Since I did my final project on a revolutionary, Jose Marti, the memory of standing behind the wall on Sunken Road that the Confederate soldiers used has been on my mind a lot. Just imagining thousands of young soldiers lying dead was a very powerful image and really brought Whitman’s post-battle descriptions home to me. And it would not have been those whom we consider “the good guys” lying on the ground in front of Sunken Road. It was a deathtrap for Union soldiers. For me, that contributed to  an already very powerful image that can easily be applied to a revolution and, in light of my recent research and writing, made the weight of Jose Marti’s ideas apparent.

During his life, Marti was calling his fellow countrymen to revolt against Spanish rule over Cuba. Even though Spain was weak compared to the other major European powers at that time, they far outstripped the military strength of the Cuban forces. When he said that he wanted his people to fight with him, Marti knew that he was potentially putting them in the same situation as the Union soldiers were in at Fredericksburg. They were the people who we consider the ‘good guys.’ They were fighting against colonial tyranny. It just casts war in a whole new light to go to a battlefield.

I’m pretty new to Google docs, so my paper looks pretty intimidating until you put it in Word. Well, it’s still long, but not quite as scary.

     Anyway, for this week’s question about Whitman’s influence, I decided to focus on Robert Lowell’s For the Union Dead. In it, I think the poet takes a very balanced approach to Whitman. Lowell is not blind to the faults of Whitman: For the Union Dead observes the latent, awkward racism that has been a characteristic of both Whitman and the states throughout their years. However, a very Whitmanic idea about the necessity of memory is also beautifully articulated. The Whitman that shines through in Lowell’s poem is the emotive spirit of the country that struggles to survive in a time that often emphasizes utility over beauty.

     So, first things first, to get the less fun things out of the way: Whitman was not above racism. We’ve read stuff both in and out of class about it and, even though it hurts, it’s true. Lowell’s description of the relief of the African-American soldiers as “… a fishbone / in the city’s throat” expresses the nature of the racism in both Whitman and the United States very well. It is not too difficult for a city board to approve a mural depicting the heroics of long-dead former slaves, just as Whitman was able to write about his empathy for slaves in the comfort of his own room. That’s the meat of the fish, the good taste of stepping outside the box.

     Unfortunately, it is when the perspective shifts from the idealized to the personal that the unexpected and uncomfortable bone reveals itself. To the father of Colonel Shaw, the soldiers that fought and died with his son are less than human, a regiment of individual men all summed up in one word, and were so thoughtless that they did not even allow him the courtesy of burying his heroic progeny. According to our Higgins reading for this week, one of the fish bones for Whitman was the Fifteenth Amendment. An imagined slave was virtuous enough to warrant praise, but a real-life African-American was not trustworthy enough to be included in the country’s body of voters. I believe that this racism reinforces the importance of memory that Lowell’s speaker emphasizes.

     A recurring idea in For the Union Dead is the return of the repressed. Even though the museum housing primitive animals has been knocked down, “yellow dinosaur steamshovels” still populate the land. Even though the overt monument to the animal kingdom has been destroyed, “Everywhere, / giant finned cars nose forward like fish.” People are trying to forget their less-civilized roots, but they continue to manifest themselves. That applies to the city’s racism; they try to drown out the memory with a mural. That forgetfulness is what perpetuates the problem though: those that do not remember the less-than-savory aspects of history are doomed to repeat them.

     The pathetic substitute for a World War II monument, the advertisement for Mosler Safe Company, illustrates both the necessity for memory and the disturbing lack of it. The inspiration for the ad is nothing less than the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan, a most grave subject that must never be forgotten. However, instead of reminding passersby of the horrific nature of war, the picture emphasizes what was preserved through the atomic blast. There is no mention of the thousands that died, both immediately and later on, because of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The positive spin of the ad might make an unwary pedestrian wonder if the bomb was really that bad after all. Apply the ripple effect, and eventually the resulting callousness might result in an atomic bombing that was taken too lightly.

     Whitman saw his Memoranda notes as a necessity, preserving the memory of what the unsung foot soldiers suffered through during the Civil War so that their lives, and hopefully the lives of future soldiers, would not be uselessly thrown away by disconnected generals with a romantic view of war. It is a personal perspective that stands in contrast to the afore-mentioned racism and exposes it for the terrible idea that it is. The capitalistic call for utilitarianism would do away with these difficult memories, in the name of efficiency and the bottom line, but Whitman is the yawp that demands their remembrance. While he was not above reproach himself, Whitman is the voice that calls us to move beyond our obstacles by going through them instead of around them.

     The mythic aspect of Leaves of Grass is a great strength of the work, because of the durability of the myth. The reason that we are still quoting Greek myths thousands of years after their inception is because they still resonate with our human condition, despite our societal differences. At the same time though, do those myths inspire us to action? It can be very easy for us to put those myths, and their lessons, into a case and admire them for their artistic beauty and nothing else: “O you temples fairer than lilies pour’d over by the rising sun! / O you fables spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known, mounting to heaven!” (531).

