5 CONCLUSION (Part 20)

From “Passage to India,” published in 1871, we bring two excerpts to illustrate what the true son of God, the poet, is singing: God’s purpose. This means that in this poem he is not singing the materials of his America or the earth, he is going beyond geography and culture since he has seen that the earth is to be all linked together, towards what is universal and eternal: the soul, and its divinity and connection with the Creator. He includes the great achievements of his time; however, he is sailing much farther than that, he is asking his soul to sail “the seas of God.”  As we have stated at the comment on “Salut au Monde!,” we have the feeling that this poem is a continuation of that one, but at another degree of awareness, passing from material, from what is seen and physical, to the immaterial, to the unseen and spiritual. I would not dare to say metaphysical because the poet himself wrote in a note that there is nothing philosophical about “Passage to India,” because it is focused on “evolution” (WHITMAN, 2002, p.345).

.

WHITMAN:

From section 2:

[…]

Passage to India!
Lo, soul, seest thou not God’s purpose from the first?
The earth to be spann’d, connected by network,
The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,
The oceans to be cross’d, the distant brought near,
The lands to be welded together.

[…]

From section 8:

[…]

Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God,
At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and Death,
But that I, turning, call to thee O soul, thou actual Me,
And lo, thou gently masterest the orbs,
Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death,
And fillest, swellest full the vastnesses of Space.
[…]

.

OUR RE-CREATION:

From section 2:

[...]

Passagem para a Índia!

Olha, alma, não vês o propósito de Deus desde o início?

A terra para ser transposta, conectada por rede,

As raças, os vizinhos, para casar e ser concedidos em matrimônio,

Os oceanos para ser cruzados, o distante aproximado,

As terras para ser soldadas.

[...]

From section 8:

[…]

Rapidamente me encolho ao pensar em Deus,

Na Natureza e suas maravilhas, Tempo e Espaço e Morte,

Mas que eu, virando, chamo a ti Oh alma, tu Eu real,

E vê, tu gentilmente dominas os orbes,

Tu emparelhas com o Tempo, sorris contente pra Morte,

E preenches, expandes bastante as vastidões do Espaço.

[...]

***

5 CONCLUSION (Part 19)

“Memories of President Lincoln” was composed in the weeks after Lincoln’s assassination on April 14, 1865, and was published together with Drum-Taps that same year. Everything that Whitman presents in the poem “When Lilacs…” actually took place: the “great star”, Venus, excessively low in the sky, the lilacs blooming at every dooryard, the bird singing, the processions throughout the United States, the coffin being taken to many cities, the cloud over the President after his second inauguration, as he appeared on the Capitol portico (seen or heard and recorded by Whitman), the atmosphere of fear. Everything was uncommonly strange during that month. In The Solitary Singer (1955, chapter VIII), Allen portrays this period in the life of Washington, Whitman and the Nation in great detail as well as Whitman does in the poem. As for our work in this section, we do not intend to present any passages from “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d;” we only want to stress the extreme difficulty to re-create its title, which in Portuguese became too long: “Da Última Vez Que Lilases Floriram no Pátio.” However, it is one that mirrors the original, which is also made up of two sound/sense units. In English they are divided or separated by “in,” and in Portuguese by “Que,” which also begins the second part. We tried many variables, but it was very hard to find one that carried all the meaning and at the same time sounded well. As it is a sad and sweet elegy, it must be read in a smooth and calm tone. In this way, we may feel the sounds echoing in each other through the line. In this way, the title can sound very well in Portuguese, because it carries in itself the tearing apart, the grieving and the tiredness of the nation portrayed in the poem. On the other hand, we shall present two stanzas from “Oh Captain! My Captain!,” which is a very rare piece in Whitman’s poetry, mostly written in iambs (verses with short/unstressed syllables followed by long/stressed syllables), and dedicated to the same person addressed in “When Lilacs…” Naturally, we did the best to maintain the beating pulse and rhymes of the original, and, in comparison to it, we may say that the result is fairly good:

.

WHITMAN:

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

[…]

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!

But I with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

.

OUR RE-CREATION:

Oh Capitão! Meu Capitão!

Oh Capitão! meu Capitão! findou nossa horrível jornada,

O navio superou toda tormenta, alcançamos a meta almejada,

O porto está próximo, os sinos eu ouço, a gente toda exultando,

Enquanto olhos miram a estável quilha, o casco duro e ousado;

Mas Oh coração! coração! coração!

Oh os pingos de vermelho sangrados,

Onde jaz no convés meu Capitão,

Prostrado morto e gelado.

[...]

Meu Capitão não responde, seus lábios, pálidos, calados,

Meu pai não sente meu braço, não tem pulso ou vontade,

O navio ancorado são e salvo, encerrada e finda a jornada,

Da horrível jornada o navio vencedor adentra com o fim conquistado;

Exultai Oh praias e dobrai Oh sinos!

Mas eu com passo pesado,

Percorro o convés onde jaz meu Capitão,

Prostrado morto e gelado.

.

MEIRA:

Ó Capitão! Meu Capitão!

Ò Capitão! Meu Capitão! Finda é a temível jornada,

Vencida cada tormenta, a busca foi laureada.

O porto é ali, os sinos ouvi, exulta o povo inteiro,

Com o olhar na quilha estanque do vaso ousado e austero.

Mas ó coração, coração!

O sangue mancha o navio,

No convés, meu Capitão

Vai caído, morto e frio.

[...]

Ah, meu Capitão não fala, foi do lábio o sopro expulso,

Meu calor meu pai não sente, já não tem vontade ou pulso.

Da nau ancorada e ilesa, a jornada é concluída.

E lá vem ela em triunfo da viagem antes temida.

Povo, exulta! Sino, dobra!

Mas meu passo é tão sombrio…

No convés meu Capitão

Vai caído, morto e frio.

.

(WHITMAN, 2005, pp.334-5; texto da edição de Folhas de Relva da Martin Claret)

***

5 CONCLUSION (Part 15)

The next poem, “Youth, Day, Old Age and Night,” must be quoted in full, since it has only four lines. This short poem is what was left of the poem “Great Are the Myths” from the 1855 edition, which was excluded from Leaves of Grass in 1881. Though short, it is a beautiful poem that sounds very well in Portuguese with its graceful and peaceful acceptance of old age.

.

WHITMAN:

Youth, large, lusty, loving—youth full of grace, force, fascination,
Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace,            force, fascination?

.
Day full-blown and splendid—day of the immense sun, action,   ambition, laughter,
The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and        restoring darkness.

.

OUR RE-CREATION:

Juventude, vasta, vigorosa, amorosa—juventude cheia de graça, força, fascinação,

Sabes que a Velhice pode vir depois de ti com a mesma graça, força, fascinação?

.

Dia maduro e esplêndido—dia do imenso sol, ação, ambição, riso,

A Noite sucede com milhões de sóis e sono e revigorante escuridão.

