Dragonfly

Walt Whitman&the World

Edited by Gay Wilson Allen & Ed Folsom

This book started as an updating of Gay Wilson Allen’s Walt Whitman Abroad (1955), but it turned into a project trying to capture the ongoing poetic dialogue with Whitman around the world for more than a century, a kind of resistant “talking back” to Whitman by other cultures. We are presented by a tapestry of a wide array of international responses which reveals the way democratic ideals, democratic attitudes, and democratic institutions are perceived around the world, showing how his views of democracy are being reconfigured by every culture he enters, from British Isles, Russia, France and Belgium, Germany, Spain and Latin America to former Yugoslavia, and so many other countries. Hence the book shows how various cultures have reconstructed Whitman in order to make him fit their native patterns and how the act of translation has altered his poetry and made it conform in ways it otherwise would not to the traditions and tones of the receiving nation, and also how his writing undertakes a different kind of cultural work than it performs in the United States.

Walt Whitman&the World gives us not only an overview of political responses to Whitman’s poetry but also an overview of aesthetic and religious responses, thus Franz Kafka found him “among the greatest formal innovators in the modern lyric”, and many Indian writers heard ancient Hindu voices at the hearth of Whitman’s poetry in Whitman’s ability to reconcile contradictions and to resist the valorisation of soul over body.

Additionally we are given an insight into the influence of reading Whitman in other cultural context on “the rather provincial understanding of Whitman held by many American readers and writers, who tend still to view him only in an American context and who tend to be oblivious to the variety of ways that Whitman has been constructed for the purposes and needs of other cultures.”

The fact Whitman „has appealed to so many people in so many places in so many ways“ and „that everyone seems to find in his poetry what she or he wants and needs“ is beautifully explained in what Jorge Luis Borges said on Whitman:

„He wrote his rhapsodies in the role of an imaginary self, formed partly of himself, partly of each of his readers.“

”Whitman Making Books, Books Making Whitman” by Ed Folsom

URL: http://www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/anc.00150.html

All Times&Moods of the Good Gray Poet

An outline of Whitman’s work which opens a new perspective to his work, drawing our attention to the whole range of Whitman’s bookmaking activities and revealing how those skills influenced his work, but also how those mere physical objects may tell us something about his work, life and his times. He put a tremendous effort in making his book because he believed that the book had a power to speak to its readers in different ways. The physicality of his book was as much important as the human body was to him. He wanted us, while holding his book, to feel it, smell it, and touch it with our naked hands in the same way we would feel, smell and touch a body. Well aware that either the content or the physicality of his book might not speak to its readers immediately, he said he would be waiting for us in his books and “on” his books.

The book covers all the major points in each of editions of Leaves of Grass. So, we are presented with the first edition of Leaves of Grass (1855), for which he designed the cover, chose the binding and set some of the type himself. With such an innovative and unusual design, Whitman tried to send a message that “the American poetry would have to be essentially different from any poetry written previously—it would have to look different, sound different, and deal with different subject matter if it was to guide the development of a radical new American democracy.” Not only the content of the book, but also the book as a physical object was perceived as “unusual in size, ornamentation, and design”. “The book itself is a hundred times more curious. It is like no other book that ever was written.” “Everything about the external arrangement of this book is odd and out of the way.” Almost all the reviewers commented on the absence of the author’s name and the odd frontispiece engraving. “The man is the true impersonation of his book—rough, uncouth, vulgar.” Charles Eliot Norton, in his Putnam’s Monthly review, summed up the feeling of many when he described it as “this gross yet elevated, this superficial yet profound, this preposterous yet somehow fascinating book.”

It was followed by the second edition of Leaves of Grass (1856) which “demonstrates Whitman’s changing attitudes toward his book and toward the goals he had for his work.” He wanted working people carry his “pocket-size” edition poetry and read it during breaks.

