All about Walt Whitman

INSCRIPTIONS, EPIGRAPHY, EIDOLON, CATALOGUES

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Our purpose in this essay is to comment on a few traces of ancient literature in Leaves of Grass, to show that the past was inserted into the body of the Leaves[i]. As Whitman wrote in the first line of the “Preface to the first edition of Leaves of Grass”, “America does not repel the past…”, although he wanted to sing “The Modern Man” (Inscriptions, “One’s Self I Sing”). However, he writes in the “Preface”:

Past and present and future are not disjoined but joined. The greatest poet forms the consistence of what is to be from what has been and is. He drags the dead out of their coffins and stands them again on their feet [...] he says to the past, Rise and walk before me that I may realize you. He learns the lesson [...]

Therefore, he does not turn his back to the past. He learns the lesson the past has taught, which is a way of reviving it, giving it a new form, fit for the current times. The past is again made present, as in a ritual, as if reborn from its ashes, but never “forgotten”. By the way, the very term “inscriptions” dates back to the ancient times:

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Inscriptions are words or letters written, engraved, painted, or otherwise traced on a surface and can appear in contexts both small and monumental. Coin texts and monumental carvings on buildings are both included by historians as types of inscriptions. [...] The study of inscriptions is epigraphy. Epigraphy (Greek, ???????? – “written upon”) is the study of inscriptions engraved into stone or other permanent materials, or cast in metal [...][1]

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From this definition we can see that inscriptions were an important medium (“monumental”) through which powerful tyrants or kings “…forged their individuality…”[ii]. Important people shared compositions commissioned to famous poets with the public by way of a “… public choral performance …”, which was reinforced by “… another stage of public sharing, that is, public display through the medium of a lavish inscription ….”[iii] Then, we might interpret that the placement of a book called “Inscriptions” at the beginning of Leaves of Grass is not a mere act of chance, but a re-enactment of an old tradition from an ancient past. It is an announcement, the spreading of news of a powerful figure that must be made public: “The Modern Man”, located in the New World, America, and that means that a great poet was assigned to sing this modern man, which is why the songs have been called “Inscriptions”.

Considering that, in literature, an “…epigraph is a quotation that is placed at the start of a work or section that expresses in some succinct way an aspect or theme of what is to follow.”[2], we could see the book “Inscriptions”, at the start of Leaves of Grass, as an epigraph for the whole work. We can find in “Inscriptions” the major themes of the Leaves: “…the word Democratic…”, “The Female…” and “…the Male…”, again “The Modern Man…” (in “One’s-Self I Sing”), “The genius of poets of old lands,”, “…bards…”, “…life and death…”, “…the Body…” and “…the eternal Soul…”, “…brave soldiers…” (in “As I Pondered in Silence”), “…the New World…” (in “To Foreign Lands”), “…Nature…” (in “Me Imperturbe”), “…America…” (in “I Hear America Singing”), and the long poem “Starting From Paumanok”, in which he celebrates life in America and sings (section 14):

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Whoever you are, to you endless announcements!

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Daughter of the lands did you wait for your poet?

Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand?

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Toward the male of the States, and toward the female of the States,

Exulting words, words to Democracy’s lands.

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The next word that has a root in the past is “eidolon”, which is the title of a poem in “Inscriptions”. Eidolon (Ei·do·lon n. pl. ei·do·lons or ei·do·la), which means “phantom, apparition, simulacrum, image of an ideal”, comes from Greek eidlon, from eidos, form. It also means “image-double”[iv]. The fact is, in Greek theatre the act of reading out loud a text means to know this text again, because it is a re-performance of the written text. Thus, the reading of a text is the activation of that composition in the minds of the reader and the audience. This way, the reading “can … serve as the metaphor for the public performance of a composition, and the image of writing, as the metaphor for the composition itself.” This is where “eidolon” enters the scene, it is this “image”, “simulacrum” of an act. And the word that originated “eidolon”, “eidos” (“visible form”) appears in a very interesting context, as we can see in the following passage from Pindar’s Homer (pp. 261-2): “…it is fitting to reiterate what Herodotus had said about the Panhellenic contributions of Homer and Hesiod: these are the poets “who indicate the visible forms [eidos plural] of the gods.”

As Gregory Nagy puts it, Herodotus was trying to communicate in the way that Homer and Hesiod did by mentioning them the way he did. And by doing that, which was a way of “claiming identity” with the poets, he was “appropriating”, possessing the discourse of those two poets, which is exactly what Pindar did in relation to the two poets mentioned. This is called the appropriation of discourse so that his own discourse could acquire authority, and then authorship. The word that reflects this is ainos (“authoritative speech, an affirmation, a marked speech-act, made by and for a group”[v]). It is further explained in this extract from Pindar’s Homer (pp. 12-13):

While Homer’s medium of epic poetry glorifies heroes, Pindar’s medium of lyric song glorifies simultaneously the heroes of the past and the athletes of the present. By collapsing the distinction between hero and athlete, the epinician (“victory ode”) of Pindar becomes a genuine occasion of prestige for the contemporary figure who is being glorified, and this poetic glorification is correlated with the realities of wealth, power, and prestige in the here and now. These three realities of wealth, power, and prestige ultimately preserve the identities of Pindar’s patrons. Conversely the identity of Pindar is a function of his authority, which is simultaneously the authority of the epinician, to confer prestige. The authority of the epinician, as a form of authoritative speech, is conveyed by the word ainos. It is this authority that guarantees the authorship of Pindar.

