Comments on: Erin for 11/10

By: wordbreaker

wordbreaker — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:00:24 +0000

I agree with Allison on this one. As I blogged about, I feel that the 1892 version of Leaves only has so much weight to it in my mind because of the amount we’ve studied leading up to this. I think that there is no way to grasp quite the achievement the deathbed edition is without having the firm basis of Whitmanic study on which to stand. Especially when one looks at Leaves as such a living breathing text that has changed and morphed so much with time. It just feels like to only grasp onto one edition of Leaves is to do the rest of the body of work an injustice.

By: Allison Crerie

Allison Crerie — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:34:50 +0000

First and foremost:
“ARG being sponsored by Levi’s right now (the GO FORTH treasure hunt game that goes along with those commercials)”
WTF??!!!!!!! You may need to elaborate about this in class. And maybe I’m a “n00b” but what does ARG stand for?

Anyway…

I fully agree with this part of your post: “There’s so much layering between each of these editions that by picking one of them as the text that we should go with above all the other texts seems rather unfortunate and narrow minded.”

I feel as though the only proper way to read Whitman is to AT LEAST read both the 1855 and the deathbed edition. Without 1855, I feel, any reading of Walt Whitman is incomplete. To only read the 91 and 92 edition in isolation seems to me like only listening to the songs on the radio by a certain musical artist but ever actually buying (or illegally downloading) their CD. Much like that song on the radio, Whitman has become known through his deathbed edition, but we all know (as fans) that there is so much more depth and variety to his work than just this one edition.

And that’s my two cents.

By: tallersam

tallersam — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:38:21 +0000

I think it was briefly mentioned, either in class or in one of our readings, that the “Deathbed” edition wasn’t really any different from its immediate predecessor, but it’s super easy to miss single mentions like that so don’t worry!

The idea of picking and choosing from the different editions of LoG appeals to me a lot. I mean, yeah, it would be difficult to pick and choose to establish what you see as a good Whitman reading list. BUT, you’re already signing yourself up for lots of work and thought when you decide that there has to be some kind of definitive reading list beyond any single edition. So, I think it’s a wonderful idea.

Just glancing at the Whitman Archive site, I can get a glimpse of the narrative that, apparently, was intended. Actually, if you have Whitman’s biography in mind, it flows pretty darn well. Idealism starts it off, platonic love turns into “calamus” love, the Civil War poetry precedes the Lincoln elegies, etc. That aspect of the edition, I think, makes a strong case for it to be the “definitive” edition. I mean, it has it all. True, some of them are different from earlier editions, but this is put together in a way that screams “completion.” I wonder: is the order of the sections in the ’92 version the order in which they came out, or was the order altered to fit the biography?

That was really a curiosity-piquing post, Erin. Good stuff

By: jpike1

jpike1 — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:51:20 +0000

Erin,

It is interesting that you note the narrative pattern in the 1882 edition. That got me thinking that maybe Whitman wanted the narrative to reflect the progression in the thinking of Whitman as he became older. Since Drum-Taps is considered the climax in this narrative section, perhaps Whitman considered his Civil War years in the DC area to be the most important part of his existence. But, I too agree with you that there is not a definitive version of Leaves of Grass, because each one was affected by the times and culture that it was written in.