The third edition of Leaves of Grass (1860) came with 146 new poems, the first edition of Leaves published by a true publisher, Thayer and Eldridge. Many of the previous poems had undergone extensive revision. This is the first time “Calamus” poems appear, a cluster devoted to male-male affection, along with “Enfans d’Adam,” later renamed “Children of Adam,” a group of poems dealing with male-female attraction. Once again we witness an interaction between the physicality of the book (Whitman redesigned his title page to turn the very letters of “Leaves of Grass” into sperm, adding the distinctive tails that had become familiar in medical textbooks of the time) and its content (a lot of controversial sexual  spermatic images, representing Whitman’s words “as the seeds for new ideas, a new nation, a new conception of democracy, but his words would need to penetrate readers and fertilize their imaginations”).

The same intention is preserved with Drum-Taps (1865) and Sequel to Drum-Taps (1865–66), a collection of war poems, where the title’s letters, formed out of broken limbs and branches, are visually alluding to the reconstruction the nation would be going through as it tried to form a union again out of the shattered fragments of the war. As if the title page indicates he is making his poetry out of “the debris and debris of all dead soldiers” and “the staffs all splinter’d and broken.”

Furthermore, we are given all the crucial facts regarding the fourth edition of Leaves of Grass (1867), the least studied and impressive one and the most difficult to find, the first British edition of Poems by Walt Whitman (1868), published by John Camden Hotten and edited by the British critic William Michael Rossetti, the fifth edition of Leaves (1871) what he called “my new & improved edition,” and his Passage to India (1871), the “Supplementary Volume” to be dedicated to giving voice to “Democratic Nationality” and the sixth edition of Leaves of Grass (1881), where Whitman totally rearranged his poems and clustered them in new arrangements.

There are also presentations of his other works like Democratic Vistas, Two Rivulets and Specimen Days & Collect, Memoranda During the War, November Boughs, Complete Poems & Prose.

Whitman’s own bookmaking ceased with the final edition, known as the “Deathbed Edition” (1891-92), created just before Whitman died, and considered to be the authoritative edition of Leaves of Grass. He wrote “L. of G. at last complete—after 33 y’rs of hackling at it, all times & moods of my life, fair weather & foul, all parts of the land, and peace & war, young & old”.

We are given a handful of beautiful and useful images showing Whitman progress and develop not only as a bookmaker but also as a poet and as a man. We have come to realise all the greatness of his legacy, his books speaking for years and years after his death, executing that very mission he had in mind when writing his poetry and making his books of an ongoing process of realisation and self-realisation. As Ed Folsom brilliantly describes:

“Bookmakers, like all readers of Whitman, have continued to make Whitman over in various guises, to create new Walt Whitmans—a Whitman who speaks particularly to the gay community, an ecological Whitman whose work resonates with the green movement, a socialist Whitman dedicated to a poetry of the working-class, a patriotic Whitman who celebrates America, a Whitman who speaks in an open and unaffected way to children, a Whitman who speaks across language and culture to Spanish and German and Arabic and Chinese readers. There are as many Whitmans as there are readers, and the nature of his project was to leave it to us to define him, to do the work that would make his poetry come alive for us, speak to us not just from his past but from our present. “

The documentary „The American Experience: Walt Whitman“ by Mark Zwonitzer

A documentary very stimulating and suggestive, with capacity to illuminate all the central problems in Walt Whitman’s life, skillfully combining autobiographical, sociological, historical and religious themes. A story told in a lively and engaging way inviting numerous impressions, conclusions and above all feelings about Whitman and his work but also about ourselves and our lives in the modern society. Just as Martin Espada says at one point that „I see his Brooklyn. And strangely enough, I think he saw my Brooklyn“, throughout the documentary one feels very close to the world and life of Walt Whitman and very often while Whitman is speaking of his time we feel he is actually speaking of our time. Is not that „urban affection“ something that concerns us also- us brushing against strangers in the streets, forcing our way through the crowd, preoccupied with everyday worries and enormous to-do lists, not noticing the myriad of faces disappearing in front of us as fast and mechanically as a underground passes by leaving no trace behind? Is not that particular feeling of alienation, awareness of isolation woven into us, making us emotionally paralysed and numb? However, the documentary successfully displays Whitman as overly sensitive finding his inspiration in „the daily human drama of the city streets“. That is something that dazzles, his opening of a window to the smells, sounds and impressions of a „simple life“, his ability to see beauty in the „heavy, dense, uninterrupted street-bass“. The documentary brings one nearer to Whitman the poet and Whitman the man, communicating in a appealing and understandable way the idea that Whitman is trying to speak for everybody and to everybody, as he writes in the opening lines of Leaves of Grass:

