By: tallersam

tallersam — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:23:49 +0000

It’s interesting that you see the replacement of ellipses with commas as being more immature, because others have seen it as the exact opposite! I do agree with you that the ellipses seem to fit more with the sprawling nature of ‘Song of Myself,’ to do more to establish a new literature, than the commas do. However, maybe the switch to commas was a sign of insecurity, rather than immaturity? Perhaps once he had attained some measure of recognition, he feared that he would not be taken as seriously if he had an overabundance of rarely-accepted punctuation? I know that sounds small, considering the fact that (among other things) he didn’t think too much of just about completely abandoning meter and rhyme at that time.
Think though: would we today, in a time probably much more accepting of strange punctuation (especially due to the internet), leave that many ellipses in something we wanted to be taken seriously? Probably not, unless there was some specific poetic ambiguity that we were trying to get across (which is not generally the case with Whitman. Emily Dickinson on the other hand…).
I didn’t catch that Whitman, apparently, no longer considered himself one of the roughs by the time the Deathbed edition came out. If we bring more biography into it, it’s a bit understandable. But his poetic vision could not have changed that much though, could it?

Comments on: Meghan for November 3

By: tallersam