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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Oscar Triggs feels that Walt Whitman's “Song of Myself” is Leaves of Grass in epitome. No doubt this poem illustrates Whitman's theme and purpose—and methods of attaining them—as well as any other poem he wrote. Perhaps the poem's synoptic quality is responsible for much critical work that attempts to explain the unity of the poem. But too often the critic's analysis superimposes a unity that is not explicitly sUpported by the poem or by any of Whitman's prose explanations of it. My purpose is first to demonstrate from Whitman's notations that his “indirect expression,” for psychological and democratic reasons, calls for reciprocity between the poet and the reader in order to achieve Whitman's desired result, and second to analyze “Song of Myself” in the light of the organic and COsmic unity that a reader's reciprocity gives to the poem.
1 The Complete Prose Works of Walt Whitman, ed. Richard Maurice Bucke, Thomas B. Harned, and Horace L. Traubel (New York, 1902), vu, 113.
2 See Carl F. Strauch, “The Structure of Walt Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself’, ’’ English Jour., College ed., xxvii (Sept. 1938), 597-607; James E. Miller, Jr., “‘Song of Myself’ as Inverted Mystical Experience,” PMLA, lxx (Sept. 1955), 636-661; and David Daiches, “Walt Whitman: Impressionist Prophet” in Leaves of Grass One Hundred Years After, ed. Milton Hindus (Stanford, 1955), pp. 112-113.
3 Ed. Emory Holloway, inclusive ed. (New York, 1948), p. 489 hereafter cited as Holloway. All italics in quotations are mine unless otherwise noted.
4 In Re Walt Whitman, ed. Horace L. Traubel, Richard Maurice Bucke, and Thomas B. Harned (Philadelphia, 1893), p. 16.
5 Richard Chase In Wall Whitman Reconsidered (New York, 1955), pp. 90-98, identifies Whitman’s indirection with hieroglyphics, symbols, or implied myth—identifications that are sound but not, as I understand them, as efficaciously inclusive as Whitman’s terminology implies. Within the boundary of his threefold definition of myth, however, Chase convincingly states that what Whitman rejected in other poets was their “feudal” myths (“improper in democratic poetry”)—myths that develop between inchoate mythic feeling and abstractions.
6 The briefest of comparisons will list the following attributes in common: (1) the poem arising from a metermaking argument and not from meters; (2) the scope and inclusiveness of the American poet; (3) the identity of body and soul; (4) the omniscient man’s embracing of words and images excluded from polite conversation; (5) the idea that what we see as evil is a kind of delusion; (6) the belief that (to quote Emerson) “bare lists of words are found suggestive to an imaginative and excited mind …” For further comparisons see, e.g., Richard P. Adams, “Whitman: A Brief Revaluation,” Tulane Stud, in Eng., v (1955), 111-149, passim, but esp. p. 124.
7 The Complete Essays and other Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Brooks Atkinson (New York, 1940), p. 329.
8 For further treatment of this theory and its coincidence with Emerson, see Richard Chase, “Go-Befores and Embryons” in Leaves of Grass One Hundred Years After, pp. 52-54. For evidence that Whitman perhaps encountered this philosophic idea early in his life, see Gay Wilson Allen, The Solitary Singer: A Critical Biography of Walt Whitman (New York, 1955), p. 139.
9 Some critics have hinted at this poetic method. See, e.g., Stanley K. Coffman, Jr., ‘“Crossing Brooklyn Ferry’: A Note on the Catalogue Technique in Whitman’s Poetry,” MP, Li (May 1954), 228, 232. But Whitman’s own terminology and definitions, as studied in this paper, indicate that his poems demand more than mere response from the reader. Adams (“Whitman: A Brief Revaluation,” pp. 119-120) approaches this problem in a way related to but somewhat different from my approach. I see Whitman’s poetic method as one intended to make the reader give to the poem as much creative realization as Whitman did, rather than to make the reader originate relationships between opposites. Relationships (in my terminology, the essence of being and action) are thus affirmed by the reader rather than created by his and the poet’s co-operation. The relationships exist; Whitman’s task is to make the reader creatively realize them for himself in order to meet the poem’s demand for reciprocity. (See my discussion of Whitman’s democratic psychology below.)
10 See Jean Catel, Walt Whitman, la naissance du poète (Paris, 1929), Ch. ii, pp. 439-452—trans. Roger M. Asselineau and printed in Walt Whitman Abroad, ed. Gay Wilson Allen (Syracuse, 1955), pp. 76-84. Catel equates Whitman’s indirect expression with symbolism. My contention is that Whitman meant much more than symbolism, per se. See also Alice L. Cooke, “A Note on Whitman’s Symbolism in ‘Song of Myself,’” MLN, lxv (April 1950), 228-232; and Chase, Whitman Reconsidered, pp. 90-98.
11 All lines quoted or paraphrased from “Song of Myself” are taken from Holloway’s edition of Leaves of Grass.
12 For a very helpful discussion of the patterns and meanings of Whitman’s catalogue technique as applied to “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” see Coffman (n. 9 above), pp. 225-232.
13 For further discussion of form and life—or “matter and soul”-as alternate speakers in “Song of Myself,” see the treatment, somewhat different from mine, in Allen, The Solitary Singer, pp. 157, 160-164. See also the mention of feminine and masculine “voices” by Chase, “Go-Befores and Embryons,” p. 52, and Whitman Reconsidered, p. 50.
14 American Renaissance (New York, 1941), pp. 517-532, esp. p. 532. On pp. 575 ff. Matthiessen, it may be noted here, writes of Whitman’s indirection, but he tends to identify it with opera and Whitman’s symbol of the sea and its movements.
15 For an interpretation of the psychic experience of Sect. 5 as a democratic conception—a conception that can coincide with the “democratic” reciprocity discussed here—see Clarence Gohdes, “A Comment on Section 5 of Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself,’ ” MLN, lxix (Dec. 1954), 583-586.
16 I wish to express my thanks to Professor Richard P. Adams for his assistance in the preparation of this paper.