But this message was far more prominent in his pre-Civil War poems than in his later ones. Whitman admired the African Americans who had served in the Union army. But he was unequipped to ponder the legal and political ramifications of emancipation. Whitman never said much about African American suffrage, but when he did, his remarks were derogatory. In an essay on the suffrage he sounded both nativist and racist: “As if we had not strained the voting and digestive caliber of American Democracy to the utmost fort the last fifty years with the millions of ignorant foreigners, we have now infused a powerful percentage of blacks, with about as much intellect and calibre (in the mass) as so many baboons.”26
His racism was fueled by the so-called “ethnological science” of the era which held that certain “inferior” races would disappear as a result of natural selection. He would tell Traubel: “The nigger, like the Injun, will be eliminated: it is the law of the race, history, what-not: always so far inexorable—always to be. Someone proves that a superior grade of rats comes and then all the minor rats are cleared out.”27 These views, deeply unsettling, were common in his time. A recent historian of science affirms that “the belief in the Negro’s extinction became one of the most pervasive ideas in American medical and anthropological thought during the late nineteenth century.”28 Whitman, with his amateurish but ardent respect of science, bought into ethnography.
His 1871 essay “Democratic Vistas” revealed that within six years after the war had ended, his disillusion over materialism and corruption had returned. Surveying American society, he wrote: “The spectacle is appalling…. The depravity of the business classes of our country is not less than it has been supposed, but infinitely greater.” He added that “the official services of America,” state and federal, “are saturated in corruption, bribery, falsehood, and mal-administration.”29 However, he had gained a new source of optimism after the war in what might be termed “progressive evolution,” a combination of post-Darwinian thought and Hegelian idealism. Whitman declared, “Only Hegel is fit for America—is large enough and free enough.”30 Hegel’s formula of thesis-antithesis-synthesis brought great consolation to him, because it suggested that, no matter what, things would work out in time. All the social ills of modern America, he now believed, would be resolved by “a native expression-spirit” of “original authors and poets to come.”31
His religious inclinations gathered strength after the war. In outlining “the future personality of America” in “Democratic Vistas,” he said that a “primary moral element,” a “sane and pervasive religiousness” must be developed. His postbellum writings often turned to what he saw as the soul’s voyage to other spheres. For example, his 1871 poem “Passage to India” begins by singing praise to the modern inventions, then predicts the coming of a future poet, “the true son of God” who “shall come singing his songs,” and ends by declaring, “Away O soul!,” in a rapturous vision of the flight of the soul through the harmonious universe.32 Similarly, in “Gliding O’er All” he envisages “the voyage of the soul—not life alone, / Death, many deaths, I’ll sing.”
If his poetry had become more spiritual, it also became more traditional in its relation to America. In the fifties, his collapsed belief in the party system and presidential power had caused an incredible surge of his omnivorous, all-gathering poetic “I,” creating his richest poetry. After the war, in the wake of Lincoln, his “I” was in retreat. He looked to the electoral process and American presidents to resolve social problems on a large scale.
Despite his growing political conservatism, Whitman remained devoted to the radical poetic project he had initiated in 1855. True, the postbellum editions of Leaves of Grass were in some senses more conventional than the early editions. Some of the most radical poems, especially “Respondez!,” were toned down. The diction became more formal (e.g., “thee” and “thou” sometimes replaced “you”), and the punctuation more normal (e.g., commas and periods replaced ellipses). Nonetheless, most of the poems of the fifties remained intact, with slight revision. To the end, Whitman dreamed that his volume would be appreciated by what he called “myriads of readers.”33
His dream has come true. Since his death he has earned a secure place in the literary pantheon. No writer is regarded as more indisputably American than he, yet no one has reverberated on the international scene to the extent he has. His liberation of the poetic line from formal rhythm and rhyme was a landmark event with which all poets since have had to come to terms with. His equally bold treatment of erotic themes has provided a fertile field for interpretation and has contributed to the candid discussion of sex in the larger culture. The radically egalitarian nature of his poems consistently inspired progressives of all stripes. His boundless love and all-inclusive language, reflected in his extraordinary intimacy with his contemporary culture, makes his writing attractive for practically all readers.
