Chapter 15 Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman revolutionized American poetry. Responding to Emerson’s call in The Poet(1842) for an American bard who would address all “the facts of the animal economy, sex, nutriment, gestation, birth,” he put the living, breathing, sexual body at the center of much of his poetry, challenging conventions of the day. Responding also to Emerson’s call for a “metremaking argument” rather than mere meters, he rejected traditions of poetic scansion and elevated diction, improvising the form that has come to be known as free verse, while adopting a wide-ranging vocabulary opening new possibilities for poetic expression. A Poet of democracy, Whitman celebrated the mystical, divine potential of the individual; a poet of the urban, he wrote about the sights, sounds, and energy of the modern metropolis. In his 1855 preface to Leaves of Grass, he declared that “the proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it”.
Critical Perspectives
1.New Historicism
Mark Edmundson, in “Walt Whitman’s Guide to a Thriving Democracy”, examines the contributions of 19th-century American poet Walt Whitman to the U.S. national identity and democracy. Topics covered include Whitman’s relationship with poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, Whitman’s work of poetry Song of Myself, and Whitman’s religious beliefs.[1]
Vanessa Steinroetter, in “Walt Whitman in the Early Kansas Press”, talks about American poet, essayist, and journalist Walt Whitman dealing with the history of the press in Kansas and his views on the American democracy. Topics include his association with former President Abraham Lincoln, literary works on U.S. politics and national identity, and his role in the Weekly Kansas Chief founded by Solomon Miller.[2]
Timothy Robbins, in “Emma Goldman Reading Walt Whitman: Aesthetics, Agitation, and the Anarchist Ideal”, focuses on the aesthetics, agitation and anarchist ideal of the literary works of Walt Whitman. It mentions that the literary works of Whitman embodies antiwar and the incarnation of the country’s anarchist menace. It adds that the political readings of Whitman’s work signifies the division between the political life of the country and literary art.[3]
Scott Holland, in “The Poet, Theopoetics, and Theopolitics”, explores the influence of the theopoetics of philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson on poet Walt Whitman and Transcendentalist author Moncure Daniel Conway. It reflects on the radicalism of Whitman and the religious aspects of the book Leaves of Grass which explore the themes of body and soul. Other topics include the task of self-creation, abolitionism, and the essay Circles.[4]
Ryan J. Davidson, in “Transatlantic Intersections: The Role of Ralph Waldo Emerson in the Dissemination of Blakean Thought into the Poetry of Walt Whitman”, argues that Whitman quoted no one in his poetry, at least not directly, as Matt Miller convincingly argues in Collage of Myself. However, Whitman was not above making use of the work of other writers in his poetry. It is through Whitman’s early reading in conjunction with his collage approach to composition that he came to create Leaves of Grass as something which appears wholly original, but which resonates with so many echoes. It is often argued that Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most important influences on Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. The extent and significance of Emerson’s influence has been a subject of inquiry since the advent of Whitman scholarship. This text will focus on Emerson’s essays and lectures as the main influences on Whitman which can be read as providing a mediating influence between Blake and Whitman.[5]
Ed Folsom and Jerome Loving, in “The Walt Whitman Controversy: A Lost Document”, discusses the relationship between American authors Mark Twain and Walt Whitman. Although people think that Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and Twain’s novels share certain characteristics, it was only during the last years of Whitman that he was occasionally referred to Twain. As a writer, Whitman once said that Twain mainly misses fire. As for his personal relationship with Twain, Whitman regarded him as friendly, but not warm. Twain confronted the hypocrisy surrounding authors by writing the article “The Walt Whitman Controversy” in 1882. But, apart from the controversy, what lingers in that hovering final fragment is Twain’s affirmation of the nobility of Whitman’s work, something he never affirmed quite so directly anywhere else.[6]
2.Canonization Study
Philippa Tudor,in “Holst, Vaughan Williams and Walt Whitman”, reflects on American poet Walt Whitman and his poem Leaves of Grass which inspired several English composers including Charles Wood and Charles Villiers Stanford. Topics discussed include composer Ralph Vaughan Williams’s musical piece “Sea Symphony”, poems selected by Wood from Whitman’s Drum Taps book collection, a table showing composer Gustav von Holst and Vaughan Williams’s Whitman compositions, and orchestral works composed by Holst.[7]