.

MEIRA:

Juventude, grande, vigorosa, amante—juventude cheia de graça, força, fascinação,

Sabes que a Velhice pode vir após ti com a mesma graça, força, fascinação?

.

Dia maduro e esplêndido—dia do sol imenso, ação, ambição, risada,

A Noite vem a seguir com milhões de sóis, com o sono e a escuridão renovadora.

(WHITMAN, 2005, p.232; texto da edição de Folhas de Relva da Martin Claret)

***

Dear readers,

my resumé page shows that I have been doing a

doctorate in poetic translation since 2005.

The good news is that I have finished it,

and got my Ph.D.

I have got an A with honors!

If you want to know what my research was about,

read a section (below) from my presentation to

the panel of examiners.

Kind regards,

Gentil

—

The focus of my work is on the re-creation of Walt Whitman‘s poetry into Portuguese in a creative way. Basically, it means that literal translation, or the transposition of a text, word for word, from one language into another, is definitely out of question. It might only happen by chance, when a verse naturally may find its way into our language without much re-working. The idea is to convey the meaning based on the re-creation of the poetic structure, the poetic-linguistic means that supports and transmits the affective-intellectual content of the poetry of the American bard. In other words, to combine in a single aesthetic act the conveyance of the semantic element, or the content, harmonized with its formal elements, which in poetry are meter, rhythm, rhyme, assonance and alliteration, in their endless manifestations, as well as the atmosphere, tone or diction of each passage. This term that I use to refer to this process, re-creation, which indicates a type of translation that goes beyond literal translation, was borrowed from my masters in this type of translation, the Brazilian Concretist poets: Haroldo de Campos, Augusto de Campos and Décio Pignatari. In English, I use this word with hyphen, “re-creation” (and its derivatives), due to the fact that “recreation” indicates only diversion, an activity that is performed for relaxation and pleasure, and not “creating again”.

Thus the specific aim of my research was to translate a considerable part of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass into Portuguese, so that the Brazilian reader can have an idea of who the great American poet was and what his poems conveyed. It is also intended to provide some information on his influence on the next generation of writers. In order to do this, I have divided the central part of my research into three chapters (chapter 1 is the introduction): chapter 2, “Criticism and Context”, contains a short account of the publishing history of the Leaves in the United States and its Brazilian editions. It also presents a critical review of the authors who have helped me to understand Whitman and the Leaves better, as well as a critical analysis of one major symbol in the Leaves, the calamus, or sweet-flag. In chapter 3, “Re-creating Leaves of Grass Into Portuguese”, I describe my method of creative translation, which can also be referred to as re-creation, or poetic re-recreation, which is different from literal translation. This chapter also presents my masters in this type of translation, a discussion on the poetic aspects of Whitman’s verse, some authors who are related to Whitman and some examples of poetic re-creation. Chapter 4 contains the poems and books which I have been re-creating since 2006. In chapter 5, the conclusion, I analyze the result of my work and assess if it has been fruitful. I will give now some more details of this research, of Whitman, of Leaves of Grass and creative translation.

As it can be seen in chapter 2, which I believe will help the reader to understand the whole matter, Leaves of Grass comprises the complete poetic works of Walt Whitman. The first edition was published by the poet in 1855, with only the title and a picture of Whitman on its cover. The 1855 edition contained the famous Preface plus twelve poems, which carried no titles either. Whitman’s name appeared only in the middle of the poem that is known today as “Song of Myself,” in the passage that later became section 24 (there were no subdivisions either in the first edition), in a verse that read: “Walt Whitman, one of the roughs, a kosmos,” as we can see in a Brazilian edition of the 1855 edition by Iluminuras publishing house. After a few changes over the years, Whitman finally arrived at the current and more poetic version of this line in 1881: “Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son.” In subsequent editions, the poet gave titles to all the poems, and inscribed his name on the cover. The fact is that every new book or cluster of poems that he wrote, he added them to the already published book, keeping the same general title. Whitman did that from the 1856 second edition until the 1891-2 last or final edition, which became known as the “authorized” or “deathbed” edition, and which is the one that is used as the source of my creative translations.

Except for the absence of the poet’s name on the cover and of poem titles, the most striking literary fact after the release of the first edition was that, among many people whom Whitman sent copies of his book, the writer and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson was the only person who personally answered him in writing, that is, by sending the poet the most famous letter in American literature, in which the poet-philosopher acknowledged Whitman’s poetic genius (Whitman answered Emerson’s letter in 1856, calling Emerson “Friend and Master”; WHITMAN, 1996, p.1350). Emerson, who was a great influence on Whitman, and would remain a friend for life, gave Whitman this “safe-conduct” into the literary world. In section 2.5.6 I provide more information on the connection between these two poets and how some Emersonian ideas on poetry and poets are assimilated into Leaves of Grass, especially Emerson’s concept of “Language as fossil poetry” and the poet as “namer”, which is linked to Whitman’s role as American Adam in his book “Children of Adam”. In the same section there is a discussion on how Whitman’s poetry is connected to William Blake’s at the spiritual level, and what there is of vision and prophecy in their writings. In section 3.4, where there is a discussion about catalogues, I also refer to religiousness, since the Bible is one of the sources of this type of writing.

Also included in chapter 2 is a review of the criticism that has been so important to me in researching Leaves and the poet. Authors such as Ezra Pound, Harold Bloom, Gay Wilson Allen, Henry S. Canby, Ed Folsom, D. H. Lawrence and Fernando Alegría have been tremendously helpful in broadening my view of Whitman. These and many others are featured in section 2.4, with emphasis on their specific contribution to my research. Then there is section 2.5, which examines the meaning and possible mythical origin of the use of calamus, reed or sweet-flag as a major symbol of manly attachment in Leaves, particularly in the “Calamus” cluster, in which it acquires a political meaning, representing comradeship, union (Calamus was a Greek mythological figure), and even nationality, which is an aspect that Whitman shares with the Romantics. By the way, whenever appropriate, I will point out what Whitman has in common with the Romantics and what aspects of Romanticism he rejected or surpassed. As a result of this approach to this literary movement, there will not be a specific section to discuss Romanticism in my dissertation. Moreover, I will examine other meanings and uses of the calamus or reed, such as musical instrument, pen, pipe and even as spice.