At his best, he was the democratic poet to an extent never matched, gathering images from virtually every cultural arena and transforming them through his powerful personality into art. By fully absorbing his time, he became a writer for all times.
Whitman in 1891, the year before his death.
Ed Folsom Collection
ABBREVIATIONS
BE
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
CG
Whitman, Walt. Walt Whitman and the Civil War: A Collection of original articles and manuscripts. Edited by Charles Glicksberg. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1933.
CWW
Complete Writings of Walt Whitman. Edited by T. B. Harned, R. M. Bucke, and Horace Traubel. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1902.
DN
Whitman, Walt. Daybooks and Notebooks. Edited by William White. 3 vols. New York: New York University Press, 1978. Vol. I: 1876–Nov. 1881. Vol. II: 1881–1891. Vol. Ill: Diary in Canada, Notebooks.
FC
Faint Clews & Indirections: Manuscripts of Walt Whitman and His Family. Edited by Clarence Gohdes and Rollo G. Silver. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1949.
GF
The Gathering of the Forces. Edited by Cleveland Rodgers and John Black. 2 vols. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1920.
H
Walt Whitman, the Critical Heritage. Edited by Milton Hindus. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1971.
InRe
In Re Walt Whitman. Edited by Horace L. Traubel, R. M. Bucke, and Thomas B. Harned. Philadelphia: David McKay, 1893.
ISit
Whitman, Walt. I Sit and Look Out: Editorials from the Brooklyn Daily Times. Edited by Emory Holloway and Vernolian Schwartz. New York: AMS Press, 1966.
LGC
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass, Comprehensive Reader’s Edition. Edited by Harold Blodgett and Sculley Bradley. New York: New York University Press, 1965.
LV
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass, A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems. Edited by Sculley Bradley, Harold W. Blodgett, Arthur Golden, and William White. New York: New York University Press, 1980. Vol. I: 1855–1856. Vol. II: 1860–1867. Vol. Ill: 1870–1891.
NF
Whitman, Walt. Notes and Fragments. Edited by R. M. Bucke. 1899. Reprint, Ontario: A. Talbot and Co., n.d.
NUPM
Whitman, Walt. Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts. Edited by Edward H. Grier. 6 vols. New York: New York University Press, 1984.
PW
Whitman, Walt. Prose Works, 1892. Edited by Floyd Stovall. 2 vols. New York: New York University Press. Vol. I: Specimen Days (1963). Vol. II: Collect and Other Prose (1964).
UPP
The Uncollected Prose and Poetry of Walt Whitman. Edited by Emory Holloway. 2 vols. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1972.
WCP
Whitman, Walt. Complete Poetry and Collected Prose. New York: Library of America, 1982.
WEP
Whitman, Walt. The Early Poems and the Fiction. Edited by Thomas L. Brasher. New York: New York University Press, 1963.
WWC
Traubel
, Horace. With Walt Whitman in Camden. 7 vols. Vols. I, II, III originally published in 1905, 1907, and 1912, respectively; all three reprinted by Rowman and Littlefield (New York) 1961. Vols. IV-VII published in 1953, 1964, 1982, and 1992, respectively, by Southern Illinois University Press (Carbondale).
NOTES
NOTES TO PREFACE
1. WCP 1326.
2. WWC 2:430. The next quotation in this paragraph is in 1:167.
3. PW 2:473.
4. LGC 344.
NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE
1. WCP 492.
2. InRe 34.
3. WCP 492.
4. WCP 698.
5. WWC 3:205.
6. UPP 1: xxvi, n. 9.
7. WWC 1:194, 2:480.
8. Scudder Whitney to Lotta Rees, letter of August 18, 1906; Walt Whitman Birthplace Association Library, Huntington, New York.
