Whitman ,Walt:
"Song of Myself"
(not used as a
subtitle until 1881 edition, Crowley xxxii)
Malcolm Crowley's take on Leaves of Grass
"the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is."
xiv
Philosophical and religious themes
written in a single state of illumination
2- 3 moments of ecstasy, then presented dramatically, as heroic new convictions
reflected in successive unfolding states of mind
the representative American workingman
Cowley, p. xv
curious, sensory & boastful (vernacular American idiom)
a vision of the potentialities latent in every American
a sacredness of vision counterpoised with self deprecating humor
"no structure properly speaking,"
"especially weak in its transitions from one theme to another."
xv
52[1] numbered paragraphs or chants
xvi
written in the spirit of symbolists or surrealists--[<me>neither romantic or realistic]
if there is a structure it is psychological and musical -- not geometrical
musical in the sense of a rhapsody or a tone poem, not a symphony
"He preferred to let one image suggest another image, which in turn, suggests a new statement of mood or doctrine."
"oneiric[2] elements" -- "as in a waking dream...transitions seem instinctively right"
xvi-xvii
"Some transitions are gradual, and in such cases it is hard to determine the exact line that ends one sequence and starts another."
"The essential point is that the parts, however defined [9 or 7 is irrelevant], follow one another in irreversible order, like the beginning, middle and end of any good narrative."
"The grass as symbolizing the miracle of common things."
Sequences Chants content lines
or pages print 1st
ed. on
line
First 1-4 the singer 1-72 25 13
Second 5 the ecstacy 73 28 15
Third 6-19 the grass "I observe" 90 29 16
xvii
Fourth 20-25 I as "everyman" 389 43 25
Fifth 26-29 ecstacy senses listen 584 51 31
Sequences continued:
Sequences Chants content lines
or pages print 1st
ed. on
line
Sixth 30-39 power of identification 647 54 33
Seventh 39-41 the superman 974 69 44
Eighth 42-50 the sermon 1050 73 46
xix
Ninth 51-52 poet's farewell 1309 85 55
xx
Whitman believed the ego was distinct from the soul
Self is (atman)
same essence as the universal spirit --
xxi
true knowledge is acquired by union with the self -- atman
"merge"
'one can read an infinite lesson in common things.' Cowley of Whitman
"each of us conceals a divine Self" atman
with "the universal duty of loving one another."
xxi
animals "they bring me tokens of myself" souls like us
"rocks, soil trees an planets possess 'eidolon,' that persists as they rise to higher states of being."
xxi
mainstream Indian philosophy all the world of senses and thought is illusion
xxii
compare Ramakrishna with
chant 48 line 1262, http://whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1855/whole.html
line 1271, page 54, first
edition, or p 83 in my re-edition.
|
"And I call to mankind, Be not curious about God, |
|
For I who am curious about each am not curious about
God, |
|
No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about
God and about death. |
|
I
hear and behold God in every object, yet I understand God not in the least, |
|
Nor
do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself. |
|
Why should I wish to see God better than this day? |
|
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and
each moment then, |
|
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own
face in the glass; |
|
I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every
one is signed by God's name, |
|
And I leave them where they are, for I know that others
will punctually come for- ever and ever. |
|
And
as to you death, and you bitter hug of mortality . . . . it is idle to try to
alarm me. "
line 1281 |
|
|
|
|
Chant 48 and Ramakrishna such parallels...are more than accidental
http://whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1855/whole.html
realism... brutal realism and serene optimism
blamed for inconsistency
xxiii
Is he denying the
existence of evil? Cowley says no.
xxiv
explicit themes
"The universe was eternal becoming for Whitman."
xxiv
"What he preaches throughout the poem is not political but religious democracy."
xiv-xxv
"his perpetual journey"
xxv
"He said one should know 'the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls'."
xxv
"his ideas expressed in 'Song of Myself' were bolder and more coherent than is generally supposed, and philosophically a great deal more respectable."
xxvi
he rediscovered a "whole philosophical system chiefly on the basis of his own mystical experience and with little help from his reading."
"venturing into the unexplored continent of the Self"
xxvi
"the personal creator of the world illusion" Atman, Brahma
xxvii
such megalomania that he was "losing touch with the realities, or at least the human possibilities of American life."
he confused 'him-self" with the "transpersonal self" of the poem (after 1856)
xxviii
"In the first edition he had broken most of the nineteenth century rules for elegant writing, but now he was violating an older literary convention, that of simply being considerate of one's readers."
xxx
after 1860-65:
"As for the creed put forward in 'Passage to India' and other poems, it is no longer purely mystical, being mixed with the ambiguous doctrine of male comradeship or 'adhesiveness' that Whitman had first expressed in the 'Calamus' poems of the 1860 edition, and mixed again with his still more recent doctrine of Personalism. The deeper self is now identified
xxxi