Walt Whitman
- Biography → He was born in 1819 in Long Island and his family was very poor; when he was four in 1823
the entire family moved to Brooklyn, where he used to see the city of New York and later he started referring
to that city to remember when he was a child (in his poems New York is called “Mannahatta”) → overall he
wrote many celebratory writings about New York, seen as a symbol of an emerging and in evolution nation
through the development of one of its major urban centers.
His family was deeply patriotic and democratic, so they were very open towards people belonging to
different ethnic groups or personalities: his parents weren't members of any religious group but as a
background they were “quackers” (the quacker thought played an essential role in Whitman's life) → his
mother's family had a quacker background, especially his grandmother, with whom he spent long summers
and happy days along also with his grandfather.
So, even though his family didn't belong to a specific Church, the quacker thought greatly influenced his way
of thinking and inherited the idea of accepting everybody as equal. One of the quacker's main element was
the:
Inner light → a metaphor of the light of Chist shining in and on everybody, which allows a person to
come to know God's will; a consequence of having this inner light in the quacker background was
that inspiration was taken very seriously and was considered as a voice that's talking to you, that
needs to be listened to and to be taken into account.
Whitman grew up in the background of the working class → he had a lot of experience in the farm with his
grandparents and in New York, that are two elements that can be found in Whitman's writings: the idyllic
Long Island countryside that opposes to the crowded and quickly growing Brooklyn in New York City urban
center. Therefore, his experience was alternated between the fast running city and the countryside, where he
came in contact with nature working on the land.
He was interested in both ways of living, so as a matter of fact his poetry is marked by a constant shift
between rural and urban settings. As far as his education is concerned, Whitman was self-taught: his mother
was almost illiterate and her son had to leave school and go to work because of the increasing family
members → he worked as a carpenter, a printer and as a delivery boy, experiences that led him to come in
contact with the world of industry and urban center.
- Career → he was a journalist, a profession considered very important in the USA and that was essential for
his experience in the city: his job was to collect news around the city for local newspapers (basic events) and
as a reporter, he had to move every day through the streets, so it was essential for him to know the city very
well.
One of his most famous images of the city is the view of New York's harbor, that became for him the symbol
of American expansionism and the fact that Whitman became so famous in the literary field (which requires a
formal education) makes him the embodiment of one of the most important American dreams, that is the
self-made man. In 1842 he became quite well-known in his job, starting to write short articles for the “New
York Aurora”, a newspaper born in 1841 where the publisher announced the name of Whitman and
introduced him as bold, energetic and original → this testified that Whitman had become famous in the
New York area and revealed some details about his future poetry.
- Moving to New Orleans → In 1848 he moved for some months to New Orleans because there he had
been offered a job as journalist; Whitman's love for the continent of America was probably born during this
journey, that was very long and widened the sense of the countries and the countries' extension. In general, it
was the first time that Whitman was leaving both New York and Long Island.
During his staying he experimented another great experience since New Orleans was a very colorful city and
full of excitement, but it was a relevant moment because he met some people who had been in battles and
were recovering from war wounds. Apart from that, he also came in contact with different languages such as
French and Spanish, arriving to call this moment an “intoxicating mix of languages” → he started seeing the
possibility of a new American culture derived from the melting of ethnic groups and backgrounds.
The staying in New Orleans had also flaws and was represented by the encounter of the horrors of slavery →
he sees the city in a complete different way when he witnesses the “slave auctions”: he never forgot the
experience when he saw humans standing on the selling block and kept a poster of this action in his room as
a reminder of this dehumanizing event that had occured in the USA → the slave auction's experience was
entirely incorporated in the poem “I sing the Body Electric”.
After this experience he went back to New York passing through Canada and Niagara Falls, an ulterior
journey that allowed him to get to know better the American continent (physical immersion that allows the
drawing of a parallelism between his body and the body of America). He will publish on the 4 th of July 1855
the “Leaves of Grass”, a book that Whitmas hopes to be the manifesto as the independence of literary and
cultural reality.