     The same could very easily apply to Leaves of Grass. The poet-speaker Whitman creates is mythically larger than life, and intends to become ensconced in the collective cultural consciousness. However, the stance that he takes to inspire can distance him so much that he loses his connection to reality. Without that bridge, Leaves of Grass becomes compartmentalized as “Towers of fables immortal fashion’d from mortal dreams” (531).

     Another way in which Leaves of Grass might unwittingly send itself off into the realm of irrelevance is its naiveté concerning the relationships between people-groups. Within the confines of Passage to India, it is simple to see the United States as “[t]he road between Europe and Asia” that will ultimately bring about the “[y]ear of the marriage of continents, climates and oceans!” (533, 535). The end result is already in sight, but the path between here and there is outlined only in the most general of terms. The speaker of Passage to India essentially ignores both the petty differences that separate people and the important disputes that drive people apart. It is just assumed that the poet, the central power in the poem, will ensure that “[a]ll these hearts as of fretted children shall be sooth’d, / All affection shall be fully responded to, the secret shall be told” (534).

     Fortunately, Passage to India ends on a note that reaches above and beyond, but not at the expense of leaving the world behind. Whitman shows himself to be aware of the line he is walking when he writes the incredible penultimate stanza of Passage:

 Passage, immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins!

Away O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!

Cut the hawsers—haul out—shake out every sail!

Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough?

Have we not grovel’d here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes?

Have we not darken’d and dazed ourselves with books long enough? (539)

 The poem is aware that it can become lost in itself; because of that awareness, Whitman is able to pull the reader back into reality. In order to accomplish the unity written about in Passage to India, action is required, and action is the final imperative of the poem. I believe that it is that final awareness, the poet leaving his room and working in the hospitals, which preserves the potential for the unity that Leaves of Grass ultimately calls for.

     In the 1855 Leaves of Grass, there are no distinct section breaks in the first, poem. Instead, there are different sections that have, throughout the years, been given unofficial names (such as the famous “twenty-ninth bather” vignette). In the first edition of Leaves, “the murder in cold blood of four hundred and twelve young men” is given the unofficial title of “the tale of a jetblack sunrise” (66). The name is repeated at the end of the vignette as well, giving it a very “folk-tale” feel.

     The 1982 version of the vignette deals with titles differently. By the last edition of Leaves, the now-named Song of Myself has been divided up in fifty-two different sections. The sections, none of which have names, give the poem more of a King James Bible feeling. Of course, this fits with Whitman’s desire to write a new sort of scripture for America to model itself after. However, the unofficial, but more distinctive, name of the vignette is lost. The events lose their connection with the weather in the new version; however, this reduction to the name of “section 34” puts more focus on the speaker of the poem.

     The only part of the 1892 version of the vignette that really differs from its earlier incarnation is the opening section. Originally, the speaker is skipped over as the subject shifts from the Alamo to our vignette: “I tell not the fall of Alamo…. Not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo, / The hundred and fifty are dumb yet at Alamo. / Hear now the tale of a jetblack sunrise” (66). The only thing overtly emphasized about the speaker is what he does not know. The source of the story remains a mystery, and its credibility is questionable: if the speaker does not know about something as famous as the Alamo, why should the reader trust what he has to say about something far less well-known, whose location and date is not even given? In the story’s 1892 version, the speaker comes across as far more authoritative.

     In its “Deathbed” incarnation, our story begins like this:

Now I tell what I knew in Texas in my early youth,

(I tell not the fall of Alamo,

Not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo,

The hundred and fifty are dumb yet at Alamo,)

’Tis the tale of the murder in cold blood of four hundred and twelve young men. (226).

Here, the speaker is coming from a much more authoritative place. The author knows the vignette himself, rather than having simply heard it from someone else. In fact, the word “know” is ambiguous enough that it could be taken to mean that the speaker witnessed these events himself. Now, with the unofficial title removed, the story has significance because the speaker has given it significance. The significance is shifted from the story’s connection to the weather (“a jetblack sunrise”) to its connection to the author (“What I knew in Texas”) (66, 226). By 1892, the poem’s speaker has become specifically revealed as the source of knowledge, and the tale has become less nebulous. The earlier folk-tale has been replaced with a New Testament-style speaker that recounts events from earlier in his life.

When the question of Whitman’s feelings for Lincoln was posed, my mind immediately jumped to consider the “Calamus” love that we’ve talked about so much. I really don’t think that Lincoln would fall into that category for Uncle Walt though, and I think it can be explained both biographically and through literary analysis. Biographically speaking, Lincoln simply doesn’t fit the profile of men that Whitman was interested in, at least as far as I know. Again and again, we’ve read about Whitman seeking after younger men: Lincoln was about ten years older than Whitman. He would not have been the type that Whitman could nurture, which seems to have been a common thread in the poet’s love life. Building on that, Lincoln was too established of a man to fit into the anonymous mold set by Whoever you Are, Holding me Now in Hand. Whitman knew exactly who Lincoln was and what he wanted from him. Lincoln could not be nurtured because he himself was already in the position of nurturer, both as a father and as president.

