Walt Whitman writes with a passion in "Leaves of Grass", and much more than this, I feel his poetry is very progressive for America considering the timeframe is the 1850's and one could say that this poetry is somewhat risqué for the time.
The poem begins with Whitman proclaiming his life as a thing of beauty. The first line of the poem shows this proclamation by stating, "I celebrate myself…I Breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it" (Song of Myself 1-7). This is interesting because historically speaking, this era was not a time where men were particularly identified as being in touch with this dimension of their character. Instead, the seer of this poem is somewhat of the "oddball" because watches other Americans conform to normalities of society work and marry, but this spectator is far different from them. This story teller is not only quirky, but also risqué and one could even say progressive for the times. There is a passage in which the teller talks of waiting in the nude for a lover, "Undressing, bathed, laughing with the waters, and saw the sun rise…my lover was coming" (Live Oak). This I feel represents the risks that Whitman takes a writer because whether this passage has a heterosexual or homosexual connotation to it, this approach is quite self indulgent and new for the times.
Does anyone else feel as though when reading through Whitman that he takes risks that others may have not? Or better yet, how does anyone else feel about his indulgence that is seen throughout the poem?
I think the indulgence Whitman basks in is new in its individuality. From my knowledge, previous English and American cultures' literary work is more suited toward the collective social body. For example, the Mayflower Compact had a more collectivist approach than Leaves of Grass. In earlier works like these, indulgence is toward one's supposedly elevated cultural status, like that of the pilgrims, which views itself as above the evils of the Church of England. However, Whitman promotes a more raw, bare-bones approach to living. He is a satisfied individual, differing greatly from the status quo of civilized society. However, he is ultimately indulging in a greater collective spirit than that of a culture; that of nature. Nature spans everything - by connecting himself to nature at a whole, he rejects the false dichotomy set between the individual and the outside world. So, paradoxically, he indulges himself both in individuality and in connection to the entire cosmos. I feel that he runs the risk of being Anti-American by setting himself against mainstream society; yet he is completely American in his taste for personal liberty and transcendence of culture.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with you that he takes risks throughout "Leaves of Grass". One thing I noticed throughout the poem that I want to point out though was that in the beginning, he was writing with a great passion. His tone was elated, and he even blatantly says that he is satisfied.In the beginning, he is obviously indulging in nature. However, as the poem went on Whitman still writes about nature, but in a less elated tone. One example I can give of this is on page 2188 line 1, when he starts writing about corpses. Corpses are definitely not the happiest subjects to write about. However, when he comments on corpses, Whitman does a funny thing. He starts stating how they are used as manure, and one sentence later, comments on how much he loves to smell white roses. Whitman connects corpses, a dark subject, to the smell of white roses, a beautiful subject. I really like that technique, and he definitely has used it throughout his whole poem. By doing this, I believe he is trying to show just how much life, death, and nature really connect, which is one of the points that Matthew brought up. Reading "Leaves of Grass", it is obvious how passionate Whitman is about nature, and I think that his ability to connect it to everything that life had to offer back then is pretty great
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