Immersion in the experience of war → in 1862 his brother John enlisted in the Army and was eventually
wounded on the battlefields. Whitman left his job in New York and went to Virginia searching for his brother
in many battlefields and several hospitals and was an unforgettable and changing experience.
One of the main themes of Whitman's poetry is the “body”, considered by him as violated, dismembered and
the images of the wounded and dead bodies of soldiers were quite difficult to match with the celebration of
the strength and beauty of the body at its best → outside the mansion that had been turned into a field
hospital, he wrote in his journal images and inscriptions of what he was moving around.
These images kept on haunting Whitman's mind like ghosts; mainly he would celebrate the physical body
and after claiming that the soul existed only in the body, he saw these devasted and completely destroyed.
The main goal that Whitman set to himself after coming in contact with these experience was to help
wounded bodies lying in the hospitals becoming their hands: he started running errands and writing letters
for them with the intention of making them feel complete again.
To be close and to help these soldiers, he moved in 1862 to Washington, where he obtained a job in
the Paymaster's office of the USA Army, which allowed him to spend time in hospitals taking care of
dying, wounded soldiers and doing hospitals daily rounds. He immersed himself completely in the
experience of war and the suffering of the soldiers is of course to be found in his poetry.
In 1873 he suffered a stroke, which made him experience in first-hand the sensation of a body that
could be maimed and crippled, whereas in June he came back to Camden, close to New York, to stay
with his brother → he moved to a working class neighborhood and so he came back to the
background he was used to during his childhood.
From Camden he then moved to Philadelphia, where he embodied the last mask, the one of the “Old
Sage” with a beard. Eventually he died in 1891 at the age of 72 years old.
The American Scholar
-Relationship between Emerson and Whitman → Whitman is believed to be the poet Emerson was waiting
for. One of the most important essays written by Emerson is entitled “The American Scholar”: it was first a
lecture then an essay where Emerson focuses on his idea of what an American writer should be and
underlines the importance of the connection between the writer and nature.
The lecture was first held at Harvard in 1837, when Emerson talked in front of students who could possibly be
the future writers of the USA and tells them the traits of the American writer.
Overall, this essay of the American Scholar has been considered as the intellectual Declaration of
Independence of the United States.
In the American Scholar Emerson expresses his regret that American culture is still very independent
of European models and states the need of national literature to move away from the European
influence. Emerson connects this topic with the role of the intellectual in a democratic society → he
defines the role of the artist, the poet or the writer as a leader who could lead the country way from
this dependency of European models.
He starts by saying that the most important influence on the American Scholar is nature: he lists very
simple things such as the sun, night and her stars,the winds blow and the grass grows and Emerson
ends up saying that the American Scholar is the one able to respond and describe the spectacle of
nature and all its situations and phenomenon.
The other importance influence is the past, that can be found in many books, where the truth about
the past is included, but Emerson then starts limiting the importance of the books, because even
though they appear to be the best of all influences, they can be used in the wrong way. Therefore,
once established that the first influence is nature and the second are the books, then he goes directly
to the point → there's this idea that the poet is a recluse, interested only in books and who doesn't
have a positive contact with the world, but that's not true: the poet is a practical man interested in
material things, he needs to have experiences of life and not only indirect experience of life through
books written in the past.
This can be summed up by saying that the American poet is not a “bookworm”, somebody locked in
a library, but he's a man who unifies thought and action, so the poet shouldn't only be educated by
books but also action and nature. By limiting the influence of books, Emerson also limits the
relevance of the past and does in favor of “first-hand experience”.
Overall, Emerson encourages the students to rely on their own experience, take pride of what they
live on the continent and try to limit the experience lived through books.
Whitman's Poetics
Whitman is revolutionary both in diction (language) and in themes, he shows a great faith in the individual
together with his possibility of being improved and he sings the American features in all its dimensions → he
puts America and the first-hand experience of America at the centre, therefore the link with Emerson is
evident.