3.Psychoanalytical Criticism
David Shaddock, in “A Universe Between My Hat and Boots: Whitman’s Self as a Model for Empathic Connection”, argues that the Poems of the great American poet Walt Whitman are herein considered as a guide to psychoanalytic treatment. Whitman’s expanded sense of self is described and compared to other, modern and postmodern views. The exquisite intimacy Whitman shows to everything in the world is compared to contemporary relational perspectives. Whitman’s empathy, in which he becomes the people he is describing, is viewed as a model for psychotherapy. His view of the body as the seat of the soul is compared to contemporary views of “embodied psychoanalysis”. Whitman’s view of trauma and loss, especially as it pertained to the Civil War, is described. A case vignette of a couple in which a Whitmanesque view of an expanded view of each partners’ self guided the therapist’s response concludes the paper.[8]
Abdullah Kurraz, in “Revisiting Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself: The Poetics of Human Self and Identity”, explores the constituents of Walt Whitman’s poetic self-soul and body; its hopes, tensions, expectations and concerns. It focuses mainly on Song of Myself for it presents a web of references and implications to the poet’s fragmented self and confused identity. Whitman portrays his self as such in its human and universal context, expecting other selves to identify with his. In its psychoanalytic ground, the paper also tries to shed light on the poetic anticipation that foreshadows the current hard situations that cause a lot of shocks, fragmentation, depression, uncertainty, and disappointment. According to Whitman’s poetics, the absence of stable selves, the loss of hopes and the confusion on place and time provide a ground for exploring human desires and hopes of having stable selves and integrated and identified identities. This paper also studies the fusion between the self and identity as seen in the identification of the poet’s self with other people’s selves, in search for uniqueness, stability, and social and psychological mobility.[9]
4.Philosophical Study(https://www.daowen.com)
Luke Philip Plotica, in “Singing Oneself or Living Deliberately”, argues that the individual stands at the center of the works of Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau. Prompted to their reflections by the changing social, economic, and political conditions of nineteenth century America, they articulate two rich and distinct visions of individuality and the conditions that foster and frustrate its development. Whitman’s poetry and prose depicts a porous, malleable, internally plural self who experiences the world in largely aesthetic terms and ecstatic terms, whereas Thoreau’s writings depict a bounded, willful self who experiences the world through the mediating force of her individual ethical principles. Thus, while both valorized individuality they present competing ideals: Whitman’s was expansive and centrifugal while Thoreau’s was integral and centripetal. Furthermore, their respective accounts of democracy—the former’s laudatory, the latter’s critical—are profoundly shaped by these antecedent accounts of the individual. In this essay Luke argues that not only do these distinct visions of individuality continue to speak to us today, they stand to inform analysis of and attachment to modern democratic institutions and practices.[10]
5.Comparative Study
As mentioned in Chapter 4, Ryan J Davidson, in “A Proposal for Revaluation: Points of Contact and Sides of Likeness between William Blake and Walt Whitman”, proposes an approach to evaluate the relationship between William Blake and Walt Whitman.
【注释】
[1]Edmundson M. “Walt Whitman’s Guide to a Thriving Democracy”. Atlantic, 2019, 323(4):100-110.
[2]Steinroetter V. “Walt Whitman in the Early Kansas Press”. Kansas History, 2016, 39(3):182-193.
[3]Robbins T. “Emma Goldman Reading Walt Whitman: Aesthetics, Agitation, and the Anarchist Ideal”. Texas Studies in Literature ＆ Language, 2015, 57(1):80-105.
[4]Holland S. “The Poet, Theopoetics, and Theopolitics”. Cross Currents, 2014, 64(4):496-508.
[5]Davidson R J. “Transatlantic Intersections: The Role of Ralph Waldo Emerson in the Dissemination of Blakean Thought into the Poetry of Walt Whitman”. Hawliyat, 2016(17):33-50.
[6]Folsom E, Loving J. “The Walt Whitman Controversy: A Lost Document”. Virginia Quarterly Review, 2007, 83(2):122-127.
[7]Tudor P. “Holst, Vaughan Williams and Walt Whitman.”Musical Times, 2018, 159(1945):3-26.
[8]Shaddock D. “A Universe Between My Hat and Boots: Whitman’s Self as a Model for Empathic Connection”. Psychoanalysis: Self ＆ Context, 2019, 14(3):323-333.
[9]Kurraz A. “Revisiting Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself: The Poetics of Human Self and Identity”. An-Najah University Journal for Research, B: Humanities, 2015, 29(8):1577-1596.
[10]Plotica L P. “Singing Oneself or Living Deliberately”. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 2017, 53(4):601-621.