Chapter 3 is dedicated to the translatorial method, a study of poetic elements, such as rhythm and meter, and an examination of Whitman’s verse. My method of creative translation is defined at the beginning, in section 3.2, where I summarize the set of ideas that has guided me in my task. In short, I could describe my method as the reconstruction or re-configuring of the original text in the target language in a way that both the meaning and its poetic elements and linguistic properties are maintained, as well as its atmosphere and diction. Naturally, my presentation in chapter 3 is more extensive and detailed, and it shows how I have put this concept of translation together. There I also mention and quote my mentors in this field of activity, what I have learned from them and how I use this knowledge in my work. As I can not cite all the translators whose works have helped me in some way, I have decided to include in my research only the most immediately representative, to me, of what might be called today a Brazilian translation school. Although critics might complain that I have neglected many important scholars in this area, such as Paulo Rónai or Lawrence Flores Pereira, I have decided to narrow a little my focus for theoretical reasons. It does not mean that I am not aware of their work, especially Professor Pereira’s, whose translations of T. S. Eliot’s poems, Antigone (2006) and Hamlet (2007) are outstanding and have been a model to me. However, my choice of authors forces me to keep my attention on the ones I have chosen.

Thus, the poet translators whose concepts I have followed most closely in my research are Haroldo and Augusto de Campos  plus Décio Pignatari, who, together with the Campos brothers, started the Concrete Poetry movement in the 1950′s and renewed our poetry from then to the present. Ezra Pound, as their chief influence, is definitely part of the history of literary translation, or more specifically poetic translation, in the Western world and must be on any one’s curriculum (his books ABC of Reading and How to Read are real manuals for translators and poets). I also mention Odorico Mendes, who was revived by the Concrete poets, who were following Pound’s path of searching for the living parts of the culture in order to integrate it into the current literary movement. Actually, there are other translators who appear in my work, in sections 3.7, 3.8 and 3.9, in which I compare my re-creation of passages from Leaves of Grass and the works of other poets to their translations. In this case, I do not discuss their theoretical view of translation, only their practical results. In this sense, it is not appropriate to relate them to the Concrete poet-translators’ concepts and activities, particularly for the reason that the Concrete poets depart from a different idea of translation. As suggested by Pound, I have just compared results to verify what works best.

As for the poetic elements and Whitman’s verse, I refer in section 3.3 to what I have learned from Augusto de Campos, Décio Pignatari and Pound, especially about directness in language and poetic and linguistic correlations that exist between words in a text. When dealing specifically with verse, and in particular with Whitman’s verse, I study parallelism, enumeration, catalogues and meter, and the differences between their expression in English and Portuguese, due to the intrinsic linguistic properties of each language (section 3.4).  In section 3.5, I compare Whitman’s career and production as a man of letters to Oswald de Andrade’s, one of our most combative writers, including in this term its political sense. This is due to my view of Whitman as an author whose attitude and writings are closer to the kind of attitude towards nature, society and industrialization presented by Modernist poets than to most American and Brazilian poets of the nineteenth century. For this reason, I have included in this part of my research the contribution of Fernando Pessoa, speaking as his heteronym Álvaro de Campos, to the spread of Whitman’s reputation as a poet who has inspired many other poets and writers in many different countries. Still in section 3.5, I bring the word of Gilberto Freyre and Aléxis de Tocqueville to help furnish a portrait of the social and political situation in the United States during the years around the publication of the first edition of Leaves of Grass, mainly from 1849 until the end of the American Civil War. This situation was important because it prompted a major shift in Whitman’s life and career, since he resigned politics in 1849, after many years of involvement in party politics, to dedicate his efforts to creating his poetic works.

After that, in section 3.6, I discuss Longfellow’s poetry, which is placed here as a counterpoint to Whitman’s, that is, as a voice that occurs simultaneously, but is independent in form and rhythm. Specifically, Longfellow represents traditional poetry, writing in poetic forms that have been used for centuries, while Whitman is the poet of current times, creating a type of poetry that mirrors the modern time in which he lives (Whitman wrote an article called “Old Poets” (1996, p.1276), in which he gives his view on American poetry of his time, and indicates the main poets: Longfellow, of course, Whittier, William Cullen Bryant, and Emerson). Longfellow was also the most popular poet of that time, he was respected by Whitman and even visited the poet in Camden in 1879, a fact that was remembered with pride by Whitman, who is known for his cultivation of many devoted friends (American and British, who helped him in his last years, when he was physically incapacitated, due to the illnesses caught during the War of Secession).

I have been reading, studying and translating Leaves of Grass for around twenty years now. During this time, I have been not only studying and translating poetry, but also developing this system of translation as well. My translatorial method, which I describe in chapter 3, has been applied to various poetic works. Thus, I have improved my translating skills and have practiced them on texts which can be defined as difficult, that is, attractive to a translator, as is stated in section 3.2. So, before tackling Whitman’s songs, I spent some time learning how to re-create poetry. Samples of this work are shown in sections 3.7, in which there are examples of re-creations from Leaves of Grass, which are compared to other translations published in Brazil. In section 3.8, I offer the reader instances of creative translations of Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Whitman loved the Rubaiyat too), James Joyce’s and Emily Dickinson’s poetry, and in 3.9 there are more passages from Leaves of Grass. All these renderings are followed by comments or explanations on technical details or choice of words performed by me.

In chapter 4, the result of my efforts can be appreciated: the poems, re-created in Portuguese according to my idea of re-construction of content and form, of re-building the poetic elements that are the structure that carry the meanings. After I  accomplished the re-creation of three books that are part of the Leaves, “Song of Myself”, “Children of Adam” and “Calamus”, in my Master’s thesis, a task that was completed in 1995 and which is available at the UFRGS library, I resumed my work of bringing Whitman’s poetry into our language. I have chosen the following books and poems to work on this time: “Inscriptions”; “Starting from Paumanok”; “Salut au Monde!”; “Song of the Open Road”; “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”; “Song of the Answerer”; “Our Old Feuillage”; “A Song of Joys”; “Song of the Broad-Axe”; “Song of the Exposition”; “Song of the Redwood-Tree”; “A Song for Occupations”; “A Song of the Rolling Earth”; “Youth, Day, Old Age and Night”; “Birds of Passage”; “A Broadway Pageant”; “SEA-DRIFT”; “Memories of President Lincoln”; “Passage to India” and “The Sleepers.”

Finally, in chapter 5, I analyze critically the re-created poems in our language, quoting passages, in order to verify whether I have achieved the desired results. I have also included comments on each book or poem, in order to contextualize them and help the readers a little. Apart from these five chapters, there is a reference section, with all the publications and authors that have contributed to my research and an annex with the text of “Origins of Attempted Secession”, since this document clarifies Whitman’s political view on the United States of his time and is mentioned in section 3.5.

A Note On Poetic Translation

—

We have learned over the years that a translator’s choice of an author is a very important step in his work. There are a number of reasons for that and many aspects to consider, for one can not have a deep relationship with a text one does not enjoy.

This aspect is taken into consideration when we look at how we accomplish our task, for it is necessary to understand, or at least to interpret, the spirit of the author inscribed in the words of his works, in order to arrive at a given version of the re-created text in the target language (we use the expression “poetic re-creation” to indicate a type of translation that is more than a literal translation, it aims at re-creating the original atmosphere of the texts, rhythm, meter, and specific diction of a poet). This means we have to have a deep comprehension of it.