With those things in mind, I contend that it is a good thing that Whitman and Lincoln never met personally. From his distant viewpoint, Whitman was able to freely paint Lincoln with the colors that he wanted to. Not to say that Lincoln was not worthy of what Whitman said of him; after all, the man did incredible things. Personal meetings have a way of bursting bubbles though: what if Lincoln had offended Whitman or, worse, not approved of him? What would have happened to the symbol that Whitman had turned Lincoln into? That being said, I think Whitman’s feelings for Lincoln are best seen within the pastoral framework.

Obviously, Whitman and Lincoln would not fit cleanly into the traditional shepherd-shepherdess, Arcadia-occupying model. However, there are other aspects of the genre that ring true here. For one, Lincoln is a muse for Whitman: he inspires what is (for better or for worse) the man’s most well-known verse. Whitman can stand on his street corner, stare at Lincoln as he rides by, and write about the emotional turmoil that the man inspires in him.

As with the traditional shepherdesses though, Lincoln is idealized to the point of having no voice of his own. He receives Whitman’s stares, but never answers back verbally. It can very easily be argued that Whitman is in love with the idea of Lincoln, the symbol that he makes Lincoln into, rather than the man himself. As with Dante, Petrarch, Garcilaso de la Vega, et al, and their female muses, readers are left wondering what the effect on the poetry would have been if Whitman had actually had relationships with the man whom he set up on such a pedestal. While we will never have an answer to this question, we are left with some amazing poetry, and that seems like a wonderful consolation prize to me!

Martí was integral in motivating Cuba to separate from Spanish rule and establish itself, so it is not surprising that he would identify with Whitman’s hopes for the United States. This article is very long, so I will do my best to translate the opening paragraph that reads like this in Spanish (so that Brady can correct me ):

“«Parecía un dios anoche, sentado en un sillón de terciopelo rojo, todo el cabello blanco, la barba sobre el pecho, las cejas como un bosque, la mano en un cayado.» Esto dice un diario de hoy del poeta Walt Whitman, anciano de setenta años a quien los críticos profundos, que siempre son los menos, asignan puesto extraordinario en la literatura de su país y de su época. Sólo los libros sagrados de la antigüedad ofrecen una doctrina comparable, por su profético lenguaje y robusta poesía, a la [de]… este poeta viejo, cuyo libro pasmoso está prohibido.”

“‘He resembled a god last night, seated in a chair of red velvet, the complete white gentleman, his beard on his stomach, his eyebrows like a forest, his hand on a staff.’ This is what one of today’s newspapers says about the poet Walt Whitman, an old man of 70 years whom the most profound critics, who are always the fewest in number, give an exalted position in the literature of his country and his age. Only the sacred books of antiquity offer a comparable doctrine, through his prophetic language and robust poetry, to that of… this old poet whose astonishing book is banned.”

I also found a poem about Whitman by the Nicaraguan writer Rubén Darío (1867-1916). Darío is regarded as the father of the Latin American “modernism” movement (which pre-dated the English-language movement and vastly differed in its ideas and focuses) and this poem was published in his collection Azul, which is seen as the archetypal “modernismo” work. The idealized way in which Whitman is described is characteristic of the modernismo style, which I think goes with what we’ve observed about early Whitman poetry. Not surprisingly, this poem is called Walt Whitman, and reads like this in the Spanish:

En su país de hierro vive el gran viejo,
Bello como un patriarca, sereno y santo.
Tiene en la arruga olímpica de su entrecejo
Algo que impera y vence con noble encanto.

Su alma del infinito parece espejo;
Son sus cansados hombros dignos del manto;
Y con arpa labrada de un roble añejo,
Como un profeta nuevo canta su canto.

Sacerdote que alienta soplo divino,
Anuncia, en el futuro, tiempo mejor.
Dice al águila: «¡Vuela!»; «¡Boga!», al marino,

Y «¡Trabaja!», al robusto trabajador.
¡Así va ese poeta por su camino,
Con su soberbio rostro de emperador!

And here is my attempt at translation:

In his iron country lives the great old man,

Beautiful like a patriarch, serene and holy.

In the Olympic crease between his eyebrows

He has something that prevails and defeats with noble charm.

His infinite soul is like a mirror;

His tired shoulders are worthy of a cloak;

And with a carved harp from an ancient oak,

He sings his song like a new prophet.

Priest that cheers on the divine gust,

He announces, in the future, a better time.

He says to the eagle: “Fly!”: “Row!” to the sailor, 

And “Work!” to the robust worker.

So that poet goes on his way,

With his magnificent emperor’s face!

Any thoughts or observations?

