Whitmaniacs, go HERE NOW for a Library of Congress link for schoolteachers that has digitized images of some of Whitman’s notebooks, including from the Civil War (and a wrenching photo of a dead confederate solider in Spotsylvania). Don’t just look, READ: their names, their mother’s names, their ages, where they worked, where they’re from, which had been at Pfaff’s, their wounds and injuries (including overdosing), what they need from him (a clergyman, something to read), their qualities (somewhat “feminine”; “tall, well-tann’d,” an “oily, labial” way of speaking; “noble, beloved”); their battle stories.
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Interesting, too, to note how little correspondence there is between these and the “impromptu jottings” that finally made it into Memoranda.
Yeah,
And I have to say it is so pragmatic in its description, and seeing the handwriting. It all seems so material.