Haroldo de Campos, a well-known Brazilian translator and poet, shows us, in “Da Tradução Como Criação e Como Crítica” (“Translation As Creation and As Criticism”), how important the understanding of an author’s works is when he considers that: “Translation of poetry [...] is primarily an inner grasp of the world and technique of what is translated” (CAMPOS, 1992, p.43). It means that grasping the world of our chosen text takes time and mental effort, for we need to apprehend or, in Whitman’s words, “absorb”, every bit of linguistic, poetic and aesthetic information in the text and on the text in order to proceed the translation. This requires a number of years in close contact with the author’s works, particularly when the task involves extensive works by the same author. This points out to the questions of closeness or familiarity of the translator critic with the text and his choice of an author. However, these two points are a priori in my current research (I am re-creating a series of poems and books from Leaves of Grass into Portuguese for my doctorate), since our work is the continuation of what we did in our Master’s thesis, ten years ago. Thus, only by establishing a deep relationship with the author and his/hers works, can a translator do a good job of transposing a piece of literary art into another language.

Note: for those who read Portuguese, my poetic re-creations are available

at Mr. Kind.

INSCRIPTIONS, EPIGRAPHY, EIDOLON, CATALOGUES

—

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:

—

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]

—

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):

—

Whoever you are, to you endless announcements!

—

Daughter of the lands did you wait for your poet?

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

—

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

Exulting words, words to Democracy’s lands.

—

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:

—

[...] 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)

—

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.

REVISIONS, PERCEPTION, MOVEMENT, CHANGE

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—

There has been much controversy (see Roy Harvey Pearce, “Whitman Justified: The Poet in 1860″, in Modern Critical Views, 1985) about the changes made by Whitman in Leaves of Grass during his life. His revisions, which are similar to the method of recomposition in performance by Greek bards, as noted by Nagy in his Pindar’s Homer, could be seen as a new edition of a book in modern times (what is done on paper today represents a new performance for a bard in ancient times). The revisions then can be taken into account for just what they are, attempts to find a better way to convey a message. This is a common practice for any writer. Every time we re-read what we write, we tend to seek a better word, better sound, better rhythm, the same way a translator does, always trying to reach perfection of expression. In the case of Whitman, we must have in mind that he never yielded to his critics, and never changed anything due to public opinion or just to have his book published. It took decades until a publishing house took over his works to make an official edition.

Even considering that, if he had done so, he would have had a much better reception by the public in general and by the critics in particular, which could have made him earn a lot of money. However, he never sold his soul. He endured much hardship, but never gave in.

He could have agreed with the editors and censors and made the changes required, crossed out the filthy words, deleted “vulgar” passages. Nevertheless, the only changes he performed in his works through the various editions were the ones based on his personal beliefs. The rearrangements came from his own feelings and thoughts. He always followed his own heart in doing so. And as, in my opinion, the greatness of a poet can only be measured by the truthfulness with which he puts to paper what comes out of his heart and mind, I believe that the changes made by Whitman correspond to what he really felt and thought. By that I mean that I trust the poet completely and do not question his changes. I take his works for granted, I accept his book the way he finally chose it to be in the last moments of his life and I am not worried about studying his notebooks to see what the poems looked before. It does not matter. It is like thinking that the sketches of a painter could be better than his final version of a painting.

That is, changes in words do not change the meaning of the message, they just refine it, make it clearer, smoother, readier to enter the reader’s mind or ears. Naturally, if the poet feels that a new form is more adequate to pass on his message, he has all the right to perform these changes.

As well as the reader interprets a poet’s works according to his own personal background. From this standpoint, we can not say that what the reader feels is right or wrong, or even that the reader has to feel something specific when he reads a passage from a book. The only thing that can be required of a reader is that he has to be truthful to his feelings as much as the poet was to his. And express as truly as he can what was it that came up from the bottom of his heart in front of that work of art.

This is what I think and feel about perception. Personally, I prefer the word perception to reception, because it implies interaction towards the world at large and works of art in particular.

Therefore, my writing can only try to describe my perceptions, especially my  present perceptions, what is happening in the now, not what I saw in the past, because the past is over and what I felt before is not important any more, except as a memory. It was important in the past, but we need to stick to the present. Just like Whitman did with the Leaves, he tried to keep it modern, updating his vision regularly, keeping it apace with the current moments. This is the essence of “making it new”. I want the living Leaves, what is alive within me now, the life that the Leaves awakens in me at this moment.

Naturally, every new moment brings a new perception. We are not who we used to be in the past, there is always a new “I” looking at the world, because “we both step and do not step in the same rivers”[i], because we evolve, we change and so does the world, and actually we may see a new world at every step of the way if we follow the movement of our lives. It does not invalidate the old perception, it just revives it, updates it, shows a new angle to look at things.

Time dies at every second and is reborn at every new second too. So we die at every second just to be reborn at the next second. It means that there is a new universe at every second, and the only thing to do is try to see it. How? By letting the past go away, because it naturally does, and seeing the present moment with present vision. And see the world from the perspective of movement. We are consciousness in movement, or the movement of consciousness. Death is lack of movement. The movement only continues if we accept to die and be reborn again all the time. This way we do not stop the movement of the spirit. Because this is not about physical death, it is about psychical death. Death is the past. If we keep looking at the world and at ourselves from the same point of view we had in the past, we never advance. In order to advance, we need to go forward, to see with open and free eyes what is before us. Simply because life is movement. What is dead does not move. Or we could call it vibration. What is alive vibrates. What is dead does not vibrate. Another good term is trans-formation, trans-figuration, trans-portation, trans-ition, trans-… that is the important word: TRANS. Trans is a Latin noun or prefix that means “across”, “beyond” or “on the opposite side” of something. That is, it is not what is here or there, rather, it is the movement from here to there.

As the poet was always advancing and changing, and seeing the present with different eyes from those he saw in the past, he was constantly rearranging the poems, the verses, the clusters, and revising and changing. He was arranging the book according to his current perception of the world. However, in my humble opinion, he was always rearranging the form of the book, not the essence. Because the essence is eternal, and the essence can assume any form. The essence is not stuck in a form. He could only change the form to make his message be better understood. Thus, the form is ever changing, as it happens in nature, in a process called metamorphosis. To finish, let us read a few lines from section 33 of “Song of Myself”, to show Whitman’s own words on movement and vision:
“Space and Time! now I see it is true, what I guess’d at,

What I guess’d when I loaf’d on the grass,

What I guess’d while I lay alone in my bed,

And again as I walk’d the beach under the paling stars of the morning.

My ties and ballasts leave me, my elbows rest in the sea-gaps,

I skirt the sierras, my palms cover continents,

I am afoot with my vision.”

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[i] Heraclitus of Ephesus, pre-Socratic Greek Philosopher, about 535 – 475BC.

