All about Walt Whitman

Kenneth Burke, Politics,  and Whitman’s contradictions:

“Another critic in this volume is Kenneth Burke, whose article, “Policy Made Personal” (BLOOM, 1985, pp.25-54), naturally revolves around the political issue in Whitman’s works.

In this case, Burke uses specifically Democratic Vistas and the Lincoln elegy as the basis of his study, but also the Leaves in general. One of the main ideas that the article deals with is the dialectics of the part and the whole, that is, how this idea is expressed by Whitman personally and politically, and how it appears in the texts. For example, in the first poem of “INSCRIPTIONS”, “One’s-Self I Sing”: “One’s-Self I sing, a simple separate person, / Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse” (WHITMAN, 2002, p.3). These two verses show the individual and the collective spheres and how one is linked to the other by the poet, as he sings in the first verses of “Song of Myself”: “I celebrate myself, and sing myself, / And what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” Whitman never separates the individual person from the whole of society and the world. One of the ways he does that is via his catalogues, in which he depicts hundreds of individual persons in order to form a whole, or the “En-Masse”; there is more information on the catalogues in section 3.4. Therefore, it seems to us that Whitman’s contradiction is not really a problem, since it can be viewed as his dialectics instead, for he does not conceive of a single person without the masses or the masses without the individuals, even when he sings of personality, which is an essential aspect of Romanticism. As we have mentioned above, although Whitman absorbed some features of Romanticism, he was, at the same time, quite different from the Romantics. In fact, even the theme of contradiction is at the core of Romanticism, a movement that was too complex to be unified, especially because of its “dissonance and inner conflict”, in which “Utopian dreams for the future” lived “side by side with nostalgia for the past” (SCHENK, 1979, p.xxii). However, as Whitman always does, he also took the contradiction and extended it further into dialectics. We believe that he learned this lesson from Hegel, as can be seen in this passage from one of his biographers:

He had been reading Hegel – or more accurately discussions of Hegel – for several years. Traces of Hegelian influence may be seen in Democratic Vistas, in Whitman’s belief that the “dialectic” of conflict and struggle will produce a more perfect society. Or as he re-expressed this idea more poetically in “Song of the Universal”[1] [...]. (ALLEN, 1955, p.460)

Whitman was aware of his contradictions and he understood that the case was not of being one thing or another. As he wrote about good and evil, both of which he said he was the singer in Section 22 of “Song of Myself”: “I am not the poet of goodness only-I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also.” This entry about Hegel’s definition of dialectic will illustrate the point:

dialectic (Gk., dialektik?, the art of conversation or debate) [...] According to the different views of this process, different conceptions of dialectic emerge. [...] In Hegel, dialect refers to the necessary process that makes up progress in both thought and the world. [...] The process is one of overcoming the contradiction between thesis and antithesis, by means of synthesis; the synthesis in turn becomes contradicted, and the process repeats itself until final perfection is reached. (BLACKBURN, 1994, p. 104)

That is, by reaching a harmony between two opposing positions, which can be things, people, thoughts or ideas, by seeking to join them, Whitman was trying to achieve synthesis. Such feat is found by looking for what unites and not what separates. Therefore, Whitman acknowledged his contradictions in order to reach a synthesis and continue on the path to progress, which, by the way, is the “Old Cause” (the progress and the freedom of his race) sung by him in a poem from “INSCRIPTIONS”, “To Thee Old Cause” (WHITMAN, 2002, p.6). Politically speaking, he developed the idea of the ensemble as the right path for the United States in the first note of the book Notes Left Over, titled “Nationality-(And Yet)”, in which he describes how it should be in relation to the people and the states of the Union:

Thus the existence of the true American continental solidarity of the future, depending on myriads of superb, large-sized, emotional and physically perfect individualities, of one sex just as much as the other, the supply of such individualities, in my opinion, wholly depends on a compacted imperial ensemble. [...] For the theory of this Republic is, not that the General government is the fountain of all life and power, dispensing it forth, around, and to the remotest portions of our territory, but that THE PEOPLE are, represented in both, underlying both the General and State governments, and consider’d just as well in their individualities and in their separate aggregates, or States, as consider’d in one vast aggregate, the Union. (WHITMAN, 1996, pp.1074-5)

A passage from The Mind of the European Romantics (SCHENK, 1979) will clarify how different is Whitman’s view of individualism, egalitarianism and his dialectics with respect to Romantic thought:

So marked was the anti-egalitarian leit-motiv in the Romantic movement, at any rate before 1830, that some historians have interpreted Romanticism as the swan song of the European nobility. To be sure, there is more than a grain of truth in this view. Indeed, the list of Romantic noblemen is impressive, [...] The Romantic attitude in this respect [political egalitarianism] is essentially different from the individualism expounded by rationalist minds. Whereas the latter emphasized the equality and inter-changeability of individual beings or groups, the Romantics laid the greatest stress on their peculiarity, or singularity, and therefore made more allowances for the rights of personality. This applied not only to individuals but also to communities such as provinces or nationalities. (SCHENK, 1979, p.13, 15)

We know that Whitman stressed personality, but not with neglect to equality. He did rather the opposite, for he praised the “divine average”[2], the common people, all treated as equals in the nation from its very beginning. We also know that he not only wrote against the malady of the soul that was typical of Romanticism (1979, p.49), but he also sang against it, as he did in “Song of the Exposition”:

Away with old romance!

Away with novels, plots, and plays of foreign courts,

Away with love-verses, sugar’d in rhyme, the intrigues, amours of idlers, Fitted for only banquets of the night, where dancers to late music slide,

The unhealthy pleasures, extravagant dissipations of the few,

With perfumes, heat and wine, beneath the dazzling chandeliers.

(WHITMAN, 2002, p.170)

Actually, this entire poem is anti-romantic, because it was written to celebrate the Annual Exhibition in New York City, 1871, in response to an invitation of the American Institute (an industrial fair), and to praise what Whitman calls the “materials” of the United States, that is, its material progress, its farming and industrial products, and also its people, workers, geography and nature (2002, pp.165-73). Curiously, the poet invites the Muses to migrate from the ancient world to visit the new world and its modern wonders, its modern constructions, another feature that was disliked by romantics, who were “offended by the hideousness of [...] industrial districts” (SCHENK, 1979, p.22). What we mean by curious here is the fact that the escape[3] into the past is another trait of Romanticism, which Whitman twisted according to his will to make the past come into the present. A similar work is performed in the poem “A Song for Occupations”, in which he sings the “Workmen and Workwomen”, the “Union” and the “Constitution”; he does not forget or despise the “Old Institutions” (2002, pp.177-83), but he does not consider the current ones any smaller or lower than the ancient. This is totally non-noble, but coherent with the poet who considered himself to be “one of the roughs”.

On the other hand, Whitman is closer to the rationalists[4], who “believed in the equality and interchangeability of human beings”, and whose “aims” included “Equality of education, equal political rights, no discrimination as regards professions” and “a movement for female emancipation” (SCHENK, 1979, p.151), ideas which are all connected to the cause defended by the poet: the progress and freedom of the race, that is, of the American people. Once again, when we compare Whitman’s idea of the interchangeability between the microcosms and the macrocosm, and the interrelation of all parts to the whole and the other way around, we can see how his dialectics pointed to a synthesis not accomplished by the Romantics, who fell prey to contradiction, which is expressed by their attempt to “encompass the whole of existence”, at the expense of attacking and excluding rationalism (SCHENK, 1979, p.6-7).”

[1] “Song of the Universal” is the first poem of “BIRDS OF PASSAGE”; Allen’s reference is to the use of the word “ensemble” in this poem, which points to the integration “of all microcosms in the grand single macrocosm of Being.” (WHITMAN, 2002, p.191).

[2] “O such themes! Equalities! / O amazement of things! O divine average!”; from “Starting from Paumanok” (WHITMAN, 2002, p.20).

[3] Chapter five of Part 1 of The Mind of the European Romantics (SCHENK, 1979, pp.30-45), “Forebodings and Nostalgia for the Past”, addresses this topic, showing how the romantics looked “with reverence to the example of the Christian Middle Ages” and “nations could be made to look back to times when they had reached their political or cultural apogee,” which are “typical Romantic-quixotic escape into the past,” that is, “into unreality.” As we know, Whitman is always praising the present time, the greatness of the States and the heroes of the nation, be them generals or workmen or sailors.

[4] The poem “The Base of All Metaphysics”, from “Calamus”, is about Whitman’s philosophical readings and what he learned from them; this poem mentions some ancient and modern rationalists, like Plato, Socrates, Kant and Hegel (WHITMAN, 2002, p.104). Concerning the emancipation of women, Whitman received great support from women, especially Fanny Fern (1811-1872), whose real name was Sara Willis Parton, who was a very popular American columnist, humorist, novelist, and author of children’s stories (2002, pp.798-800); and Anne Gilchrist (1828-1885), who was an English writer who traveled to the United States to meet Whitman (2002, pp. 802-6). Another woman who became a great admirer and follower of Whitman and his works is Isadora Duncan, who considered Whitman as her spiritual father (GREENSPAN, 1997, pp.166-93).

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