At times he comes off as scandalous and vulgar, he sings all that belons to the world, to the New World and
talks freely about it (sex, the body) because he believes that those elements belong to the real experience of
the human being. Whitman is the “American Bard”, who tries to embrace the whole America and his poems
are the best descriptions of the American melting pot.
As a child, Whitman didn't receive a standard and formal education, so his poetics can't be found in an essay
or a theoretical reflection of his poetry, but it's shown in one source, that is the Preface he wrote for the first
edition of “Leaves of Grass”, where he clarifies some ideas such as his education, cultural background, but
mainly expresses the fundamental principles that inspired his poetry.
- Themes → Whitman declares his willingness to talk about everyday subject with an everyday language. He
makes several lists in his poetry, element that represents the attempt to include everything (for example
wilderness: animals, sees, mountains, rivers). He believes that:
The United States are the “greatest poem”,because they have a variety of ethnic groups, nature, wide
spaces that testify to the spirit of the country of the USA.
Apart from variety, the genius of the USA isn't expressed by intellectuals or politicians, but by
ordinary people who with their life create the “unrhymed poetry”.
Whitman opposes to conventional poetry → this kind of poetry would only deal with a few things
considered worthy of becoming objects of a poetical position (tendency that Whitman links to a
tradition not in board with the United States); on the contrary he includes all themes, subjects which
at times come off as scandalous but that are part of the direct experience of everyone's life.
Whitman is often seen as the “poet of liberation” → he sets poetry free from the convention of the
past but also frees men from inhibitions and ethical rules of the body.
The body is very important in Whitman's poetry → the body is considered as something secret, a
tangible expression of the soul; body and soul are two elements that can't be separated because
they depend on each other and in a democracy they have the same importance (every man has the
same dignity).
Whitman appears to be in contrast with many of his contemporary authors, who are more
conventional and have another project in mind, that is to limit the rough American physical evergy;
on the contrary, Whitman aims at giving voice and relevance to this energy, because it's believed to
be the symbol of America's conquering attitude.
- Language → Whitman looks for a language that's able to express the expanding soul, the body and the
thoughts of the democratic human being (American), who's building a new society in a new continent.
In the attempt of reproducing the language spoken in America, Whitman, apart from lowering the register,
also uses American slang (common American's way of thinking) and a language that is the result of the
transformations and influences of non-native speakers of English.
The vocabulary is where the change is more visible → it's richer and keeps on changing. Here the
author creates new words that belong to the New World and that are needed to describe things we
have seen for the first time in the United States, but useless to describe the experience in Europe.
So, these new words need to be used, adopted and assimilated into the language → Whitman has a
clear vision of the language as something that keeps on changing and these changes that take place
completely reflect the American nation that's moving and developing, so the language needs to do
the same (parallelism).
Whitman's intention is to create a linguistic system made of expressions and idioms heard by the
poet: in his work all linguistic registers are present.
He decided to use the “long verse” and a lot of repetitions, two elements that testify to the great
influence that king James Bible had on the structure that he uses in his poetry. Whitman calls the
long verse “rhythm of the breath”, but it will be later defined by T.S Eliot as the “free verse”, which
gives us the idea of the complete absence of rhythmical rules, but that's not Whitman's case,
because the poet's long verse has its rhythmical rules based on specific repetitions both of images
and sounds.
- Role of the poet → to explain the role of the poet, Whitman carries out what Emerson recently had
theorized, a sort of identification between the poetic I on one side and America and reader on the other →
in his poetry, the concept of expansionism doesn't only concern the geographical and political field, but it
also deals with the concept of American destiny, so Whitman is trying to make this experience universal.
Whitman clearly states that poetry can't become literature unless it shows interest in the American life and
hopes: the writers of his time weren't interested in the New World, so they couldn't express the American
experiment whereas the poet must instead show people the beauty and dignity that resides in every object
of the American experience; it's also important that the poet shows the relationship that the human soul
should have with the world.
So, the poet is looked at as a leader who reveals the most important realities and spread the acknowledge of
beauty.