     The closing years of the eighteenth century yielded an innovation in firearms technology: the digging of grooves into musket barrels. The grooves, dubbed rifling, put a spin on the discharged round: this increased the effective accurate range of the weapon. However, these weapons continued to fire round bullets until the middle of the nineteenth century. According to an article by Paul Dougherty and Major Herbert Collins, “Although accuracy could be improved with the use of a rifled barrel, the tit of the bullet/barrel needed to be tight to impart a spin on the projectile. This made reloading too slow for the standard military arm” (Wound Ballistics 403). Due to the requirement of being small enough to quickly slide down the rifled barrel, the accuracy of the bullets was hampered.  However, in 1847, French officer Captain Claude Minie developed a new sort of round that seemed to solve this loading problem. He created a bullet shaped like a cylinder that tapered to a cone at the front end. The base of the bullet was hollow, which, according to historian Charles Worman, expanded “by the force of the exploding gunpowder, causing the bullet base to expand and fill and grip the rifling grooves” (Firearms in American History 71). Harper’s Ferry assistant master armorer, and later superintendent of Confederate armories, James Burton later improved on this design, but history has given the bullet the moniker of “Minie ball.” The Minie ball essentially solved the aforementioned bullet and barrel problems and truly took advantage of barrel rifling. In the Union army during the Civil War, these advances were most often made apparent through the use of Springfield M1861 and Enfield .577 rifle-muskets.

     The name of the M1861 model gives the year of the Springfield model’s creation, but it was largely based on the company’s M1855. Both models boasted forty inch, round barrels with three rifling grooves and shot a .58 caliber bullet. The gun’s caliber was a compromise between two previously-used sizes; .54 caliber rounds, which avoided excessive recoil but lacked accuracy, and the increased accuracy of .69 caliber rounds, which was counterbalanced by the excessive weight required for guns to be able to fire them. It could also be fitted with an intimidating triangular bayonet. However, despite contracting private gun makers produce M1861s, the Union army still faced a shortage of up-to-date firearms. For example, although Lincoln’s government contracted more than a million rifle-muskets in 1861, meaningful quantities of firearms did not begin to arrive in soldiers hands until two years later. In order to fulfill these weapon needs, muskets and rifles were purchased from a large number of foreign sources.

Springfield M1861

     Of these, the British “long” Enfield Pattern 1853 was the most sought-after. Perhaps the secret to its success with Union soldiers stemmed from its similarities to the Springfield models: the Enfield had a thirty-nine inch, round barrel, with three grooves serving as rifling. The Enfield officially shot a .577 caliber round which, according to Louis Garavaglia and Charles Worman’s Firearms of the American West, “would also work in the U.S. .58 caliber rifles. Depending on actual bullet diameter, U.S. .58 caliber Minie bullets… would work in the Enfields as long as the bore was reasonably clean” (167). Both the Springfield and the Enfield were muzzle-loaders, meaning that a rod was required to push single rounds into place in the barrel before they could be fired.

Enfield 1853

     Both the Springfield models and the Enfield expelled their single rounds with a percussion cap, described in Firearms in American History as “a small copper cup with the fulminate inside its base covered with a tin foil disk and sealed with a bit of shellac to make it waterproof” (44). These caps worked much better in poor weather than did the previously-favored flintlock system, although some on the frontier were reluctant to abandon their tried-and-true mechanism. The individual cartridges, containing the round and necessary gunpowder, were sealed in paper. When the guns were loaded, the paper was torn open in some way and the powder was poured down the barrel. An amusing legend states that, in the early stages of the war, four good front teeth were required for enlistment. This way, the soldier would be able to quickly bite open cartridges, instead of having to open them with his fingers (Firearms in American History 109). Next, a ramrod, which had to be withdrawn and replaced, was used to shove the round down. Finally, a percussion cap was placed on the gun’s nipple, the gun was cocked, and it was ready to be fired. Firearms in American History gives the normal rate of fire for these guns as “about three rounds per minute under good conditions” (109). Unfortunately, due to the powder residue left by each Minie ball, the rifle muskets would become difficult to fire after around twenty shots if they were not cleaned. Here is a video of a Civil War-era rifle was fired:

     These favorable qualities contributed to the rifle-musket’s effective range far out-doing previously-favored smoothbore weapons. Unfortunately, since these forward strides had been made so close to the advent of the Civil War, the leaders on both sides did not immediately recognize the pitfalls of employing smoothbore-era military tactics in the age of Minie balls and rifled barrels. Smoothbore weapons, such as those employed in the Revolutionary War, only had an effective range of about fifty yards, according to Dougherty and Collins. In contrast, rifle-muskets had an effective range of between 500 and 1,000 yards. With that increased accuracy in mind, it is easy to see how the attrition battle of lining troops up less than 100 yards apart to shoot at one another was less effective in 1863 than in the previous century. However, mechanically speaking, these Springfield and Enfield rifle-muskets of the Civil War performed excellently in the workhorse role they were given in the war. Unfortunate for them was that the march of technology did not stop with them, and both models were soon rendered obsolete.
 

Works Cited

1853 3-Band Enfield Musket, .58 Caliber. Taylor’s & Co., Inc., Winchester. Taylor’s & Co., Inc.. Web. 20 October 2009.

Dougherty, Paul and Herbert Eidt. “Wound Ballistics: Minié Ball vs. Full Metal Jacketed Bullets—A Comparison of Civil War and Spanish-American War Firearms.” Military Medicine 174, 4:403 (2009): 403-407. Academic Search Complete. Web. 16 Oct. 2009.

Garavaglia, Louis and Charles Worman. Firearms of the American West: 1803-1865. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984. Print.

Springfield 1861. Myra Museum, Grand Forks. Civil War History: The Blog Between the States. Web. 20 October 2009.

