Lecture note on a number of poems by Walt Whitman WHITMAN AND THE DIVINE: http://www.compleatheretic.com/pubs/literary/eng358response.html http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2002/11/17 http://www.bartleby.com/142/243.html

1. How so “The Lymph of Life is Man”
 From Romantics to the 1960s  confessional tone in poetry evolved to the
expression of the deepest feelings of the human soul.
 Humanity’s relationship with the world has changed  a new poetic voice
 The relationship with the divinity  unable to revive the world, and to
understand & provide salvation – thus the sacral function becomes useless 
disappointment
 Individual is one’s own centre  the writer is the deity.
 creates a work of art that needs to be listened to and must echo in the mind of
the reader.
 The medium is a bridge of communication with the readers  arousing in the
receiver similar feelings s/he has experienced in real life
 the latter willingly entering the game of manipulation of reality to be able to
reproduce and semantically interpret with the same emotive depth of the
experience described (“ …willing suspension of disbelief.” – Coleridge)

2. How so “The Lymph of Life is Man”
Nature … witness to suffering and loss.
[Whitman]imagines a soldier wounded in battle crawling
into the woods to die, his body missed by the burial
squads that came by several weeks later during a truce.
the soldier “crumbles into mother earth, unburied and
unknown.”
He writes: “…the infinite dead—the land entire saturated,
perfumed with their impalpable ashes’ exhalation in
Nature’s chemistry distill’d, and shall be so forever, in
every future grain of wheat and ear of corn, and every
flower that grows and every breath we draw…” (cit.35)

3. How so “The Lymph of Life is Man”
Not uncommon to have soldiers’ remains unburied  from a natural event to
something transcendental-mystical(physical) at the same time.
Specimen Days and later Civil War poems  the bodies of unknown soldiers
become the compost of the nation—their spirits present in every blade of grass,
every sheave of wheat and every flower.
LINK
confessional autobiographical work
evolution towards a new poetic mode  in its centre the
most intimate thoughts of the poet and claims them to
pertain to his self and thrust them “upon” the reader 
imposed divulging – almost violent confession  Sylvia Plath, Amy Lowell.
From Romantics to the 60s  confessional tone in poetry has
evolved towards the expression of the deepest feelings of the human
soul.

4. Walt
Whitman
1819 – 1892
“America’s Poet, … he is America”
Ezra Pound

5. Whitman
• Most influential & innovative of American poets
• Personally sees effects of slavery, slave markets, & common
every day tragedies in the life of individuals
• First-hand experience with untamed nature also appear in his
works
• Transcendentalist poet (influenced by R. Waldo Emerson and
E.A.Poe’s technical efficiency) moving toward Realist view of
expressive means  prose
• explores the relationship between man and nature as well as the
value of the mind and spirit
• Never abandoned the importance given to common people as
subject matter

6. • Early work as a journalist – in Long Island (The Patriot)
- Involved in opposing slavery & other socio-political
issues
• One prose work – Franklin Evans, 1842 –
Temperance novel (aka – The Inebriate)
a journey of a young man living and learning
through his mistakes – life teaches.
• The Leaves of Grass – LINK
(Foglie d’Erba) 1855 – most famous collection –
 Song of Myself – Oh Captain, My Captain
(death of Abraham Lincoln)
• Specimen Days – LINK –

7. Whitman  Transcendentalist poetry
Whitman refers to his poetry as the mean by which he was able to “find himself ”
“I was simmering, simmering; Emerson brought me to a boil.”
LINK
Characteristics of transcendental thought and practice
“ Song of Myself ”  vision of the self and its relationship to
the universe ___ confessional reflection on life and humanity
“ Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking ”  meditation on the
phases of the poet’s life ___  flow of the ocean symbolizes
renewal and the cycles of life, death, and rebirth
“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd ”  uses nature as
symbol ___ visual images represent rather than mean …
Lilac, great star.. that has "droop'd in the western sky, sea of faces
and the unbared heads, “dark mother … strong deliveress”
To a Locomotive in Winter

8. Leaves of Grass, 1855
12 meditative confessional poems
o Song of Myself
o I Sing the Body Electric
• Whitman envisioned a unified America at a
time when it was being divided by civil war,
• an America able to harmonize differences
through the power of language and poetry.
• Poetry  a powerful force for balancing the
needs of individuals and society.
• Whitman claimed that language could unify
the self, culture, and Natural Law through the
aesthetic experience

9. Leaves of Grass
Song of Myself 23, 16
[23]
Endless unfolding of words of ages!
And mine a word of the modern . . . a word En Masse.
A word of the faith that never balks,
One time as good as another time . . . here or hencefoward it is all the same to
me. I accept Time absolutely.
. . . materialism first and last imbueing.
Hurrah for positive science! Long live exact demonstration!
Fetch stonecrop and mix it with cedar and branches of lilac;
This is the lexicographer or chemist . . . this made a grammar of the old
cartouches,
These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas,
This is the geologist and this works with the scalpel, and this is a mathematician
Gentlemen I receive you, and attach and clasp hands with you,
The facts are useful, . . . And yet they are not my dwelling . . .
I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling.
.

10. Leaves of Grass
Less the reminder of property told my words,
…..
And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men and women fully
equipt,
And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives and them that plot and conspire.
Song of Myself
[24]
Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos,
Disorderly fleshy and sensual . . . . eating drinking and breeding,
No sentimentalist . . . . no stander above men and women or apart from them . . . no
more modest than immodest.
Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!
Whoever degrades another degrades me . . . . and whatever is done or said returns
at last to me,
And whatever I do or say I also return.
Through me the afflatus surging and surging . . . . through me the current and index.
I speak the password primeval . . . . I give the sign of democracy;
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of
on the same terms.

11. Leaves of Grass
Through me many long dumb voices,
Voices of the interminable generations of slaves,
Voices of prostitutes and of deformed persons,
Voices of the diseased and despairing, and of thieves and dwarfs,
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars -- and of wombs, and of the fatherstuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
Of the trivial and flat and foolish and despised,
Of fog in the air and beetles rolling balls of dung.
Through me forbidden voices,
Voices of sexes and lusts . . . . voices veiled, and I remove the veil,
Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigured.
I do not press my finger across my mouth,
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.
I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing hearing and feeling are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from;
The scent of these arm-pits is aroma finer than prayer,
This head is more than churches or bibles or creeds. … LINK

12. Language
• Seemingly mystical
• Foreign words
• Terminology from various fields  anatomy,
astronomy, military, nautical, botany – often refers to
national flora and fauna as emblematic of the entire
• Strong sound – sense association

13. Diction
• Free verse – no meter division  no rhyme
• Proposes same images with different medium
• Use of symbols, symbolic phrases
• Initial repetition in lines  anaphora
• Enjambment – sentence or thought runs over through
to the next line - epanaphora  creating a loop
• Contrast
• Symbolism
• Pounding repetition  to emphasize a point

14. Main Ideas
• power of love, brotherhood, and comradeship
• faith in democracy and equality
• Belief in regenerative powers of nature
• Nature as a teacher
• Equivalence of body and soul and the exaltation of
the body and sexuality
LINK