Leaves of Grass (1855)
Seen as the work of a life, it was published on the 4 th July in 1855, a symbolic date because it represents the
American Independence's Day.
The first edition contained 12 untitled poems and an essay in prose identified as Preface; the book is
a quarto-sized volume, which means that its measures are larger than a standard volume → he
chose these measures because they allowed him to let his lines freely run in their entire length.
However, future editions will put these strange dimensions aside and will opt for a standard
dimension as the author believes that it's more important that the reader could bring the book
around with him.
The name of the author doesn't appear on the book's cover, but it's presented in a poem of the
“Collection”, where the author introduces himself through the picture contained in the first edition.
The book has a green cover decorated with intertwined branches (floral decorations), symbolism of
leaves of grass but also of a book, elements unified by the idea that the book is something organic
that keeps on growing → as a matter of fact, the first edition only contained 95 pages, whereas the
last edition (1891) came to contain more than 500. It's the seventh edition (1871) that sets the
definitive order and won't change in the last two editions (8 th and 9th), where Whitman only adds a
few pages at the end. Whitman defines his last edition as “death-bed edition”, the final edition and
he's is also aware that books have a life of their own, independent from the will of their authors.
Inscriptions→ groups of poems contained in the edition published in 1871 (7 th) in a section called
“Inscriptions”; some critics have defined these poems as “program poems”, in the sense that Whitman wants
to give the reader a sort of “preview” of what he's going to deal with in his poems.
One's-self I sing → first poem of Inscriptions and sets the tone for the rest of the volume, because Whitman
introduces the themes he's going to “sing” about. In the poem Whitman examines the meaning of “one-self”,
a wide concept including opposites and that's summed up in the last line of the text “The Modern Man I
Sing”.
The poets starts off by saying that he wants to sing the “self” that represents all the people: here he's
speaking to a general idea of the self, common between his personal identity and the “democratic self” that
everyone shares → here the presence of the pronoun “I” is very strong, because it's an element that
underlines the idea of democracy frequently repeated in his poems.
The poet here is seen as a leader, someone who can show the way and gives huge importance to the concept
of body and soul (“Of Psychology from top to toe I sing”): they are connected, because the human body is
seen as a “vessel” used by the soul to experience the world.
Whitman goes on by introducing the theme of the gender, asserting that he treats men and women equally
in his poems → again this idea of democracy is strongly underlined because in his poem he writes “The
Female equally with the Male I sing”; the poet believes that women are as sacred as men, because despite
their physical differences, they are all human. The idea of democracy can also be glimpsed when Whitman
writes the word “En-masse”, that gives the idea of extension and inclusion and since it's a French word also
represents an extension of vocabulary.
The last lines of the poem express the idea of the identity of the self, a self that has an American identity full
of vitality, strength, health and impulse towards extension and continuous increase (“Of Life immense in
passion, pulse and power”. It's important to clarify that Whitman isn't talking on a political level, but rather
on a moral one explaining that it's the human being's idea of vitality that leads to the development of the
United States (here the word “cheerful” isn't very poetic but represents the poet's optimistic idea).
To Foreign Lands → whereas in the first inscription Whitman was only speaking with America, here he's
addressing to the entire world. The question that here the poet tries to answer to is “What is America like?”:
to answer this question, the poet makes a peculiar use of adjectives by using the word “athletic” → it's
known that Whitman often uses adjectives referring to the body to explain abstract concepts, such as the
concept of democracy here, but he also wants to underline the importance of the body and of staying health.
Whitman here connects the athleticism of the body with the country of the USA, explaining that this country
is a nation under a progress of huge and fast development, always “in motion” and it's exactly for this reason
that this country fully embodies the concept of being athletic.
In the last lines Whitman gives a lot of importance to the reader and by reading them it's evident how a
personal relationship between the reader and the author is established.