SEARCHING FOR WHOLENESS, OR DIVINITY

The passage “Do I contradict myself? / Very well, then, I contradict myself. / I am large, I contain multitudes.”, from section 51 of “Song of Myself”, is a true picture of Whitman and the Leaves. For the author as well as the book contain multitudes. “Multitudes” means a great number of things or people, the masses, the populace, hosts, legions, armies, or even multiple points of view, as in the expression “a multitude of reasons”. A reader may be even puzzled by the Leaves for many years, feeling confused by not comprehending its messages, and considering himself unintelligent for not being able to capture the totality of the work or to grasp its open or hidden meanings.

However, when this reader finds words like: “Except for Dickinson (the only American poet comparable to him in magnitude), there is no other nineteenth-century poet as difficult and hermetic as Whitman [...]“, and “Only an elite can read Whitman, despite the poet’s insistence that he wrote for the people [...]“, written by Bloom (1985, p.3), he understands that he needs more than a superficial comprehension of the book to really walk down these leafy roads.

The poet was not easy to be understood; although he was acquainted with people of all ranks, he preferred to be with the common men, as he called himself “one of the roughs”(BLOOM, 1985, p.2), someone who enjoyed being with the common people on ferries and buses, as he truly confesses in this poem, “To the Prevailing Bards”, from “Uncollected Poems”:

—

Comrades! I am the bard of Democracy

Others are more correct and elegant than I, and more at home in the parlors and schools than I,

But I alone advance among the people en-masse, coarse and strong

I am he standing first there, solitary chanting the true America,

I alone of all bards, am suffused as with the common people.

I alone receive them with a perfect reception and love-and they shall receive me. [...] (WHITMAN, 2002, p. 580).

—

The man who treated the common people on equal terms, who had bus conductors as intimate friends, as portrayed by Allen: “This was the real Walt Whitman, undiscriminating, easily stimulated by noise, color, and movement, happy to lose himself in the ceaseless flux of people going and coming.!” (1955, p.78). He was also the man who sang Homer in public places on top of buses. We could say that this is an example of his contradiction. The man who worked for many years as a nurse in public hospitals during the War of Secession had previously been an opera lover, was fond of the classics, used to read Homer, Plato, Socrates, Shakespeare and Dante. The poet of the modern who did not despise the past, the man who used all his earnings to buy pen, paper and food for wounded soldiers also admired the President in the White House. The man who said that the Leaves “owed nothing” to Emerson was the same man who called him “master” (CANBY, 1943, p.156), which is also testified by Harold Bloom in his “Introduction” to Modern Critical Views, a volume of criticisms dedicated to the “major American literary myth”, the “national poet” of the United States.

It is not by chance that Bloom calls him “hermetic”. The poet called himself “Hermes” in “Chanting the Square Deific”. Again, contradiction: “hermetic” means sealed, impervious to outside interference; but it also means “Hermetic”, referring to Hermes Trismegistus (the Thrice-Greatest God), magic and alchemy. However, Hermes Trismegistus  is distinct from Hermes, the Greek god/myth, who was the son of Zeus and Maia, the inventor of the lyre and Pan pipe (syrinx), protector of the heroes, travelers (besides accompanying the dead to Hades), god of commerce and flight and Divine Messenger (GRIMAL, 1991). It is worth remembering that Whitman was well acquainted with Egyptology. This position or role of messenger was self-assigned by Whitman, as we can see in part 6 of “Passage to India”: “Finally shall come the Poet, worthy that name; / The true Son of God shall come, singing his songs.”. In this context, he was a blend of both Hermes, a true son of God, bringing His message to this world, and also one who used symbols to do so in a hermetic way.

Whitman’s hermeticism lies on his multiplicity of expression. He did contain multitudes, and this aspect of his personality or soul is what we have learned to admire and respect. Therefore, it is practically impossible for one single person to hold a whole view of the Leaves. From our experience of reading Leaves of Grass and criticisms on it for the past twenty years, we firmly believe that the best one can do to understand the Leaves is, besides reading the book, naturally, to broaden one’s view of the book by reading as many secondary sources of information as possible. The main reason is that the more we read articles, studies and biographies of the poet and the more we enlarge our own comprehension of both poet and book, the more we know that it is absolutely necessary to do so; otherwise our vision of it becomes too limited.

Consequently, no single critic can show us how large and multitudinous this poet and his works are. It is similar to a mosaic, a design that is made up of small and big colored pieces that depicts the spirit of a nation. As the poet himself was so fond of photographs, we could also say that the book is a composite picture of an era, written by a man of exceptional talent and capacity of vision. We need to acknowledge his capacity and ability to convey this vast vision in a multifaceted book, which resembles multiple photographs that overlap one another.

Thus, each criticism, article or biographical study that we read contributes some information to our interpretation of the Leaves, describes to us one of these overlapping photographs. It shows how large and important Whitman was and is for America, not only North-America, but all the Americas. This is why the task of interpreting the works of Whitman can not be assigned to one individual. And many years of study have shown us that the best way is to travel down these different roads, appreciate these pictures offered to us by so many talented critics who have enhanced our comprehension of this vast book and the man, as well as the poet, so that we feel we have grasped something of his works, understood the poet and the man a little. As he sang in “So Long!”, from “Songs of Parting”: “who touches this touches a man”.

Our purpose here is to bring to the reader various viewpoints that have been of invaluable assistance to us in understanding the book, the poet and the man, and have opened our eyes to many wonderful things in them. And our own interpretation and comments on these discoveries as well. We will begin then by our reading of some essays by Emerson and what we have found in the Leaves that we consider as echoes of Emerson in Whitman’s works. We are going to quote Emerson and indicate where we think these ideas appear in the Leaves. In “The American Scholar”, an Oration Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837, Emerson (1909-14, p.1) argues that “Events, actions arise, that must be sung, that will sing themselves. Who can doubt that poetry will revive and lead in a new age [...]“. As soon as we start reading the Preface to the 1855 Edition of the Leaves (WHITMAN, 2005, pp.12-14), we find the poet practically paraphrasing Emerson on the first page, by stating that the “[...] United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.” The poet has no doubt that the “Americans of all nations” are poets themselves, actually they have the “fullest poetical nature”, which naturally includes himself,  one of the roughs, though highly intellectual, but one who finds himself to be like one of the “common people” of his nation, because the common people have the “genius” of the United States, more than the “executives or legislatures”, or “ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors”, or even “newspapers or inventors”. They will lead “in a new age” because the “American poets are to enclose old and new for America is the race of races.” They incarnate “its geography and natural life and rivers and lakes”.

