Stephen Railton

Stephen Railton

I addressing You:

“Another very important secondary source for us was the Cambridge Companion to Walt Whitman, edited by Ezra Greenspan.

This book, according to its editor, contains “a variety of critical perspectives on and approaches to the phenomenon of Whitman” which “will reflect the wide-open, decentralized situation of current thinking” (GREENSPAN, 1997, p.4). Stephen Railton writes the first article, “‘As If I Were With You’-The Performance of Whitman’s Poetry” (1997, pp.7-26), on the use of the pronouns I and you. He states that the use of I may be more frequent, but that you is more pervasive, even when compared to other major poets. The point is that, although the I shows how egotistical Whitman is, the you indicates how the poems are conceived to address the readers in a dramatic way, the crowds of you referred to by the poems, to whom the poet always returns. Another question discussed by the author is the fact that how could a mature and experienced journalist, who knew a lot about advertising, write a book that would sell so little. Did the poet lose touch with reality or did he really know what he was doing, by shocking the public with his uncommon way of addressing themes like sexuality, for example? The answer is that Whitman never changed anything in his works due to public reaction or censuring. He kept faithful to his poetry till the end.”