Poets to come → in this poem addresses specifically to the poets of the future, clearly stating that the
meaning and the value of his poetry will be understood only in the future; the feeling that the reader gets is
the optimism that the future world will be much better than the present, where the contemporary critics
aren't able to appreciate his poetry in terms of themes and language → the poet is clearly aware of being
ahead of time and he's saying to these future poets that it will be their job to justify and explain his poems.
At the end of the first part the reader can see this “Arouse!”, a typical romantic invitation not to hide longer
but to finally reveal yourself to justify what Whitman has created: this invitation will be eventually be
accepted and the poet will be looked up to as a forefather for some poets.
The end of this poem focuses again on the idea that a work of art is independent from the author's life →
future generations will use his poems in an unforeseen way to him, maybe they will make his poetry more
varied going down a path unknown to him, but the poet doesn't consider this in a negative way.
Thou reader → the last section focuses on the person who's holding and reading the book in this precise
moment; the poet addresses his poems to the reader and therefore to everybody. The reader is considered
as the last element of this action of addressing his poetry to an audience, so he starts from a specific reader
and then up to a wider audience → here the poet mainly introduces the idea that the book is forever and
that the reader is an active element in this process, because he contributes to the meaning and to the
creation of the book together with the poet.
The last part reveals the poet's willingness to identify with the reader and create a some sort of connection
with him: this lets the reader understand that Whitman hasn't started writing poems just for the sake of
writing, rather he wanted an audience to read and think about his poems, where he deals with universal
poems.
Song of Myself → it belongs to the last edition of Leaves of Grass (1891) and it's one of the most famous
poems that Whitman wrote: initially it didn't have any title, but then after giving various names, the author's
final decision was to name it “Song of Myself”, a long poem divided in sections where the poet presents a
celebration of the human self.
Section 1 → from the beginning there's a strong “I” of the poet, which the reader could find self-
congratulatory and quite arrogant, but then he says “For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to
you”, that makes us understand the real intention of the poem: it won't specifically be about Whitman as
individual, but about all human beings, so that initial “I” that announced the poet's self-celebration, is at the
same time universalized. This idea of “singing of everyone” is specially underlined when he talks about his
parents and his parents having parents and so on, showing the repeated nature of existence and saying that
he has an experience shared even with ancestors he has never known.
Then the image of the grass is introduced (“observing a spear of grass”) → Whitman chose this new natural
element that's mild, almost insignificant and not the sublime element that's generally chosen by Romantic
poets; the grass represents Whitman's love for nature, even in its humblest forms. The grass appears to be
like a “single atom” that can rise and spread everywhere in the world, so each leaf becomes a symbol of
something universal → it's evident how here grass is described as a symbol of democracy, because all leaves
are the same and each of them has its own identity.
Then Whitman goes on by introducing himself: he firstly underlines his deep American roots by saying that
he was born in a family that had been living in the American soil for several generations and then proclaims
his age, underlining body elements and focusing on the idea of health, asserting that he has a quite good
health, but he also tells the reader that he has the intention of keeping on writing until his death.
In the first lines of the last stanza Whitman states that books and traditions of the past aren't forgotten,
rather they are just “frozen” for a while, whereas in the last lines he turns to something much more essential,
that is the celebration of the unpredictable, raw and limitless form of nature, starting from the leaves of
grass.
Section 2 → the second section presents one of Whitman's specialties: lists, elements that define his poetic
style. A list requires the naming of a whole set of things to which the poet belongs and with which he wants
to be in contact with (the technical term for these lists in a poetry context is “catalogue”).
An important element of this section is that its structure's based on senses: as he names this long catalogue,
he gives huge importance to the senses (so also to the body) and celebrates one of the smells that's usually
forgotten, that is the smell. Peculiar is that Whitman doesn't only take into account good smells such as
perfumes and fragrances, but also bad smells like intoxications.
Section 3 → here this key element of the poem is reintroduced, that is the grass; Whitman introduces the
presence of a child (romantic element, someone very close to the divine because he can get the meaning of
things through imagination before experiencing them) who asks a meaningful question: “What is the grass?”.
