Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

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Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

• American Literature I
• 11/22/2004
• Cecilia H. C. Liu

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Outline

• Introduction Whitman and Leaves of Grass
• Whitmans Song of Myself
• Whitmans Portrays of Slavery in Song of Myself
  (Critics comments)
• Whitmans There Was a Child Went Forth
• Suggestive Readings
• Works Cited

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Whitman and Leaves of Grass

• Walt Whitman is one of the 1st generation of
  Americans who were born in the newly formed US
  and grew up in the stable existence of the new
  country.
• One of the haziest periods of Whitmans life is
  the occurrence of the Civil War, when Whitman
  encountered casualties of the war. During this
  time, he visited wounded soldiers who moved to
  New York hospitals, and wrote about them in "City
  Photographs" published in 1862.
• During the time of his hospital service, Whitman
  wrote about the war experience, but not the
  aftereffects, such as the moonlight illuminating
  the dead on the battlefields, the churches turned
  into hospitals, wound dressing, encountering with
  a dead enemy in a coffin, the trauma of battle
  nightmares for soldiers who returned home.

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Whitman and Leaves of Grass (2)

• Whitman paid for the production of the 1st
  edition of his book and had only 795 copies
  printed. The book appeared on the 4th of July,
  as a representation of literary Independence
  Day.
• Whitman's book was an extraordinary
  accomplishment after trying for over a decade to
  address in journalism and fiction the social
  issues (such as education, temperance, slavery,
  prostitution, immigration, democratic
  representation) that challenged the new nation).
• Whitman expresses with the identification of a
  new American democratic attitude, that would make
  up the diversity of the country in a vast,
  single, unified identity.
• "Do I contradict myself?" was a question Whitman
  asked confidently toward the end of the long poem
  "Song of Myself" "Very well then . . . . I
  contradict myself / I am large . . . . I contain
  multitudes Other Passages

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Whitman Leaves of Grass (3)

• His work echoed with the language of the American
  urban working class and many corners of the 19th
  century culture, giving presentations in the
  nation's politics, its music, its new
  technologies, its fascination with science, and
  its evolving pride in an American language that
  formed as a tongue distinct from British English.
  
• It is clear now the author of Leaves of Grass is
  Whitman, but Whitman did not put his name on the
  title page until the 1876 "Author's Edition" of
  the book.

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Whitman His Influences

• Beyond poetry, Whitman has had an extensive and
  unpredictable impact on fiction, film,
  architecture, music, painting, dance, and other
  arts.
• Whitman has enjoyed great international renown.
  Whitmans importance not only presents from his
  literary qualities but also his standing as a
  prophet of liberty and revolution, since he
  served as a major icon for socialists and
  communists, who fulfilled promise of democracy.  
  

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Whitmans Song of Myself

• He shows suspicions of classrooms, with "Song of
  Myself" generated by a question a child would
  always ask, "What is the grass?" was defined in
  the 1st section.
• In addition, the term of grass is one of the
  focus within the poem as he spends the rest of
  the poem with his discoveries of those seemingly
  simple, the cosmos in himself.
• By the mid-1840s, Whitman began to show awareness
  of the cultural resources of New York City, and
  began dedicating himself to journalism. For
  Whitman, serving the public was to frame issues
  in accordance with working class interests, which
  is usually the whites interests.

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Whitmans Song of Myself (2)

• Whitman dreaded slave labor as a "black tide"
  that could overwhelm white workingmen. He
  believes that slavery should not be allowed into
  the new western territories.
• Periodically, Whitman expressed outrage at
  practices that furthered slavery itself for
  example, he was incensed at laws that made
  possible the importation of slaves by way of
  Brazil. Like Lincoln, he consistently opposed
  slavery and its further extension, even while he
  knew (again like Lincoln) that the more extreme
  abolitionists threatened the Union itself.

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Whitmans There Was a Child Went Forth

• Walt Whitman wrote more frequently about
  educational issues and always retained an
  interest in how knowledge is acquired.
• One of the poems in his first edition of Leaves
  of Grass, eventually called "There Was a Child
  Went Forth," could be read as a statement of
  Whitman's educational philosophy.
• He celebrates unrestricted extracurricular
  learning, and shows openness to experience and
  ideas that would allow for endless absorption of
  variety and difference, which was the kind of
  education he particularly valued.

