in the rustling of the reeds among voices of Kalamos, Karpos, Hadrian, Antinous, and all those who dared to love differently?