9. See Arthur Golden, “Nine Early Whitman Letters, 1840–1841,” American Literature 58 (October 1986): 342–60.
10. WCP 188.
11. WWC 2:283.
12. WCP 548
13. InRe 33.
14. PW 1:473.
15. WCP 23.
16. J. T. Trowbridge, “Reminiscences of Walt Whitman,” Atlantic Monthly 89 (February 1902):166.
17. LGC 729.
18. WCP 660.
19. WCP 40, 57.
20. WCP 1326. The next quotation in this paragraph is also on p. 1326.
21. H 34.
22. H 32, 61.
23. WCP 26.
24. NUPM 1:167.
25. WCP 311.
26. LV 1:262.
27. WCP 478.
28. WCP 1327.
29. NUPM 4:1554.
30. William Thayer and Charles Eldridge to Walt Whitman, letter of February 10, 1860; Charles E. Feinberg Collection, Library of Congress.
31. Leaves of Grass Imprints (Boston: Thayer and Eldridge, 1860), back jacket.
32. FC 215.
33. WCP 988.
NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO
1. Whitman in His Own Time, ed. Joel Myerson (Detroit: Omnigraphics, 1991), p. 43
2. LGC 657.
3. WEP 127.
4. WWC 1:93.
5. WCP 408. The next quotation in this paragraph is on p. 303.
6. WEP 10.
7. UPP 2:20–1.
8. See WCP 226–29.
9. NYD 140.
10. Brooklyn Daily Advertiser, June 28, 1851.
11. Brooklyn Evening Star, May 21, 1846.
12. WCP 312. The next quotation in this paragraph is also on p. 312. The quotations in the next two paragraphs are on pp. 195, 613, 585–86, and 210, respectively.
13. WCP 1190.
14. DN 3:669, 736.
15. WCP 242–43.
16. New York Examiner, January 19, 1882.
17. ISit 43.
18. Brooklyn Daily Times, February 20, 1858.
19. WCP 479 and LV 1: 188–89.
20. H 22.
21. H 22.
22. Life Illustrated, July 28, 1855.
23. Boston Transcript, July 3, 1888.
24. H 25.
25. WCP 50.
26. WCP 8.
27. WWC 5:529.
28. WCP 9.
29. WCP 470 and WCP 379.
30. LGC 296. The block quotation after the next sentence is on p. 77.
31. WCP 18. The quotations in the next two paragraphs are on pp. 1317, 1313, 706, and 1310, respectively.
32. WWC 1:223. The next quotation in this paragraph is in 1:166.
33. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 23, 1847.
34. UPP 1:194.
35. WCP 1320. The next quotation in this paragraph is on p. 1318.
36. NUPM 1:69.
37. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 26, 1846.
38. WCP 1008.
39. WCP 9. The quotations in the next six paragraphs are on pp. 9, 8, 6, 18, 27, 188, 193, 203–4, 15, 8, 320, 225, and 256, respectively.
40. Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song, eds. Jim Perlman, Ed Folsom, and Dan Campion (Minneapolis: Holy Cow! Press, 1981), pp. 96 and 351.
NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE
1. WWC 1:455.
2. WCP 1189. The quotations in the next paragraph are on pp. 1192 and 1187, respectively.
3. WWC 4:141.
4. WCP 1192.
5. WWC 7:295.
6. CG 56.
7. WWC 4:519.
8. Whitman in His Own Time, ed. J. Myerson, p. 33.
9. Quoted in David S. Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), p. 161.
10. WCP 508.
11. LGC 67 and LV 1:59
12. WCP 544. The next quotation in this paragraph is on p. 313.
13. LV 1: 58, LGC 71, and WCP 216.
14. WWC 6:457.
15. W. Whitman, “Democracy” (1867), in Democratic Vistas, 1860–1880, ed. Alan Trachtenberg (New York: George Braziller, 1970), p. 359.
16. Brooklyn Daily Times, January 30, 1857.
17. NUPM 6:2230.
18. LV 1:83–84.
19. WWC 1:5.
20. NUPM 1:314.
21. NUPM 6: 2232. The next quotation in this paragraph is on p. 2236.
22. WWC 2:26–27. The next quotation in this paragraph is in WWC 3:375.
23. WCP 327.
24. See especially C. Caroll Hollis, Language and Style in Leaves of Grass (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983) and Christopher Charles Burnam, “An Analysis and Description of Walt Whitman’s Composing Process” (Ph.D. diss., University of Rhode Island, 1979).