It's a very hard question to answer to for the poet, because even though the grass is a simple element, it
can't be easily defined since it's a symbol for relevant matters like democracy; so by asking this is like asking
“What is the sense of human life and everything?”.
The poet is unable to give a precise definition, so puzzled, tries to guess and arrives to define to grass as the
“flag of my disposition” (symbol of his poetry) and the “handkerchief of the Lord” (something divine), but
then adds “Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation” → here the poet
introduces a parallelism between the child as human being and the grass as the child of nature and
vegetation. However, apart from these two definitions, Whitman uses other terms:
“A uniform hieroglyphic” → this means that it's difficult to understand; although there's this idea
that grass is humble and simple, nothing in nature is ever univocal: nature appears to be ambiguous,
because it can express several symbols and human beings need to welcome and accomodate these
different perspectives arising from the leaves of grass and the book.
Summing up, in the poet's poetry the grass is a very complex element and stands for democracy,
understandable by a quote in this section where Whitman puts black and white people on the same
level, sharing this idea that there aren't differences between social, political and ethnical level. In the
quote Whitman also makes use of words deriving from the native language such as “Tuckahoe”, a
plant that was eaten by natives in Virginia → by making use of this word, Whitman is recognizing
also the native roots of the USA.
“Hair of the graves” → another term for grass. Here the poet wants to refer to those American
graveyards where grass seems to sprout from the buried bodies' graves, so here in the element of
grass the two opposites meet (life and death).
In this way, Whitman celebrates life and death at the same time, because from the death of buried
bodies life comes out → the element of grass shows that death doesn't exist, because if grass is
what's originated from death, death can't exist because the grass is a symbol of life (Whitman's
concept of the cycle of life and death never actually breaks up but continues to develop”.
In the final part of this section, there's a positive connotation of grass through the cycle of life and death,
because death sees the moment when life (grass) first appear: Whitman leaves us with an invitation, that is to
consider death as a perennial cycle of life and death.
To sum up this section, we could say that the element of grass is a multilayered and complex symbol
standing for humanity, god, democracy, nature, the symbol of Whitman's poetry and an unending perennial
cycle of life and death.
Section 10 → here there are various situations that Whitman describes, and when he describes them it's like
he's taking pictures of the experiences on the American soil. The images that he presents throughout the
tenth section are:
He creates the image of the piooner (the Yankee) moving towards the American Western frontier,
describing his feeling of loneliness in the middle of American nature: wandering alone in the
American wilderness is one of the Romantic themes.
The second picture connects with the first, because as he's wandering the American Western frontier,
he witnesses the marriage of a native girl with an American white man (the trapper): at the sight of
this situation Whitman starts thinking of an ideal world where ethnical discriminations are overcome
and a peaceful meeting takes place.
The last picture introduced by Whitman is the one of the run-away, a fugitive slave; here the poet
describes the slave's body as suffering and hurt due to this situation. The last line of the section
represents a moment of the year 1855, when the Fugitive Act was active → Whitman had decided to
let the slave sit at his table, since the poet saw the slave as someone who's not a source of violence.
Section 16 → here Whitman introduces his idea of inclusion and the identification with America and its
opposites; he makes use of a list as a narrative device to include all the experiences: no one is excluded and
there's no discrimination in terms of age, sex or color (social or ethnical groups) → his list mainly allows
Whitman to express more his idea of inclusion.
There's this idea that the USA are formed by many different nations, but the poet isn't interested in their
power or extension, instead he claims that all nations have a dignity and we must be happy to welcome
them, no matter their extension or power.
In the last part of the section Whitman asserts that he learns from people who are simple whereas teaches to
well-educated people.
Section 17 → Whitman here appears as humble and states that there isn't originality in what he writes: he's
not trying to be original in themes, but in his celebration of elements and topics found in his poetry.
Summing up, he just tries to be universal, idea represented by the element of grass, which is universal and
democratic, something common to everybody and linked with life, possible thanks to the presence of three
important elements: land, water and air (essential for life on Earth).
