“Another symptom is the need felt by individuals of being even sternly sincere. This is the one great means by which alone progress can be essentially furthered. Truth is the nursing mother of genius. No man can be absolutely true to himself, eschewing cant, compromise, servile imitation, and complaisance, without becoming original, for there is in every creature a fountain of life which, if not choked back by stones and other dead rubbish, will create a fresh atmosphere, and bring to life fresh beauty. And it is the same with the nation as with the individual man.”

This quote from Margaret Fuller seems uniquely appropriate for Walt Whitman. While he is prone to flights of hyperbole, he never seems to realize it himself. When he says in “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”, he sincerely believes that there will be a reader hundreds of years from him admiring the steamboats in the water before him. To me, Whitman is not the voice of Truth, necessarily, but he is speaking his truth, which seems to be the thrust of Fuller’s claim.

In his poems, we are forced by his exuberance and sincerity to see Whitman’s America. Not only is he trying to create an American literature by establishing a literary standard, but he is also trying to create an American nation by reaching out to average American citizens nationwide with his style, language, and subjects.

It is interesting how consciously he is chasing his dual goals. Every time he says “men and women” or some equivalent thereof, I am jolted out of the work; he is trying so hard to be inclusive that it is not only noticeable but obvious. The feminist in me cringes when he goes to such effort to claim men and women are equal to him, then falls right back into glorifying the “masculine” world, presumably without noticing the disconnect between the two. (An example that comes to mind is on pages 356-357, “The wife, and she is not one jot” to “none shall wish to escape me”)

The deliberation behind so much of his work brings me to wonder if perhaps he intends these deliberations to be transparent. He purposefully constructs an image of America and his idea of what American literature needs to be, as well as deliberately writing to fulfill those requirements. It seems likely that his exaggerations and conscious inclusion of images and people (of which women are only one example) are meant to be spotted and considered. He would likely prefer that they are then accepted as at least partly true, as he seems to think what he has to say is quite valuable. In this vein, perhaps my example in the beginning of the steamboats is Whitman being sincere but simultaneously acknowledging the possibility that he may be exaggerating. I’m not sure if I have read enough Whitman to decide yet.

In a rambling fashion, this brings me to Whitman’s contradictions. I am undecided as to whether he is unaware of his contradictions, aware but hoping that the reader does not notice, or aware and anticipating the reader detecting the contradictions as well. As an example of the contradictions that caught my attention, his attitude towards the physically and morally diseased people in society seems to change from acceptance to rejection: compare his attitude in “A Song for Occupations” on page 356 and in “Song of the Open Road” on page 303. I cannot decide what his contradictions reveal, or whether they are even contradictions.