25. Quoted in Harold Blodgett, Walt Whitman in England (1934; New York: Russell & Russell, 1973), p. 21.
26. PW 2:725.
27. WCP 992. The next quotation in this paragraph is on p. 611.
28. PW 2:592.
29. WWC 2:174.
30. Statistics from Robert D. Faner, Walt Whitman and the Opera (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1951), p. 122.
31. WCP 6.
32. ISit 173.
33. Brooklyn Star, November 5, 1845.
34. NF 70.
35. GF 346.
36. WCP 564.
37. WWC 6:120.
38. R. Faner, Whitman and the Opera, p. 63.
39. C. Hamm, Music in the New World (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973), p.231.
40. WCP 174.
41. WWC 2:173.
42. WCP 215. The next quotation in this paragraph is on p. 625.
43. WCP 625.
44. WWC 4:286.
45. George C. D. Odell, Annals of the New York Stage (New York: Columbia University Press, 1928), 6:187.
46. PW 1:20.
47. J. Johnston and J. W. Wallace, Visits to Walt Whitman in 1890–1891 (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1912), p. 162.
48. G. C. D. Odell, Annals, 6:264.
49. WCP 208. The next two quotations are on pp. 215 and 528.
50. FC 19.
51. UPP I: 98.
52. Saturday Press, January 7, 1860, and J. T. Trowbridge, “Reminiscences of Walt Whitman,” p. 166.
53. WCP 640.
NOTES TO CHAPTER FOUR
1. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 12, 1846.
2. NUPM 4:1524.
3. LGC 642.
4. WWC 4:125.
5. LV 1:92, 18.
6. GF 2: 114–15.
7. Brooklyn Star, February 2, 1846.
8. Walt Whitman and the Visual Arts, eds. Geoffrey M. Sill and Roberta M. Tarbell (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992), pp. 6–7.
9. WWC 1:131.
10. WCP 236.
11. Form and Function: Remarks on Art by Horatio Greenough, ed. Harold A. Small (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1947), pp. xvi, 120.
12. WCP 19. The next quotation in this paragraph is on p. 11.
13. LGC 30.
14. See WCP 196–97.
15. UPP 1:238.
16. WCP 198–99.
17. Burroughs, Walt Whitman, A Study (1896; New Yo
rk: AMS, 1969), p. 143.
18. LGC 42–43. The quotations in the next paragraph are on pp. 42 and 203, respectively.
19. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 18, 1847, and April 14, 1847.
20. WCP 632. The quotation from “To You” in the paragraph after the next one is on p. 376.
21. PW 1:268.
22. WWC 2:407. The next quotation in this paragraph is in 1:7.
23. UPP 1:298.
24. LGC 430.
25. UPP 1:246.
26. ISit 129–30.
27. PW 2:681.
28. The World of Science, Art, and Industry Illustrated from Examples in the New-York Exhibition, 1853–54, eds. B. Silliman and C. R. Goodrich (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1854), p. 15.
29. LV 1:92.
30. LGC 642–43.
NOTES TO CHAPTER FIVE
1. WCP 369. The quotations in the next three paragraphs are on pp. 236, 383, and 1332, respectively.
2. LV 1:262.
3. LGC 434–35.
4. LV 1:25.
5. WCP 237.
6. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 28, 1847.
7. J. Liebig, Organic Chemistry in Its Application to Agriculture and Physiology (London: Taylor and Walton, 1840), p. 225.
8. LGC 107–8.
9. WCP 193, 194, and 245.
10. J. Liebig, Organic Chemistry, p. 336.
11. WCP 495. The next quotation is on p. 496.
12. WCP 310.
13. LGC 439.
14. WCP 240. The next five quotations are on pp. 245, 239, 50, 210, and 516–17, respectively.
15. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 10, 1846.
16. Madeleine B. Stern, Heads and Headlines: The Phrenological Fowlers (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971), p. 102.
17. WWC 1:385.
18. WCP 15, 20.
19. LV 1:189.
20. WCP 251.
21. Orson S. Fowler, Amativeness, or, Evils and Remedies of Excessive and Perverted Sexuality (New York: Fowler & Wells, 1846), p. 56.
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