Audrey Sande

From 1850s

This is Audrey's research page for 'Leaves of Grass', by: Walt Whitman.

[edit] Information on 'Leaves of Grass' that I Found

The introductory note in the beginning of the book is excerpted from The American Spirit in Literature: A Chronicle of Great Interpreters; by: Bliss Perry. This excerpt has some great insight on how Whitman was reviewed and how Leaves of Grass was reviewed. There are also references to other reviews on Whitman that give a good jumping off point. Whitman set the type himself for Leaves of Grass and printed about 800 copies. Most of America did not buy or understand his book and were thrown by the overt sexuality of the poems. "Like many mystics, he was hypnotized by external phenomena, and often fails to communicate to his reader the trancelike emotion which he himself experienced. This imperfect transfusion of his material is a far more significant defect in Whitman's poetry than the relatively few passages of unashamed sexuality which shocked the American public in 1855." This book is to represent the unity of the universe based on the experience of love. He perceived that humanity has one heart and should have one will.

"Nearly everyone agrees that Walt Whitman is America's greatest poet." "He is elusive, both as man and poet"

One thing about Whitman is that he gives very little actual information about himself, one can speculate but never really know him as the man he is. He describes 'Leaves of Grass' as an autobiography "an attempt from first to last, to put a person, a human being (myself, in the latter half of the nineteenth century in America) freely, fully and truly on record." He truly projects a person through his poetry who is intellectual and unorthodox. His neurotic side is "covert, bisexual, quirky, elusive, power-seeking, bohemian, libidinous, and indolent." He was maladjusted for his time in America.

Some critics view his "singing" to be a celebration of America's material success. He celebrates the democratic man.

He had a lifelong attachment to his mother who was illiterate herself, it is speculated that because of this relationship he never successfully established his sexuality. This shows in his bisexual behavior that leaned on the side on homosexuality.

Whitman wrote for newspapers, taught school, was the editor for the Brooklyn Eagle, worked for the New Orleans newspaper the 'Crescent', and wrote and printed 'Leaves of Grass' himself.

Few read his book when it was first published and it did not receive many favorable reviews, among them 1 or 2 Whitman wrote himself. Whitman found his earliest fans in Europe, not America. When he did build a reputation in America he was more of a public figure, a prophet more than a poet. His readers felt his mindless celebration of democracy was surprised by his use of satire. His outright use of sexual content was reviewed as shocking for his time. I think another frustration for Whitman's readers is the fact that his work is difficult to read and he was hard to understand as a person.

Whitman felt that the in the postwar period that honesty and purposefulness were lost from life. He worried about chaos and fragmentation of American life and that people needed more identity. His optimism of the future with his lack of historical view of things did not go over well with 20th century realism. He wanted moral and spiritual regeneration in America. He wanted people to exercise offices of moral and spiritual leadership that were once used for organized religion. Whitman saw himself as a philosopher and priest, in 'Leaves of Grass' he parallels the poet and priest often.

His poems have a musical structure and a Biblical influence, he uses repetition and parallelism by restating lines which builds momentum in his poems. This work was one that was very modern for his time, Whitman showed that poetry can be more than just proper. He approached moral questions on the assumption that moral values do not derive from society but from the individual.

"His inner oppositions, his ambiguities, his wit, like his democratic faith, his optimism, and his belief in the self, are native to the man as they are to America. For these reasons one cherishes Walt Whitman-and takes him to be in a real sense 'the spokesman for the tendencies of his country.'"

"Do I contradict myself? Very well then...I contradict myself" this quote of Whitman's is one that is most famous and has been taken least seriously. Whitman was willing to approve and sponsor the expanding society in America, while he still had serious reservations about the competitive origins of the exciting energy. He solved this conflict by "desocializing and naturalizing this energy" in his poetry, this helped him minimize the things that he found disturbing.

Whitman used nature in his poetry to express the importance for one to focus on the internal as well as the external environment around them. "Many Transcendentalists would certainly have agreed that man's intense preoccupation with external nature arises from his concern with his own essential or ultimate nature."

Bibliography

The Lunar Light of Whitman's Poetry. M. Wynn Thomas. Harvard University Press. 1987.

Walt Whitman. James E. Miller, Jr. Twayne Publishers. 1962.

American Writers Volume 4. Editor in Chief: Leonard Unger. Charles Scribner's Sons, N.Y. 1974.

Leaves of Grass: The Original 1855 Edition. Walt Whitman. Dover Publications, Inc. Mineola, N.Y. 2007.

The American Spirit in Literature: A Chronicle of Great Interpreters. Bliss Perry. 1918.