Worman, Charles. Firearms in American History. Yardly: Westholme, 2007. Print.

     As we have seen in his relationships generally regarded as “more than just friendly,” Whitman expected an incredible amount of emotional energy from those he was close to. For a time, the passionate O’Conner seems to have fulfilled those expectations. According to the account of O’Conner’s wife, Ellen Calder, he was never reluctant to challenge Whitman’s ideas and, perhaps, would even intentionally provoke the poet. Interestingly, it was because of an issue that Whitman was more ambivalent about that the two men went their separate ways: slavery. Whitman’s more middle-of-the-road stance, which saw him as reluctant for society to set former slaves on the same level as those of European descent, did not match the abolitionist sentiments of O’Conner. However, when it came to his allegedly more intimate friendships, Whitman did not tend to gravitate towards personalities like O’Conner.

     Instead of intellectuals, Whitman tended to become romantically attached to younger men of the working class. Some of the letters assigned for this week center around Peter Doyle, a former soldier who apparently did not think very highly of Leaves of Grass. It is intriguing that Whitman was attracted to someone that disregarded such a large part of his life, namely his pre-war poetry. Doyle was perhaps symbolic of Whitman’s ideal person, but seems to have been unaware of the message that Whitman sought to communicate in his early poetry. Perhaps it is through Doyle’s dislike of Leaves that we can explain his eventual separation from Whitman. When one ignores poems like Song of Myself, the passion of the poet behind the words is also missed. However, why did Whitman still expect so much of Doyle, even though he was obviously not ignorant of the man’s opinions? Through his demands, Whitman became like the father whom he had heard about so many times from young soldiers: the man that had driven his son away because he asked too much of him.

     How does all this reflect Whitman’s relationship with his readers? Well, in his early work, Whitman demands of his readers that they acknowledge and reciprocate his passion for life and people. It is most appreciated when the reader questions and challenges it, as our class has found. This does not apply as much to the more somber tone of Drum Taps though, which appears simpler at face value. It must be seen in light of the earlier work as well though, and so Whitman’s passions shine through. So, if the reader’s wits are kept about him, Whitman becomes an infinitely-interesting companion. However, he can quickly become too much for those that do not at least have some idea of his full scope.

     The poet here, a very thinly disguised picture of Whitman himself (an anti-academic, the poet is at one point referred to as a “bard out of Manhattan”), is the torch-bearer for change (423). He has both the first and the last word in the poem and is able to fully articulate what is hinted at by the child and rejected by the father. The child is able to glimpse what the poet knows, and expresses a desire to follow the anti-materialist, country-spanning path of the poet, but the father’s final word overshadows his. Here, the father is the voice of people content with the establishment, those that want nothing to upset what has been built thus far. However, the father is paralyzed by that love of the establishment, so that he will not even rise up to defend it. He is paralyzed by what he sees directly in front of him, so that he is unable to see future threats that must be defended against.

     The pennant and the banner occupy similar roles, although the banner’s small size probably explains why it is the one to speak to the child and the banner speaks to the poet. The banner serves as the connection between the world of the child, which wonders “what is that in the sky beckoning to me with long finger?” and the banner that of “Demons and death then I sing” (421, 425). The banner is the recipient of the poet’s focus and seems to be dependent on the poet for direction: “Point this day [O bard out of Manhattan], leaving all the rest, to us over all—and yet we know not why, / For what are we, mere strips of cloth profiting nothing, / Only flapping in the wind?” (423). It shows Whitman’s high view of the national poet, who is able to infuse objects with meaning, including the meaning that inspires people to war. The poet does not create democracy here, but he is the force that spurs people to enjoy and defend it. He gives direction to those that dare look up from the pavement and money exchanges in front of them.

     In previous centuries, the dialogue poem had been an oft-used format that generally facilitated a discussion between the soul and the body. Generally, things came down in favor of the soul, reflecting the strong Christian influence of the time. While it’s reasonable to assume that Whitman would be on the side of the body, the answer is much grayer than that. While the poet obviously comes down on the side of the physical, with his call to arms, he also is outside of the world. He calls for a rejection of what the world deems worthwhile, such as money, while extolling the abstract idea of democracy. The poet is connected enough to sense the currents of the world, but separated enough to be in touch with the world of ideas and souls. In other words, the poet is a kosmos.

     As the war (and our reading in the LOA) began, Whitman’s view of the soldiers seems to have been similar to what it was in 1855, with his descriptions of the returning, defeated Union soldiers after the first Battle of Bull Run remaining pretty general. These men, lacking “the proud boasts with which you went forth,” do not have names (732). The act of naming someone, or something, signifies an affection that Whitman does not yet seem to feel for these men; instead, they are “queer looking objects” (733). Not surprisingly, this distance rapidly shrinks when Whitman begins to search for his brother in the hospitals.

     By December of 1862, Whitman had begun to see the faces of the soldiers he was writing and hearing about. Beginning with the “Back to Washington” note, Whitman begins to give names to the soldiers he had previously left untitled. “D.F. Russell” and “Charles Miller” are sitting there, with Whitman watching over them (738). That exact specificity does not last though; a mere six months later, Whitman reduces the soldier’s names to abbreviations.