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Other Topics Whitman Addresses

• Whitman deals a lot about topics within Slavery,
  especially passages in Song of Myself, The
  Sleepers, and I Sing.
• He also deals with Civil War, in Drum Taps, sex,
  in Calamus and Children of Adam, and the sea, in
  Sea-Drift.
• Death is also mentioned quite a bit for Whitman,
  in his Drum Taps, with passages of the death of
  soldiers.

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Other Examples

• New voice spoke confidently of union at a time of
  incredible division and tension in the culture,
  and it spoke with the assurance of one for whom
  everything could be celebrated as part of itself
  "What is commonest and cheapest and nearest and
  easiest is Me" (Section 14).
• This represents the new American spirit that
  Whitman intends to portrays.

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Walt Whitman Images
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Whitmans Song of Myself (3)

• "Song of Myself" portrays Whitman's poetic birth
  and the journey into knowing launched by that
  "awakening."
• However, the "I" who speaks is not alone, since
  he has included the camerado, "you," addressed in
  the poem's second line, which is the reader,
  placed on shared ground with the poet throughout
  the journey.

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Whitmans Song of Myself (4)

• The poem opens with the representation of the
  poet "observing a spear of summer grass" and
  extending an invitation to his soul, clearly
  prepares him for the soul's visit of section 5, a
  section that dramatizes the transfiguring event,
  launching the poet on his lifelong quest.  Ex
  section 1 and 2.
• Awakening in section 5 prepared the poet for new
  knowledge, as he proceeds on the journey, and
  extends through section 32, where leads the poet
  to more subjects and themes addressed in Leaves
  of Grass.

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Whitmans Song of Myself

• Permit to speak at every hazard, / Nature
  without check with original energy" (Section 1).
• Leaving "creeds and schools" behind, he goes
  "to the bank by the wood to become undisguised
  and naked" (Sections 1 and 2).
• He presents himself (section 13) as the "caresser
  of life wherever moving . . . Absorbing all to
  myself and for this song."

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Whitmans Song of Myself (5)

• After the grass imagery in section 6, Whitman
  moves to "en-masse," in 7-16.
• The speaker, Whitman reveals, in forms of Whitman
  himself, American, roaming the continent,
  celebrating the scenes of ordinary life. Example
  Section 13
• Then, such movement rises in a crescendo to the
  extended catalogue of section 15, with exuberant
  snapshots of American types and scenes.

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Whitmans Song of Myself (6)

• In sections 18-24, the poet collapses traditional
  discriminations, and celebrates "conquer'd and
  slain persons" (section 18) along with victors,
  the "righteous" the "wicked"and extends his
  embrace to include outcasts and outlaws.
• However, his focuses on the equality of body and
  soul and ways of rescuing the body from its
  inferior status.
• He turns to himself and his own, and presents in
  section 24 a nude portrait of himself, with a
  metaphoric catalogue.

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Whitmans Song of Myself (7)

• In sections 18-32, the poet celebrates the erotic
  dimension of all the senses, but he turns to a
  miraculous touch in section 28.
• In section 33, it begins with higher affirmations
  of the 2nd part of the journey. The poet feels no
  longer bound by the ties of space and time, but
  feels that he is able to soar like a meteor out
  into space.
• Hence, this peak of exaltation in section 33
  switches to a tone to its opposite as the poet
  identifies with the rejected, suggests that he
  has moved obscurely beyond the knowledge of his
  previous phase in sections 17-20. 

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Whitmans Song of Myself

• "Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new
  identity? (Section 28).
• "Space and Time! now I see it is true, what I
  guess'd at, / . . . when I loaf'd on the
  grass. (Section 33).
• "I am the man, I suffer'd, I was there." He
  becomes the "old-faced infants and the lifted
  sick," the mother "condemned for a witch," "the
  hounded slave. (Section 33).
• "I discover myself on the verge of a usual
  mistake. (Section 38).