Then, we have the following words by Emerson:

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It is one of those fables which, out of an unknown antiquity, convey an unlooked-for wisdom, that the gods, in the beginning, divided Man into men, that he might be more helpful to himself; just as the hand was divided into fingers, the better to answer its end.  The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and sublime; that there is One Man,-present to all particular men only partially, or through one faculty; and that you must take the whole society to find the whole man. Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. In the divided or social state these functions are parcelled out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of the joint work, whilst each other performs his. The fable implies that the individual, to possess himself, must sometimes return from his own labor to embrace all the other laborers. But, unfortunately, this original unit, this fountain of power, has been so distributed to multitudes, has been so minutely subdivided and peddled out, that it is spilled into drops and cannot be gathered.

—

which, again echo in the first poem of the Leaves, “One’s Self I Sing”, from “Inscriptions”, where the poet sings “A simple, separate Person;/ Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-masse.” Here is the corresponding dialectic idea in verse: by singing a “simple, separate Person”, that is, the ideal person or “Modern Man”, who is present in everyone, the poet, dialectically, is bringing everybody together, bringing the “multitudes” comprised by one person into his works, which he is going to sing, for example, in his catalogues, and naturally in himself, since he is “large” and contains these “multitudes”. He sings “a Person”, however, this person will be depicted in a wide variety of pictures, in long catalogues, but each depiction, in the end, will be of the “all”, of the “original unit”. He needs to sing each separate person to compose the masses, because, only by portraying each one of them and putting them side by side, can he be able to paint the portrait of this crowd, this collection of thousands or millions of individual, all of them a separate person in themselves, but not separated from the All, the totality, the whole of mankind.

Then, this movement from person to crowd and from crowd to person, or from the part to the whole and from the whole to the part means that the whole can not exist without its every part, otherwise it is not a whole, and the part can not exist apart from the whole, otherwise it will be lost in itself and will have no meaningful life, because nothing can exist from or outside of itself. Nature is everywhere showing us that every form of life is interconnected and dependent upon each other. Then, Whitman’s inclusion of every man in his catalogues is a way of trying to gather again the drops that were spilled in the fable. Weaving everybody back together into one whole, into a unity that had been lost, his song sews all together, bringing all the creation into a complete union, which is the utmost job of a true son of God.

Here Whitman takes this rather pessimistic view of Emerson’s mentioning of a fable of a divided society and turns it into a quite optimistic view, by showing in his poems that it is possible that this once “subdivided” “fountain of power” can be sewed back together into a whole, through the “lifelong love of comrades”, for example, as he sings in the “Calamus” cluster in the poem “For You O Democracy”, in which he promises to “make the continent indissoluble” and cities “inseparable with their arms about each other’s necks”, and that he will do that “by the love of comrades”. As Emerson himself does in the following lines of his essay:

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What is Nature to him? There is never a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of this web of God, but always circular power returning into itself. Therein it resembles his own spirit, whose beginning, whose ending, he never can find,-so entire, so boundless. (EMERSON, 1909-14, p.2).

—

Actually, like the old sage of Concord, Whitman takes many steps ahead of the dark idea of a subdivision of the “original unit”, which we could simply call “God”, or even “web of God”, this “circular power” that is “so entire, so boundless” that we can not see its limits, its boundaries, but of which we are a part. We think that we are separated from this “continuity” because we only believe what we see with our own physical eyes. The problem with that is that we only see the visible physical world, the “world of appearances”, we do not see what is unseen by our physical eyes. To see beyond that we need to use our intuition, our sensitiveness, our hearts, not our minds, to be able to feel what can not be seen by our eyes. We must remember to use the mind to understand and the heart to feel. This is so obvious and at the same time so forgotten in our daily lives. Apart from what we learn in books, if we just think for a while of a non-religious concept of God, which would be like a whole, a holos (the Greek word that means total, all, entire), a complete thing, we could call it the universe, a number or a thing which lacks none of its parts, we could say that this holos or God can not deny or refuse any of its parts, due to the simple logical fact that if a whole negates one of its parts it is not complete anymore. And if we think that the whole universe is a holos, and if this holos can be called God, then the body of the universe is the body of God. Now, if we think of our own body as a holos, a microcosm, made up of billions of cells, and each cell has in itself the code to make a new body (DNA), equal to itself, why could we not think that each body in the universe has also the code of the whole universe? If the universe has the code to make stars and planets (coincidentally called celestial bodies!) and bodies of living animals, why not think that the universe inserted this code in each one of its creations, as a child carries in itself the code of its parents. Then we could come to the conclusion that each “separate Person” has in him/herself the code of the whole, each person can possibly be any of the other persons of the whole. This leads to the conclusion that we are not subdivisions of the “original unit”, but products of its expansion, because the universe expands itself by multiplication, as any animal or plant naturally does.  We are copies of the original unit, similar to it. We are entire beings, and not subdivisions.

It is not by chance that we are discussing this theme here, for the poet himself was deeply interested in Astronomy and it “[...] was always to be the one branch of science that Whitman knew best, and most accurately.” (ALLEN, 1955, p.124). The study of astronomy fascinated him, and he even became more “philosophical” because of that, which helped him to transcend “time and space and to search intuitively in his poetry for eternal duration.” And if we speak of something “eternal”, we necessarily speak of our souls, our divine souls. For if our physical bodies are mortal, what is eternal in ourselves is surely our souls. And if we consider our souls to be divine, they must be God’s creation. So, we if were created by God, we are His children, and then we are like Him.

Coincidentally, this idea is similar to an idea that exists in the Bible, in the book of Genesis, 1:26: “And God said, Let us make man in our Image, after our likenesse [sic]“. Thus, God created man in His own Image, “male and female” (verse 27), and He said to them: “Be fruitfull [sic], and multiply, and replenish the earth”. Coincidentally, the first poem of the Leaves sings “The Female equally with the Male [...] under the laws divine, the Modern Man”. Again, Emerson was right there, before Whitman, showing to his pupil that “A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.” By acknowledging that we were created in the Image of God by Himself, it makes us Divine like Him. We are as celestial as the heavenly bodies that float in space. And if each one is divine, all is divine, then, if one citizen is divine, the whole nation is divine. So there can exist a nation where each individual can be inspired by his/her divine soul. This is one of the reasons why Whitman never denied one single person, even if the person was mean, cruel, or devilish, or low. He believed that it was possible to show this divinity in every one (God’s omnipresence). One proof of that is that he wrote a book to mirror this to all. We hardly ever see the light by ourselves. We always need someone to guide us into it, just like a baby needs the care of the parents to learn how to live in this world, we need someone to show us the path to the light (of God, naturally!). As long as Whitman had many Guides, and one of them was definitely Emerson, he also became a master, a creator, a guide to others.

And one way to do it was by including all persons in his works, both in the book and in himself, because he did not separate the book from the man. Then, here is Whitman again merging all things in himself and his book to create this mirror of the whole for the readers, mixing the old and the new, the past and the present, religion and science, the masses and the individual, the part and the whole (the poet as a mirror of a divine omniscient mind). This is the movement of his contradictions or of his dialectics instead. Section 16 of “Song of Myself”, one of the innumerous catalogues that appear throughout Leaves of Grass, shows both the contradiction and a short example of catalogue:

—

A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest;

A novice beginning, yet experient of myriads of seasons;

Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion;

A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker;

A prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.

