Mon 2 Nov 2009
So many things struck me about the 1855 to 1891-92 Song of Myself that it is hard to know where to start. I guess at the beginning is always good. Whitman makes a point of saying in the 1891-92 version that he is “now thirty-seven years old in perfect health”. Really, Whitman? If “deathbed edition” means anything, you are neither 37 nor in perfect health. And this line does not appear until the 1881 edition, along with the stanza that it appears in, as well as the following stanza. It is interesting that Whitman is trying to insist upon his youth in his old age. Why such emphasis on him being “now” 37? Does he think that he knows his thirty-seven-year-old self better now than he did then? This strikes me as an extra odd revision, when compared to the others. While they show how his purposes in writing and publishing “Song of Myself” have changed, this one shows how he wishes to make us believe that the poem has stayed the same. (or perhaps that at least he has not aged)
In the end of section three, the 1855 version identifies the “hugging and loving bed-fellow” as God, but he remains unidentified in the deathbed edition. This seems to have two possible explanations: either Whitman’s feelings about God have changed to make the bed-fellow a fellow human being or a secretive God (per his sneaking out of the house at the break of dawn – God’s walk of shame?) or else Whitman simply felt that he need not outright identify the bed-fellow as God, and that he felt the meaning unchanged by the revision. I feel that dropping “God” from this section is important, inasmuch as I would not have considered the bed-fellow as God without it.
On a related note, Whitman shifts his perspective on God at the end of the fifth section. Previously, God was identified as “elder” – the “elderhand of my own”, “the spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own” – in the 1891 edition, God and Whitman are equals, or at least neither is directly placed above the other. Instead, Whitman seems to be embracing more fully his comfortable lack of concern over God. The section about God’s remembrances is still much as it was. This section seems to explain his stance on God that he has adjusted in these other sections. Basically, he says “God is there, He will always be there, and we needn’t worry about Him leaving us.”
To look at the poems fairly, I think that I am actually surprised by how little is changed from the 1855 version to his 1891 version. There probably are not many poets/authors who could constantly revise their works and yet keep so close to the original vision. My artist sister has ruined a few works by revising them over and over again until they don’t resemble anything, much less the pictures that they were originally. It is impressive that Whitman manages to avoid this, even with his numerous reinventions of “Song of Myself”.
November 2nd, 2009 at 9:55 pm
I hadn’t noticed or thought about Whitman’s “God Edits.” As for the bed-fellow, I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the significance of this change, but I agree with you that it’s probably not willy-nilly. Perhaps he wanted God to be a more ambiguous entity within the poem, leaving it up to the reader to insert God if they choose to. Or maybe Whitman does not want the bed-fellow to be God because the morbid implication of it.
Also, I too thought the opening lines of the 1891 version were a bit odd. I see his assertion of being 37 as a reminder to the reader of who the poem comes from, of what state it’s derived from.
As of your parenthetical “God’s Walk of Shame”– did you watch the Sarah Silverman episode when she sleeps with God and then doesn’t call Him back?
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:40 pm
I think the change in Whitman’s perception of God is really interesting. Most people are raised with certain conceptions of God that come from their parents and their community, etc. But as people grow older, they begin to develop their own ideas about God, and that can be a pretty scary realization. That’s what I see here, as Whitman aged he became more comfortable with his feelings about God, which became less and less formal.
November 5th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
There are a couple different ways I thought of to look at the “thirty-seven years old” phenomenon, neither of which are necessarily correct.
In 1892, Leaves of Grass turned 37: So, as you say, Whitman could be “[wishing] to make us believe that the poem has stayed the same.” Leaves of Grass has been around for 37 years, and yet is as relevant as when he first wrote it. In this case, it would actually be the poem speaking instead of the poet.
Whitman could be putting himself in his own shoes back in 1855 looking both forward toward his death and back toward his birth. As I just mentioned, the “deathbed edition” was 37 years after the first; but also, the first was published in Whitman’s 37th year. So by imagining himself at 37, Whitman would have been EXACTLY middle-aged [relative to the “present”] and still physically prime, and just finished with the collection that would be his magnum opus…really the peak time in his life.
This view is a bit more silly than the first interpretation, but not necessarily unwarranted.