     The abbreviations are not a sign of a returning disconnect between Whitman and the men: they convey the man’s initials, as we as his unit and where the unit was raised from (presumably around where the soldier was from). Instead, the reduction of names abbreviations reflects how there were simply too many men that Whitman was in contact with for him to convey how he truly felt for each individual. Despite the grand declarations he made about himself, our great poet of democracy had to deal with the limitations of being one man.

     Whitman deals with that forced namelessness in an interesting way though: instead of bemoaning his powerlessness, Whitman turns it into a glorification of the working-class foot soldier. However, while in “Unnamed Remains the Bravest Soldier” Whitman seems to solve his own problem and put a plug in for his favorite team, to do it requires him to put that old distance between himself and the men. Like Whitman’s captive hunters that are betrayed and slaughtered in Song of Myself, the bravest soldier here is also unfailingly young: “Our manliest—our boys—our hardy darlings; no picture gives them. Likely, the typic one of them (standing, no doubt, for hundreds, thousands)…” (748). That distance turns out to be more the rule than the exception with Whitman’s treatment of the Confederate soldiers.

     Although it is admirable that Whitman did not appear to show preference for northern soldiers when he was moving through the hospitals, he does in the written descriptions he gives of soldiers. With a couple of exceptions, the personal descriptions he gives of the soldiers he encounters are of Union men, with some men warranting entire notes for themselves. Not so for the Confederates: they remain almost entirely faceless. This should not be surprising, since Whitman was spending his time in Union army hospitals, that doubtlessly gave preference to Union wounded over Confederate wounded, but it shows another of Whitman’s limitations.  While he may have celebrated himself as containing galaxies, Whitman was very quickly shown by the war what size he was. It warrants mention though that, while these boundaries may have affected Whitman’s writings, they drove him to physically do work that belied those limits.

Perhaps Dr. Scanlon should offer more video close analysis?

MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.

Both poems express the rather repulsive idea that people are unknowingly connected through the parasites that plague them, but they cast it in different (albeit sexual) lights. For Donne, the unity represented by the flea is a positive: it is a sign of the good times that are (he hopes) soon to arrive. The connection is between the speaker and the girl he’s pursuing, exclusively; even though it has a sexual undertone, it is a monogamous sexuality. Donne’s lines are also light-hearted: he wisely knows that pick-up lines are good only insofar as they can make the girl laugh. He turns the flea into a holy thing, a carrier of souls and a tragic victim. However, that “marriage bed and marriage temple” does not fulfill its normal 17th century role: it is not a sign of re-birth and re-production. Instead, it’s end is pleasure.

Basically all of those things contrast with what Whitman has to say in his poem. Until the afore-mentioned line, This Compost! has a very dark and serious tone. After reflecting on how many sickening bodies the land has taken into itself, he speaker has sworn that he will no longer give himself to the land as he once did. The land has been promiscuous with the “drunkards and gluttons of so many generations.” The mite, the parasite, marks a disease-born connection between people. There is nothing holy about what has been done to establish that connection; like the land, the mite has prostituted itself out. However, after the mite-mentioning line, the tone changes and focuses on (exactly what Donne’s amorous speaker was hoping to avoid mentioning) reproduction. Once the cycle of things has come around, the ground overcomes its past and is blameless, perhaps like the literal prostitute that Whitman writes to in other poems. Whitman doesn’t seem to cast himself as a redeemer here though: the earth has healed itself. This emphasis on cycles/seasons and the power of the earth are another oft-repeated Whitman themes, with Song of Myself coming to mind immediately.

Why these distinct differences (I mean, besides the obvious, 100+year gap and several thousand miles of geographical difference)? Well, Donne’s poem doesn’t seem to have much significance beyond the woman he’s writing to: it is simply not one of his wider-scope poems. This seems much more within the realm of possible explanations, since he never styled himself as “England’s poet” the way Whitman did in the Union. Of course, it’s always wise to have historical context in mind when one reads a poem, but with Whitman, it is pretty much a requisite when reading his poems. In the immediate wake of the Civil War, the regeneration of the earth after it has imbibed so much “foul liquid” is symbolic of the country putting itself back together after years of in-fighting. This is obviously a much more somber topic than Donne’s peace-time pursuits of good times. So guys, perhaps the next time you find a six-legged pest clinging to your leg or arm, you should see what you can relate it to.

When I read the book, the biography famous;

And is this, then, (said I,) what the author calls a

man’s life?

And so will some one, when I am dead and gone,

write my life? (268)

These lines remain the same in the later version of the poem, showing that Whitman’s conviction about biography (and biographers) does not change. However, there is more of Whitman’s trickery afoot here!

     Through Leaves of Grass, and all its editions, Whitman is constructing a new sort of biography: it is both autobiography and biography of the Union (but I will just be looking at it as autobiography here). By creating a private conversation with the reader, through parenthetical revelations, Whitman seeks to draw the reader into accepting his new biographical form. Confusion arises in the following line though: “(As if any man really knew aught of my life…” (268). On the surface, it seems to be discounting what other men might write about him, but it forces the reader to wonder if Whitman himself, as autobiographer, really knows about his own life.