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Whitmans Song of Myself (8)

• Section 38 opens with strong rejection of the
  role of beggar he has assumed resets the
  direction for the poet on his journey. This
  stage, in which the poet is confident in his
  transcendent power, extends through the closing
  sections, 38-49.
• In section 43 the poet affirms all religious
  faiths, and in section 44 he celebrates his place
  in evolutionary theory both religion and science
  contain the seeds that provide the source for his
  supreme power. 

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Whitmans Song of Myself (9)

• In section 50 the poet seems to have emerged from
  a trance-like state, similar to what he
  experienced in section 5
• The "it" could refer to the transcendent meaning
  of Whitmans experience on his dream-like
  journey. Example
• Whitman addresses "brothers and sisters" first
  evoked in section 5, and includes a word that
  could convey some idea of the transcendent
  meaning on his journey. Ex

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Whitmans Song of Myself

• "Wrench'd and sweaty--calm and cool then my body
  becomes, / I sleep--I sleep long." Coming out of
  his deep sleep, the poet stammers almost
  incoherently "I do not know it . . . it is a
  word unsaid, / It is not in any dictionary,
  utterance, symbol" (Section 50).
• Something it swings on more than the earth I
  swing on, / To it the creation is the friend
  whose embracing awakes me" (Section 50).
• "It is not chaos or death--it is form, union,
  plan--it is eternal life--it is Happiness." 
  (Section 50).

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Whitmans Song of Myself (9)

• As the In the last two sections (51-52), Whitman
  addresses the idea of camerado from the
  beginning, "you," once more.
• Whitman does not deny but dismisses his
  "contradictions, (see more), and describes
  himself "not a bit tamed,and "untranslatable,"
  His journey is over, he prepares for departure,as
  he return to the dirt to grow from the grass",
  and says humorously, "If you want me again look
  for me under your boot-soles."

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Whitmans Song of Myself

• I am large, I contain multitudes (Section 50).
• On beginning his journey (section 1) he promised
  he would "permit to speak at every hazard, /
  Nature without check with original energy."
• At the end, the poet admonishes his readers to
  "keep encouraged" and continue their search for
  him, promising "I stop somewhere waiting for
  you" (Section 52).

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Portrayals of Slavery in Song of Myself

• In section 10, Whitman addresses the runaway
  slave, and reminds us is the tremendous need for
  grammar in this world, the tremendous need for
  structural provisions unattached to particular
  persons, and responsive to all analogous persons. 

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Portrayals of Slavery in Song of Myself

• Whitman portrays the African American in a sort
  of figure that one could identify and sympathize,
  such as the hunted figure in section 33 crucified
  by his pursuers and with whose passion the
  speaker identifies and the figure of the black
  drayman in section 13, in command of his horses
  and himself.

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Portrayals of Slavery in Song of Myself

• Another implication of the slaves could be seen
  in Section 11, the 28 bather,  and in this
  passage Whitman encourages us to forget is the
  condition under which the slave is admitted, that
  they are trapped and unable to be let out, as one
  of its representative figures in his poetry.
• Indeed, these figures--the trapper and his bride,
  and the bathing young men--must be forgotten as
  well. Thus, this reveals a sort of tender
  forgetfulnessthat the 28 young men, bathers, do
  not realize that the woman had left her house and
  began to join in the dances and activities with
  them, touching them, because it is simply not
  registered as antecedence.

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Suggestive Readings

• Calamus (Sex)
• Children of Adam (Sex)
• Drum Taps (Death and The Civil War)
• Sea Drift (How Whitman Portrays the Sea)
• Memories of President Lincoln and Drum Taps
  (Death and Memories in America)
• Specimen Days (Memories of Whitman)

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Works Cited

• The Walt Whitman Hypertext Archive. Ed. Folson
  and Kenneth M. Price. http//jefferson.village.vir
  ginia.edu/whitman/
• Miller, James E., Jr. Song of Myself.Ed. J.R.
  LeMaster and Donald Kummings. Walt Whitman An
  Encyclopedia. New York Garland, 1998.
• Whitman and Slavery Critical Positions.
  http//jefferson.village.virginia.edu/fdw/volume1/
  price/positions.html