October, 2009:

I will now own up to how profoundly my reading of the 1855 “Song of Myself” freaked me out.

            I doubt that I’m alone in that reaction.  The 1891-92 “Death-Bed” edition of Leaves of Grass seems to easily surpass other versions in terms of current availability.  Together with the fact that the “Death-Bed” contains the last revisions Whitman was able to effect before his death, the “Death-Bed’s” prevailing presence has imparted to the text, at least to me, something of the character of an immutable literary monument.  Given the compact recognizability of the opening of “Song of Myself,” this poem evinces this quality even more pronouncedly, making it rather like Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in terms of its succinct iconicity.  Every ounce of that document’s language rings with a kind of engraved familiarity, a sense that the combined sounds—in their exact rhythmic sequence—deepen the meaning of the words themselves.  We feel ever more strongly that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” precisely because that sentence, and the semi-musical feeling of reciting it, will never perish from our American collective memory.  That is the text; how could there be any other?

            Imagine, then, that you read an earlier draft of Lincoln’s speech that opened with the phrase “Eighty-seven years ago.”  Only so dramatic a change can illustrate how jarred I was when reading the first stanza of the 1855 “Song of Myself”:

 I celebrate myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. (27)

 Of course, the first line reads “I celebrate myself, and sing myself” in the 1891-92 Leaves (though the online Walt Whitman Archive reveals that this opening first appeared in the 1881 edition).  Even if I assume incorrectly that the “Death-Bed” edition has long reigned as the form most widely circulated and readily available, I have at least Whitman’s own assertion, in the notice that opens the 1891 version, that he “prefer[s] and recommend[s] this present one, complete, for future printing, if there should be any” (148).  If Whitman thereby guaranteed that this would stand as the “authoritative” Leaves, as Amanda Gailey notes in her “Publishing History” of the collection, my own experience with the “Song’s” first stanza has ratified this definitiveness.

            Why should it matter, though, that this final form of the poem’s opening stands so strongly in my memory, or my country’s?  I think the answer lies in the way in which the short line “I celebrate myself” forces me to confront my internal construction of Whitman as a “literary personality,” a figure almost deified in our willingness to use certain texts, like the opening of the “Song,” as talismans testifying to his greatness.  Even though we have traveled to D.C. and faced the sheer material proof that Whitman lived, wore glasses, had hair, etc. (I really wish, perversely enough, that those strands had come right out of his armpit), my earlier astonishment at seeing “I celebrate myself” in isolation, and my relief at now seeing it “completed” by its partner phrase, make me realize how strongly the “Great American” legacy of Whitman has taken hold of me.  Can I ever really “love the man personally”—or, like Whitman’s from-afar infatuation with Lincoln, do I just have to wish I could?

Not just a monument of words

(Image from http://www.mallowandgogo.com/gallery/slideshow.php?set_albumName=album01)

What lurks behind editing?

We know now a great deal about his personal life through his letters, Memoranda, information given to us by our pals Reynolds, Morris, and Erkkila, but there still remains a void. Whitman, containing multitudes, is not easily pieced together. His poetry, though we can only speculate, reveals some thing deeper than biographical information. Through the evolution of his poems, we see the evolution of the man himself– an edited poem flows from an edited mind. Song of Myself, even within its title, serves as Whitman’s mirror, and the changes that occur within the poem over 36 years reveal much about the mindset of our beloved poet not long before his death. What was even more revealing to me, however, were not the things that changed over three decades, but what stayed the same.

Within the first stanza of the 1891 version of Song of Myself, Whitman immediately makes an edit, reminding the reader that this is a different poem from a different man:

“My tongue, every atom of blood, form’d from this soil, this air,

Born here of parents born here of parents the same, and their parents the same,

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,

Hoping to cease not till death” (188).

Whitman was, of course, not thirty-seven years old when he made this revision. Instead he reminds us of from where and who the poem originates; Song of Myself is birthed from vitality, from youth, and not from the current state of the writer at the time (nearing death). With the following line, Whitman links his thirty-seven year old self with his current self, knowing that he has achieved the “hope” of his younger self. With this, Whitman re-writes Song of Myself reflectively, and we read it reflectively. Whitman desires and challenges the reader to see the meaning behind his editing.

We have discussed at length the concept of “en masse” and its significance to Whitman, i.e. his philosophy of the American identity, unity through diversity, and comradeship, and it’s no surprise that “en masse” has become capitalized (literally) in Whitman’s writing after 36 years of theorizing it. Along with the capitalization, Whitman describes “En-Masse” as, “without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all, / that mystic baffling wonder along completes all” (210); whereas in 1855, he defines “en-masse” as, “a word of the faith that never balks,/ One time as good as another time…. here or henceforth it is all the same to me” (49). His attitude towards “En-Masse” shifts from a favorable, yet semi-apathetic one, to something he exaggerates passionately about. Whitman couples “En-Masse” with a thought on reality. In 1855 he submits a “word of reality” (49), and in 1891 he “accepts Reality and dare not question it” (210).  Reality, capitalized like En-Masse, has become a force worth recognition, something he must  submit to; for Whitman to set aside something (anything!) that he will not question, reveals the reverence he has developed for Reality. We, of course, know the reality that Whitman will meet one year later.

Despite the fact that Whitman is ailing in 1891 and nearing death, he maintains his optimistic, almost flippant, remarks about death. The 1891 SOM asserts, just as the 1855 version, that life springs from death, that death is nothing to fear: “And as to you death, and you bitter hug of mortality… it is idle to try to alarm me” (85 and 245). The only difference within these lines about death is that in 1891 “death” is capitalized, as are “corpse” and “life.” So though Whitman maintains his same theory about life and death, but in 1891he pays more respect to their significance and presence. Some lines, however, do not change at all, not even in syntax or punctuation. Most notable of the unchanged lines are the very last 8 lines of the poem. At age 37 and at age 73, Whitman chooses to end his poem with the same enigmatic, enduring words. No matter his age, we will find him under our boot-soles.

Quick post about an observation that just occurred to me. I was just reading the Preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass and I stumbled across these little nuggets:

“The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.”

and:

“Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations.”

and:

‘Here is action united from strings necessarily blind to particulars and details magnificently moving in vast masses.”

and:

“Here are the roughs and beards and space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves.”

and:

“Here the performance disdaining the trivial unapproached in the tremendous audacity of its crowds and groupings and the push of its perspective spreads with crampless and flowing breadth and showers its prolific and splendid extravagance.”

After reading through these “heres”, I couldn’t shake this feeling that I had read this some where else. Check out this stanza from “By Blue Ontario’s Shore”(1856, 1881):

“These states are the amplest poem,

Here is not merely a nation but a teeming Nation of nations,

Here the doings of men correspond with the broadest doings of the day and night,

Here is what moves in magnificent masses careless of particulars,

Here are the roughs, beards, friendliness, combativeness, the soul loves,

Here the flowing trains, here the crowds, equality, diversity, the soul loves.”

The poem pulls, almost verbatim, from the preface. Can someone plagiarize them self? Fanny Fern does advise in her article “Borrowed Light” to find a great writer and copy their writings as closely as possible, perhaps Whitman is just followed her advice and selected himself as a great writer. What do you guys make of this? Any more examples of Walt’s “recycled” words?