     In the 1867 version, the poem ends with the line “As if you, O cunning Soul, did not keep your secret well!)” (268). This distances the reader, by turning the parenthetical information into a dialogue between Whitman and the soul. It also gives Whitman the appearance of knowing more about himself than other men possibly could: who else could know the secret of his soul? So, again, Whitman is tearing down barriers with one hand, while at the same time he builds them back up with the other hand. The changes made in the later edition of When I Read give a very different picture though:

Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of

my real life,

Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections

I seek for my own use to trace out here.) (171)

     Here, Whitman is almost on the same level as the reader: there is no dialogue between him and the source of secrets. This also comes close to putting him in the same boat as the traditional biographer that he blasts in the earlier part of the poem. Whitman still stands out though; while his knowledge may be incomplete, his chosen biographical form is not confined to mere retellings of historical facts. Poetry can see history call within its walls, but it extends far beyond textbooks. Poetry is open in a way that allows for “diffused faint clews and indirections” (171). That openness can lead to frustration if one is searching for specific answers, but Whitman sure does love his mysteries. What is the use that he refers to in the last line? At the very least, it notes more separation between author and reader and tempts the reader to search for them in the rest of his writing.

     This frustration appears initially in the first poem of the collection, In Paths Untrodden, when the speaker says that he cannot express himself fully in the company of others: “for in this secluded spot I can respond / as I would not dare elsewhere” (268). He will “tell the secret of my nights and days, / To celebrate the need of comrades” (268). However, in order to tell those secrets, he must separate himself from most people, including many that wish to be close to him. He must discern who is worthy and who is not, which requires that he expose his inmost self to those that might end up harming him. In Scented Herbage of My Breast, Whitman talks of the beauty that comes from putting himself out there, but he first complains of the pains that precede it: “You are often more bitter than I can bear, you burn and / sting me” (269). Indeed, death itself becomes analogous to love for Whitman: pain becomes one with pleasure.

     This pain often manifests itself as fear: he voices a fear that what he loves might elude him repeatedly throughout the Calamus collection. Are You the New Person Drawn toward Me? shows the narrator questioning whether he is one able to give the love that he is so sure of at other times. On the other hand, in Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances, the narrator is so unsure of the existence of anything outside himself that he has to talk to himself, sounding a bit like one of Plato’s dialogues in the process: “The skies of day and night, colors, densities, forms, may-be / these are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions” (274). That poem ultimately ends when the narrator is satisfied with the company of another, but the feeling that is so satisfying then brings more death with it: the end of words.

     Silence may suffice for the narrator when he is in the company of his beloved, but a lack of verbal communication breeds insecurities in other situations. Still, the sacrifice of words is required in To a Stranger: “I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit / alone, or wake at night alone” (280). With that poem being an exception, solitude tends to be negative for Whitman. Even at the end of the Calamus collection, there is an uncertainty about the existence of the redeeming companionship that Whitman has repeatedly espoused. In Full of Life Now, the collection’s closing poem, Whitman writes to future readers about his message, “Fancying how happy you were if I could be with you and / become your comrade” (287). However, the poem, and thus the collection, ends with confusing language: “Be it as if I were with you. (Be not too certain but I am / now with you)” (287). Whitman leaves readers questioning whether it is they that he is addressing, and if his message even extends beyond the words on the pages in front of them. So it goes with our poet of contradiction and questions:

Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught

Me, behold!

Already you see I have escaped from you. (271)

wheat… gossip of flames… clack of sticks

cooking my meals” (Song of Myself 53).

A bravura can be either a noun or an adjective. As a noun, it is generally associated with music, meaning a ”Brilliant technique or style in performance… [or] A piece or passage that emphasizes a performer’s virtuosity.” However, it can also be more general, signifying ”A showy manner or display” (The American Heritage Dictionary).

The word functions similarly as an adjective, with it’s musical meaning being “Of, relating to, or being a brilliant performance technique or style.” More generally, it means “Showy; ostentatious” (read: Victorian) (The American Heritage Dictionary).

Since, within the context of the poem, “bravura” is referring to bird songs, here is footage of the lyre bird as it busts out a mating song, which even comes with some awesome British narration. It’s not surprising that Whitman would use this word to describe the bird song that he hears. To him, nature is divine, and it’s creatures can’t help but sing at that level. The ornateness of the ”bravuras of the birds” contrasts with the simplicity of the terms that follow it, but together they form a sort of uncivilized, bustling metropolis.

I know that Whitman refers to birds when using the word but, as a fan of heavy metal, something else came to mind when I read this definition: guitar solos. So, here is a video of Yngwie Malsteen, the most showy and ostentatious guitar player I can think of. I also found what was doubtlessly one of the inspirations for “This is Spinal Tap,” an 11-minute live version of Van Halen’s “Eruption,” but I decided to spare you guys.

“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles.”

When I read those words, I was reminded of a passage from Eliot’s poem, Ash Wednesday:

“And I who am here dissembled

Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love

To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.”

