Wilmot Proviso

While searching around on the Wilmot Proviso, I found some related commentary regarding Whitman’s stance on slavery from a PBS special. Click here for the link. The entire show sounds interesting – maybe they will rerun it between episodes of Downtown Abbey.

Loafing in the Woods

I choose to read the section “Loafing in the Woods” from Specimen Days mostly because I enjoyed our discussion of the word “loafe” in class last week. This process of loafing and the resulting clarity that is derived from this disposition is clearly an important one for Whitman – so much so that he captures this theme in the first several lines of the poem (“I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease…”). What I also love about this theme of loafing are the implications to Whitman’s reader. Whitman immediately sets a tone of comfort in Song of Myself which makes his poem more inviting to his reader. Whitman boldly tells his reader that what he is sharing is “the origin of all poems” and that whoever reads and understands him will “possess the good of the earth and the sun” – not light topics to say the least. This concept of loafing helps to mitigate the concerns that might come with reading something that promises such lofty ambitions. Whitman is in effect telling his reader that what he is saying is important but that you don’t need a suit and tie and a litany of academic degrees to understand it.

The other thing that sticks out to me from this particular passage in Specimen Days is that Whitman truly lived what he wrote. He loved to be outdoors, he loved the impact the outdoors has on his senses, and he seems to ruminate most effectively on the issues of life while “seated on a log in the woods,” as opposed to seated on the wood chair of an office or classroom. The reader’s sense of his sincerity is critical to the efficacy of Whitman’s writing. You may choose to disagree with him but it is not because you doubt his own belief in what he is writing. In fact, Whitman’s sincerity and confidence may be at the top of the list in terms of the most affecting aspects of his writing.

Thoughts on the Merge

Who need be afraid of the merge?
Undrape.... you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded,
I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no,
And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless.... and can never be shaken away. -- W.W.

In Song of Myself, Whitman repeatedly returns to a theme of “merging” as it relates to a profound number of combinations: the body and soul, flesh and nature, Whitman and his reader, the past, present and future, as well as life and death. Whitman speaks of living in his own unified utopia whereby the arbitrariness of human distinctions are irrelevant and one lives in a certain harmony with himself, others, and nature. In the lines cited above, Whitman invites his reader to “undrape” and assures him there is nothing that can offend him. Interestingly, Whitman speaks to his own perspicacity and tenacity telling his reader he will pierce the veil of their being regardless of their willingness to shed their “broadcloth and gingham” (Whitman is certainly not lacking in confidence with respect to his life mantra – a theme you feel consistently throughout Song of Myself as well as Whitman’s preface to Leaves of Grass). One of my favorite aspects of this theme of merging is the manner in which Whitman describes himself as one with nature. In the preface to Leaves of Grass, Whitman states that the poet “incarnates [his country’s] natural life and rivers and lakes” and then goes on to describe how rivers should not embouchure into the sea but into the poet himself (allegories like these are just so cool). I could fill a number of pages with other references to the theme of merging but will leave at this for now.

As a side note, this theme of merging and convergence reminded me of a passage I read a number of years ago in Forbes magazine (of all places). They posed the question “What does convergence mean?” to several business figures and celebrities. The following link takes you to the response provided by Muhammad Ali. Ironically, the theme of convergence that the magazine was referring to was a technological one – that of the telephone, television and internet. This context was apparently not provided to Ali as his response is a very personal and philosophical one. As I read Song of Myself, I see and feel a number of parallels with Ali’s sense of “convergence”, particularly where Ali says: “To understand that there are no distinctions of any real importance in the affairs of men, that there is only one time and one place and one person and one truth. And that we are all contained in that time and place and person, and that the truth contains us all.” While I had always regarded Muhammad Ali with a certain level of awe, his poetical response to Forbes magazine certainly reaffirmed his status to me as “The Greatest.” See link below for full text – it is very cool (and it’s not that long).

http://www.forbes.com/asap/1999/1004/070_print.html