The question then is how this applies to Leaves of Grass? There are two instances of this in Whitman’s works. One is the use of Greek words and poetic forms in the Leaves. Some of the words we have mentioned here and some of the poetic forms are: myths, “catalogues”, odes and elegies. The other is the use Whitman makes of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s writings to validate his own writings. Firstly, with the essay “The Poet”, publicly recognized as an influence on Whitman’s concept of a national poet. And secondly with the letter sent to him by Emerson on behalf of the publication of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, of which Whitman printed a sentence on the back of the following edition of the Leaves and served to give additional authority to his works, considering that Emerson was already a national figure at the time.

Whitman has been criticized many times for using “catalogues” in his works. Actually, never was he mentioned as doing something worthy of praise regarding the catalogues. However, never has any critic cited the fact that the “catalogues” was an essential part of epic poetry. It appeared in the Catalogue of Women by Hesiod; in Homer’s Iliad[vi], to describe the genealogies of the warriors fighting in the Trojan War. Then there is the “Catalogue of Ladies” in Odyssey Book XI (Odyssey Book XI – Nekuia – Odysseus’ Trip to the Underworld, which includes the Catalogue of Condemned[vii]).

As for the odes[viii], the only one which is clearly recognized as such in Leaves of Grass is the “Death Carol” (in italics), which appears in section 16 of “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed”. It is an ode within an elegy. Regarding the elegies, in my opinion, Harold Bloom gives the final word on them:

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[...] the six long or longer poems that indisputably are Whitman’s masterpieces: “The Sleepers”, “Song of Myself”, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”, “As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life”, “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”, and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” Though only the last of these is overtly an elegy, all six are in covert ways elegies for the “real Me”, for that “Me myself” that Whitman could not hope to celebrate as poet and could not hope to fulfill as a sexual being.

(“Introduction”, by Harold Bloom. In Modern Critical Views, Walt Whitman, Chelsea House Publishers, New York, 1985, pgs. 6 and 7)

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Elegy comes from Greek elegeia, (from pl. of elegeion, elegiac distich, from elegos, song, mournful song.), which is a poem or song composed especially as a lament for a deceased person, as referred to by Bloom above about “When Lilacs…”, but it is clear from the context that this form of composition came to us from the Greeks.

Regarding the other form of appropriation carried out by Whitman to give authority to his works, it was done by inscribing himself as the poet proclaimed by Emerson (“Introduction”, p.1) in his essay “The Poet”[ix]. And a letter from Emerson, who was one of the very few (apart from Whitman himself, who wrote reviews of his own books in newspapers) to see any worth in the Leaves, of which a sentence was put on the back of the next edition of Leaves of Grass (1856) to advertise the book.[x]

Thus, we can finish this essay by going back to the beginning, to remember that Whitman did not reject the past. He wanted to bring the past to the present, reviving it in new forms, making it live again. This can be called an act of re-creation or co-creation, or creating together, even if it is with people long deceased, by making the myths live again in a new land.

Then instead of rejecting the past or the other writers before him or from his own time, he appropriated them, he possessed them, to make them grant worth to his own works. Which is a tradition passed down to him by the Greek poets.

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[1]See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inscriptions

[2] See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigraph

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[i] “Reading Whitman’s Postwar Poetry”, James Perrin Warren. In The Cambridge Companion to Walt Whitman, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1997, pg. 47: “The model of revolutionary style reveals a more varied and complex sense of Whitman’s relationship to a tradition than the totalizing critical narrative suggests.”

[ii] Pindar’s Homer, Gregory Nagy. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1994, p.174.

[iii] Ibid., p.175.

[iv] Pindar’s Homer, op. cit. pgs. 171 and 419.

[v] Ibid., pg. 515.

[vi] The famous Catalogue of Ships is recorded as a part of Book II (verses 494-760, PP Il.2.494) of Homer‘s Iliad. It lists the names of all the allies who came with the Greeks to lay siege to Troy along with the names of their leaders and the number of ships they brought with them. It is followed by a similar, though shorter, list of the Trojans‘ allies. (for more information, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalogue_of_Ships)

[vii] Odysseus briefly talked to a dozen women, mostly good or beautiful ones, mothers of heroes, or beloved of the gods (lines 169 to the end of Book XI; this book includes the Catalogue of Condemned, which describes the conversation with MINOS (son of Zeus and Europa whom Odysseus witnessed meting out judgment to the dead); ORION (driving herds of wild beasts he had slain); TITYOS (who paid for violating Leto in perpetuity by being gnawed upon by vultures); TANTALUS (who could never quench his thirst despite being immersed in water, nor slake his hunger depite being inches from an overhanging branch bearing fruit) and SISYPHUS (doomed forever to roll back up a hill a rock that keeps rolling back down). The women are:

1. TYRO, mother of Pelias and Neleus
2. ANTIOPE, mother of Amphion and the founder of Thebes, Zethos
3. Hercules’ mother, ALCMENE
4. Oedipus’ mother, here, EPICASTE
5. CHLORIS, mother of Nestor, Chromios, Periclymenos, and Pero
6. LEDA, mother of Castor and Polydeuces (Pollux)
7. IPHIMEDEIA, mother of Otos and Ephialtes
8. PHAEDRA
9. PROKRIS
10. ARIADNE and
11. CLYMENE
12. and a different type of woman, ERIPHYLE, who had betrayed her husband.

[viii] “There is in Western literary tradition a significant sub-genre of the lyric, the ode (from the Greek aeidein, to sing, chant). And as it has come down to us from the ancients Pindar, Horace, and Anacreon (along with one shing example apiece from Sappho and Alcaeus) no longer confined to its original casing, though periodically adherent – the spirit of the ode as practiced by its originators remains intact.” (in http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/cdwright/ode.htm )

[ix] “The Poet”, Emerson, Ralph Waldo. In Essays and English Traits. Vol. V. The Harvard Classics. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909-14.

[x] The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907-21).
VOLUME XVI. Early National Literature, Part II; Later National Literature, Part I.

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