Walt Whitman

Transcription

1 Walt Whitman

2 Marylin Monroe reading Leaves of Grass (ca. 1952)

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4 Whitman between 1865 and 1867

5 SOME FACTS Whitman was born in West Hills on Long Island on May 31 st, He came from a working class family. his father was a carpenter and a farmer The second son of Walter Whitman Senior and Louisa Van Velsor. The family consisted of 9 children In the 1820s and 1830s the family lived in Brooklyn and Long Island Whitman s formal education ended when he turned ten. Whitman was SELF-EDUCATED (circulating libraries, theatres, opera) and an avid reader SELF-TAUGHT= SELF-MADE : America s new Adam

6 A Jack-of-all trades Initially an office boy, at 12 Whitman learned the PRINTER s trade: he spent time in printing shops and binderies. He worked as a printer and compositor in Brooklyn and N.Y. City he was forced to give up the profession when he was 17 He moved back home (rural Long Island) and worked as a SCHOOL TEACHER in the Long Island area for five years Then an itinerant JOURNALIST and newspaper EDITOR (see for example his New Orleans sojourn)

7 The 1850s These years marked a turning point in Whitman s life: a dramatic change in his RACIAL ATTITUDES [New Orleans sojourn] From his notebooks: I am the poet of the body And I am the poet of the soul I go with the slaves of the earth equally with the masters And I will stand between the masters and the slaves, entering into both so that both shall understand me alike

8 Leaves of Grass (1855)

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10 Fern Leaves from Fanny s Portfolio, Fanny Fern

11 It is a book whose cover insists on an organic understanding of literature, with words rooted in nature, with language as abundant as grass Ed Folsom, Whitman Making Books/Books Making Whitman: A Catalog and Commentary

12 Leaves the title: a pun Printed in Brooklyn by Andrew Rome. About 800 copies The book included 12 untitled poems written in the early 1850s Whitman designed the cover, the binding and the pages L. of G. went through 6 different editions! Yet America is a poem in our eyes (Emerson, The Poet ) The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem (Whitman, L. of G.)

13 alive It grows everywhere GRASS fertile Rooted in the soil

14 The Poet (1844) Emerson The poet is the sayer, the namer and represents beauty Our log-rolling, our stumps and their politics, our fisheries, our Negroes, and Indians, our boasts, and our repudiations, the wrath of rogues, and the pusillanimity of honest men, the Northern trade, the southern planting, the Western clearing, Oregon and Texas, are yet UNSUNG

15 Leaves of Grass (1872)

16 Song of myself I celebrate myself : the main character is an I. The poet announces a new identity for himself. This American I = a poetic persona and what I assume you shall assume : an ENCOUNTER between the I and You, perceived as the Other. Thus suggesting the poem [and life/reality] is a never-ending dialogue between two agents (I and you)

17 Leaves of Grass= a life-long poem Both poetry and reality are viewed as a PROCESS constantly UNFOLDING The making of Leaves of Grass mirrors the making of America and its identity America is celebrated in all its VARIETY: the people, the land, the natural life The INDIVIDUAL as a unity of BODY and SOUL, who claims his/her right to SELF-EXPRESSION and EXPERIENCE

18 Self-Reliance (1841) R.W.Emerson To believe our own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, -- that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier.

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20 From Song of Myself You shall no longer take things at second or third hand nor look through the eyes of the dead nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, you shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself

21 The mirror carried through the street, ready to render an image of every created thing Emerson The poet In Song of Myself the EYE watches & wonders through absorption and assimilation

22 Walt Whitman, 1887 Thomas Eakins

23 The Swimming Hole, 1885 Thomas Eakins

24 Whitman s Brooklyn the blab of the pave The tires of carts and sluff of bootsoles and talk of the promenaders [ ] The clank of the shod horses on the granite floor

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26 Written in 1865 When I heard the learn d astronomer Included in By the Roadside section. [the poet perceived as an observer of life] The poem consists of a SINGLE stanza of 8 lines Free verse But there is a rhythm/pattern [repetition of words and sounds]

27 Juxtaposition The scholar, a learn d astronomer Scientific perspective Proofs and figures; charts and diagrams Add, divide and measure The speaker, an individual Personal/poetic/imagin ative perspective Rising and gliding out; wandering off; looking up By MYSELF