     Initially, this connection is a bit surprising since Whitman isn’t exactly mentioned in “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” He doesn’t fit the mold of Eliot’s typical role model (too straightforward for the metaphysicals, too concrete for the symbolists, etc) and Eliot does not fit the profile of the American that we find in Whitman (not very rugged and lacking a beard). In these two passages, the poets are speaking about their legacies: what do they have to say about what they will leave to posterity?

     Whitman does not break character in the least in this discussion of his death. Through his physical burial, he will become a part of the nature cycle that he extols over and over in Song of Myself. His body will be equal to the grass, which is no better or no worse than the horses eating it that give rides to wicked and divine men. Death is a return to the earth that Whitman worships, in contrast to the Christian tradition that had dominated in America until that point. However, while the Christian afterlife has no place in Whitman’s scheme, his spirit will still linger on. Through the grass, Whitman is accessible to all people. That accessibility is perhaps the crux of the differences between Whitman and Eliot: as he attempts to create a new “American scripture,” Whitman must become all things to all men, while Eliot intentionally steeps his verse in an erudite tradition only accessible to the learned.

     By fleeing to Europe and embedding allusions to complex writers of the past in his poetry, Eliot essentially did the opposite of what Whitman proposed that American poets after him would do. The “posterity of the desert” that Eliot offers himself to does more than separate him geographically from Whitman’s grass: it marks him as a part of the religious tradition that Whitman would have America abandon. Within the larger context of the poem, it’s seen that Eliot refers here to Israel, and more particularly to the Christian tradition that sprang from Israel. Eliot’s biography fits with this, as Ash Wednesday was written after he joined the Anglican Church, again putting him on the path that Whitman stepped off.

     In short, the differences between these two men might be best illustrated through their radically different views of themselves and their abilities. Whitman’s very title, Song of Myself, sets him as the beginning and the end of things, as being capable of bestowing meaning. Eliot, however, is not capable of such an accomplishment; in this poem, he generally does not directly speak to God, the giver of purpose. Instead, he speaks to a female intermediary that he hopes will petition God on his behalf. In the end, Eliot might reach the divine, but it’s more a prayer than a barbaric yawp: “Suffer me not to be separated / And let my cry come unto Thee.”

“Ash Wednesday.” The Highland Shepherd. 6 September 2009. http://www.msgr.ca/msgr-7/ash_wednesday_…;.

     The way in which the tale is told stands out: with the “Hear now the tale… of the murder in cold blood,” the narrator keeps the booming, larger-than-life tone of the rest of Song. It is a tone that brings Beowulf to mind, instead of a Victorian or Puritan voice. Therefore, it is fitting for Whitman’s view of the United States as a new frontier. And it is that frontier mentality that soon reveals itself in the story.

     Like the naval stories that follow, the “jetblack sunrise” is about underdogs. The underdogs are not trained and schooled soldiers though: these 412 men, “Not a single one over thirty years of age,” are “the glory of the race of rangers” (67). These young men are the children of America’s ever-expanding western border, those used to persevering through difficult circumstances to carve out a life for themselves. That they find themselves surrounded in a military situation only mirrors the harsh wilderness that surrounded them at home.

     The use of these characters shows Whitman’s fascination with the lower classes of people, those that appeared to live out the simplicity that he extols in Song of Myself. The fact that they are underdogs reflects Whitman’s feelings towards the establishment. After all, well-schooled, overtly-religious children of wealthy families would be terribly out of place in a poem written by a mostly self-educated, working-class man speaking out against organized religion. The characters are idealized though: the narrator’s voice drowns out anything that might ruin his romantic scenario. The fighters do not have their own voice here, nor do they even have any physical characteristics to separate them from one another.

     The final aspect that I’ll look at is the betrayal, and execution, of these men by their anonymous enemies. In what seems like a jab at Christianity, the men are betrayed on a Sunday morning, although the business is finished by eight (presumably early enough that the men could still attend services) and the burning of the bodies begins at eleven (after services might have finished). The men die in a variety of ways, but we are left with the chilling final image of men covered in the blood of a seventeen year old.

     So, how might Whitman’s war poetry progress from here? For one, the biography specifically mentions how Whitman sought to give a voice to the soldiers that he visited in the hospitals. His soldiers presumably fill out, changing from idealized icons into individuals. Perhaps even the passage read by Dr. Earnhart last class about the wounded soldier’s stump of an arm provides an adequate example of this, when contrasted with the broader strokes that paint the assailants of this poem’s seventeen year old. Along those lines, it is doubtful that Whitman saw only pre-thirties, frontier-born soldiers during his hospital work. Men from across the U.S. would have passed before Whitman’s eyes, all worthy of dying with dignity, regardless of their background. Finally, it is eerily prophetic that the men of the “jetblack sunrise” are killed by men using bayonets and muskets, weapons like their own. No foreign “other” is identified here, which points to the way in which citizens would fight their fellow citizens in the coming Civil War.

Hopefully, I will be able to see for myself how Whitman’s war writing evolves over time in the coming weeks.

The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows,

The air tastes good to my palate.

Hefts of the moving world at innocent gambols, silently

rising, freshly exuding,

Scooting obliquely high and low.”