„ 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 master and the slaves, entering into both so that both will understand me alike.“

A collage of various characters like scholars, writers, poets, historians and biographers combined with tremendously good choice of music, photography and voices (Chris Cooper did a wonderful job as a voice of Walt Whitman) contributes to stripping the documentary of any dull moments all along and captivating our attention in a sort of a little spasm of excitement what we will hear next.

This is a true glimpse into Whitman’s life and work, provoking us to think and consider all the difficulties, sufferings, aspirations, regrets but also joys and happiness of our lives now and then.

The documentary stresses out that Whitman left Leaves of Grass to anyone who would have it after his death, no wife or children to inherit such a treasure chest of human emotions and thoughts, rather to everybody, the same way he completed it, saying:

“If you want me again look for me under your boot soles…failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged. Missing me one place search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you.“

This is a significant and exposing „slice of life“ and no doubt you will enjoy it!

My dear colleagues,

I could not resist the temptation to draw your attention to the story about one of Karen’s students, a sophomore art major named Alice Wetterlund, that you may read on the page XLIV in the book Karen gave us. I was almost touched to tears while reading this passage, because I was confronted with such a tremendous source of energy and power of written word. I felt I was there with Alice, we became one, her voice my voice, carried over the hubbub of Henry Street. I felt her excitement rushed through my veins end exploded in such a wonderful moment of true happiness and bliss. I cast off all my fears and anxieties, social customs and expectations, flooded with a feeling of revelation. Alice did what Whitman hoped for; she raised her voice above the simplicity and restrains of our everyday lives but also above herself. She spoke for herself, for you and me, for everybody, just as Whitman did. I felt the spell of the poetry spilled all over the place.

After having discussed the phrenological term “adhesiveness” this Saturday during our class, used to refer to the attachment between men, the word “comrade” caught my attention while I was reading “In Paths Untrodden” from the “Calamus” cluster. “Adhesiveness” and “comrade” evoke at first “sticky or gluey” and “a companion or a member of the Communist Party”, respectively, however both bearing a hidden connotation. Notably, taking into consideration that “Calamus” takes its name from an herb with pointy, narrow leaves which shape is suggestive of an erect phallus, that the poems in the “Calamus” cluster are held together by the sentiment of “male bonding” or “manly attachment”, that the title of this poem is very suggestive (“paths untrodden”), we start seeing the word “comrade” in a different light. Isn’t it beautiful to reveal layer by layer all what words comprise? I looked up the word “comrade” and this is what I found:

1. Middle French camarade group of soldiers sleeping in one room, roommate, companion;

2. One that shares the same sleeping quarters as another;

2.a. One that shares the same fortunes or experiences as another: intimate friend;

2.b. Companion

2.c. Comrade-in-arms (his fallen comrades)

3. Communist

I was intrigued by an image denoting something military, obedient to rules and commands, a strict pro-regime system,  but also denoting love, intimacy, devotion, affection and sharing, all along paths untrodden, forbidden, disdained and unaccepted.

WORKS CITED:

“comrade” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary Unabridged. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster Inc., 1993.

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass: First and “Death-Bed” Editions. New York: Barnes& Noble Books, 2004.

Welcome to Looking for Whitman. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!