—

He can be one thing and the other, he is one man and he is all men. He is beyond thesis and antithesis; he is already a synthesis, a “creator”, as he sings in Section 41 of “Song of Myself”, where he is “becoming already a creator”. Emerson would agree with that: “Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his” (“The American Scholar”, 1909-14, p.4). This is so because he can be both parts of the equation, interchangeably. This work on synthesis can be traced back to Hegel, whom Whitman used to read, as is testified by one of his biographers:

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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” [...]. (ALLEN, 1955, p.460)

—

By being aware of his contradictions and understanding that the case is not of being one thing or the other, that is, he does not have to choose between the thesis or the antithesis. The point is being one thing and the other, the thesis and the antithesis; by doing so he realizes the connection between the two parts of the equation and then unites them into a synthesis. In Section 1 of “Song of Myself”, Whitman sings: “I Celebrate myself, and sing myself, / And what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”, which shows his awareness of non separation between individuals, which he applied to bridging the gap between the “me” and the “other”. The same way he did with good and evil, of which he said he was the singer in Section 22: “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:

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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)

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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. Which is found by looking for what unites and not what separates. This is what made him fight for a united nation, which is used against him, for example, as charge of anti-abolitionism. The fact is that Whitman was looking for something greater than two opposing factions or fractions; he was searching for a way to unite the opposing sides, which has nothing to do with supporting slavery. He was against slavery, but he was also against fratricide war. This is proven by his hard work in the hospitals during the U.S. Civil War, in which he cared for Southern soldiers as well as Northern ones. As well as for the fact that although he was a journalist and poet, he was there working as a wound-dresser, using his income to bring some relief to soldiers from all the country, which was also a way to know his country well. He did not travel all over the U.S., but he met people from everywhere during the war time (ALLEN, 1995, p.374).

By accomplishing a synthesis of opposites, the poet could be inferior and superior; he could be at the bottom and at the top, because he knew that what is below is similar to what is above, which is the teaching of Hermes Trismegistus. This is why he did not despise the common man, because he himself was also the common man. He was the poet and the carpenter, the intellectual in an office and a nurse in a hospital caring for dying soldiers. He was a journalist and a workman. He is not stuck at one side, he is not “contained between” his “hat and boots” (section 7, “Song of Myself”). He is much more, he is “an acme of things accomplish’d”, he is “an encloser of things to be” (section 44, “Song of Myself”). But above all, one needs to acknowledge that one is contradictory, otherwise no step can be taken on the path to becoming a synthesis, that is, the awareness that we can be one thing and the other, alternatively, and that we will not lose track of ourselves, both mentally and psychologically. This very expression, “one thing and the other”, is an example of Hermes Trismegistus’ teaching: we have three elements in this formula: “one thing”, “and”, “the other”. “And” is the main element, because it is the link between the other two. If we are only “one thing” or “the other”, and we miss the “and”, we might get confused, for at a time we are “one thing”, and at another time we are “the other”. If we keep changing positions without being aware of what we are doing, a psychiatrist might think we have a mental problem, or a friend might think we have a double face. However, if we learn that the most important element in this equation is the “and”, because it is the link between the two sides, we have the solution to the problem, and what was two before becomes one, linked by the “and”. As it is was said by Hermes: “That which is above is like that which is below”, but we must be aware that there must be a connection between “above” and “below”, otherwise it is like table tennis, we go from one side to the other and we never know where we are or what we are doing. Whitman was a northerner as well as a southerner (he actually spent three months in the south), and he did not want the two opposing sides of his country to separate. This made him look for a link to connect them, something greater than party politics or finance. This made him leave professional politics and walk the path of poetry, which proved to be more effective than his political writings. As Canby (1943) said, if Whitman had stopped his career in 1850 or continued only as a journalist, today he might be remembered as a good journalist, and nothing else. And perhaps he would not have moved so many people around his country and the world, and led so many to think about unity, and not separation.

Speaking of a Hermetic equation, Jesus Christ said something two thousand years ago that can be viewed in this context too: “I and the Father are one”; actually, Jesus also said in verse 38, quoted below, that “the Father is in me and I in him.”, which makes him a synthesis of the Son and the Father, because only the Father in him can tell him of His presence and make him aware that the Father is speaking in and through him; and only he as the Son can be conscious of the presence of the Father. Therefore, if both are parts of the same holos, they will occupy each position interchangeably, depending basically on the consciousness of whom is speaking, who will then be aware that he is at one moment the Father and at another the Son! This can be viewed in a logic example: if we consider a man here on earth, a common person, who is a father and at the same time a son. In his relationship with his own father, he will be the son. As well as he is himself a father in relation to his own son. And he has the father and the son in himself. The same occurs to a woman, who can be a daughter in relation to her own mother and a mother in relation to her own daughter. If the person realizes this, the person is accomplishing a synthesis in one’s self! This can be applied to personal roles as well as social ones. This even appears in popular sayings, like: “put yourself in the position of another”, meaning that you have to look through the eyes of the other person to be able to see the situation from their point of view. Then, by doing so, you will know how the other person feels and you will not judge the acts of the other person, but rather think or work together with the other person to find solutions to matters. That is what synthesis means, personally or socially. Only by working the differences or oppositions, can we find the common interest that will unite the people. That is the meaning of the “en masse”, of democracy to Whitman. How could he then despise the common man? The uneducated people, if these people were the ones who were building the nation, who were working to make it great as well as any educated men in the country did. Intellectuals and working people, rich and poor, or social or economic differences can not be a barrier to mutual understanding. Whitman did not even despise the criminals, whom he visited in prisons, as well as he visited sick people in hospitals. He was a guest at high class places, like the Tammany Hall, Libraries, Hotels, and also at low class places, like cheap bars and restaurants.

Many critics at his own time never understood why Whitman could prefer to live among uneducated people, such as bus drivers, workers in general, than with educated ones. But that was not a question of preference, that was a question of being aware of the many aspects of his personality, or of his “contradictions”. He was a man of the people; he mingled with them as one of them. His father was a carpenter, his mother was a housewife, his brother George was a soldier, another brother, Jeff, worked at the Water Works department. He grew up among working class people. He made his way to the journalistic world, but he never forgot his background. He became a poet, but he never forgot his past. Although he gained knowledge and taught himself the classics, and could be among high class people, he did not erase his life with the low class people. He did not use knowledge as a mask to hide himself and his past behind it. This is why he always called himself “one of the roughs”! He was a rough as well as a poet/journalist/intellectual. And for being so, a common person never felt uneasy in his presence. He would be warm and friendly with anyone, with the president as much as with the mechanic.

Let’s look then at another passage by Emerson, from the “The American Scholar” (p.3), which states that “The poet chanting was felt to be a divine man: henceforth the chant is divine also.” Divine is a word that is present all through the Leaves, from the first poem in the volume, “under laws divine”, to section 24 of “Song of Myself”, where the poet sings his own divinity: “Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch’d from,” and in many other passages where he sings “divine man”, “divine wife”, “divine materials”, “divine power”, the famous “divine average” in the “Song at Sunset” (from “Songs of Parting”), etc., until the end of the book, where the heavenly word divine appears in “Good Bye My Fancy” in the title of a poem called “The Rounded Catalogue Divine Complete”. As he sings in “Laws for Creations” (from “Autumn Rivulets”):

—

What do you suppose creation is?

What do you suppose will satisfy the soul, except to walk free and own no superior?

What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred ways, but that man or woman is as good as God?

And that there is no God any more divine than Yourself?

—

What else could the “true son of God” say of his fellowmen, of mankind itself, of the earth and nature? Being himself divine, and considering everybody else and everything else divine, there is no other way of viewing the whole world as that, as “the Divine Ship” (from “Old Age Echoes”), an idea that is conveyed in a poem (quoted below) from this book, which was added to the tenth edition of Leaves of Grass (1897), and which actually echoes that “[...] vast Rondure, swimming in space!” from “Passage to India” (Section 6):

—

One Thought Ever at the Fore

One thought ever at the fore -

That in the Divine Ship, the World, breasting Time and Space,

All Peoples of the globe together sail, sail the same voyage, are bound to the same destination. (WHITMAN, 2002, p.486).

—

Whitman could not separate his destiny from anybody else’s destiny on the face of this planet. He was there, more than a hundred years ago, worried about our common future on the globe, not leaving anybody out of the Divine Plan. For what “destination” would he be talking about? What destination would the “true Son of God”, “the Poet”, be pointing to us all, in justifying all the persons that inhabit this earth? He was necessarily talking about a Divine Destination, a common destiny, a common salvation. For the only deed worthy that name to the “true Son of God” is to take His brothers and sisters and parents and children to His Father, which is what the Son came here to do. As the poet sang in “Think of the Soul” (from “Poems Excluded from Leaves of Grass“): “Recall Christ, brother of rejected persons-brother of slaves, felons, idiots, and of insane and diseas’d persons.”, a mirror reflecting Walt himself, when he looked on his “[...] own crucifixion and bloody crowning.”, and especially during the Civil War, when he worked as a volunteer nurse at hospitals in New York and Washington, dedicating his efforts to help so many diseased and desperate soldiers, and after having been multiplied by the “grave of rock”, he saw “Corpses rise, gashes heal, fastenings roll from [him].“[...] troop forth replenish’d with supreme power, one of an average unending procession;” (Section 38, “Song of Myself”), reviving those lost souls in his poems, trying to save them from forgetfulness, from oblivion, which is a kind of death, in order to help them and himself be reborn, and finally enter heaven.

The point is that only by not being afraid of death, which means one is not afraid of life, can one live a good life. While a person is afraid of dying, this person is afraid of living, and when one is free from this fear, one can lead a fruitful, prosperous life. Prosperous is used here to refer to people who share what they have, no matter how little or how much that is. Because what really matters is that the person has an open heart and mind, ready to give them to others (when we give of ourselves, it is our true will that counts, not how much the gift cost). And to give of oneself to others is to share the love of one’s heart, and to share love is to unite, to bring the other person to heaven, which is similar to “Recall Christ”, who said that “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy selfe. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour [sic] [...]“. This is the ultimate task a person can have here on this vale of tears: when one is shown or is conscious of his divinity or deity, one must tell the others about it, one can not omit this to others: his neighbors. And although Whitman ran the risk of being misunderstood in his self-acknowledgement of being a true Son of God, he never gave in to criticism, and undertook his task with all the joy he felt in his broad loving heart. He assumed his position as poet and Son of God, which for him were the same.

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Allen (1955, p.121-2) writes of Whitman in his biography of the poet: “And by this time [1855] Whitman had met a learned and distinguished man in New York who was to have a deep and lasting influence on his mind. This was the owner and curator of the Egyptian Museum at 659 Broadway. [...] By 1855 Dr. Abbot had found his Museum such a burden that he was trying desperately to sell it to the city, and to help the cause Whitman wrote an article about it for a magazine called Life Illustrated. This article reveals not only an intimate knowledge of the collection, but also a surprising familiarity with the literature about Egyptology, including books recently published abroad. Undoubtedly Dr. Abbot had called Whitman’s attention to some or all of these publications-perhaps loaned him books in English-and the echoes, allusions, and references to Egyptology in Leaves of Grass are so numerous that one must conclude that Whitman read the works closely and took notes on them. In fact, some of the notes have survived.”

Whitman indicated that in Section 21 of “Song of Myself”, when he sang: “I chant the chant of dilation or pride”.

“That which is above is like that which is below, and that which is below is like that which is above, working the miracles of one. As all things were from one. Its father is the Sun and its mother the Moon.” Available at: <http://www.sofiatopia.org/equiaeon/emerald.htm> Accessed on October, 11^th, 2006.

Whitman said to Horace Traubel, one of his literary executors, these famous words, which are worth mentioning here, as he was asked by Traubel what he was supposed to do with Whitman’s last pieces of writing: “[...] So far as you may have anything to do with it I place upon you the injunction that whatever may be added to the Leaves shall be supplementary, avowed as such, leaving the book complete as I left it, consecutive to the point  I left off, marking always an unmistakable, deep down, unobliteratable division line. In the long run the world will do as it pleases with the book. I am determined to have the world know what I was pleased to do.” (WHITMAN, 2002, p.485).

The Holy Bible: King James Version, 1611 Edition. [A reprint of the edition of 1611.] Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2005. Romans; XIII, 9-10.

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King James Version. New York: American Bible Society: 1999; Bartleby.com, 2000. ON-LINE ED.: Published May 2000 by Bartleby.com; © Copyright Bartleby.com, Inc.  The Gospel according to St. John, Chapter 10: “Jesus Rejected by the Jews:

22 ¶ And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter.
And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon’s porch.
Then came the Jews round about him, and said unto him, How long dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly.
Jesus answered them, I told you, and ye believed not: the works that I do in my Father’s name, they bear witness of me.
But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you.
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:
and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.
I and my Father are one.
¶ Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him.
Jesus answered them, Many good works have I showed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?
The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.
Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods ?
If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the Scripture cannot be broken;
say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?
If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not.
But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works; that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.
¶ Therefore they sought again to take him; but he escaped out of their hand,
and went away again beyond Jordan into the place where John at first baptized; and there he abode.
And many resorted unto him and said, John did no miracle: but all things that John spake of this man were true.
And many believed on him there.”

Available at: http/www.bartleby.com/108/.  Accessed on: March, 13^th, 2007.

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