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Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself," Sections 1 to 15; from Leaves of Grass, 1855
Are the issues raised in this section somehow reconciled in Whitman's poetry? If you select this text, you will have the opportunity to find out. Emerson wanted no masses at all, "no shovel-handed, narrow-brained, gin-drinking million stockingers or lazzaroni." Whitman, on the other hand, celebrated the masses, including the spinning girl who "retreats and advances to the hum of her big wheel" and the "newly-come immigrants" who "cover the wharf." Yet upon the publication of Leaves of Grass in 1855, Emerson hailed Whitman: "I greet you at the beginning of a great career." Whitman fulfilled Emerson's idea of the poet as inspired seer, "the man without impediment, who sees and handles that which others dream of, traverses the whole scale of experience, and is representative of man, in virtue of being the largest power to receive and to impart." What Whitman received and imparted was the raw experience of a democratic culture which hestanding "Apart . . . amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary"elevated and transformed into art. 9 pages.
Discussion questions
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What is Whitman's vision of America? |
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What would bring both the "stockinger" and Emerson to praise Whitman's poetry? |
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Does Whitman reconcile the tension between the individual and the mass? If so, how? |
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How does Whitman's poetry express the idea of equality, of democracy? |
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What is Whitman's notion of liberty? How is it expressed in both the content and form of "Song of Myself"? |
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"Song of Myself" was published in the middle of the stormy 1850s when the nation was witnessing the rise of the Know-Nothings, when immigrants were pouring into American cities, and when the nation was dividing over the expansion of slavery into the territories. In what way is the poem a response to these and other events of the period?
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Reading highlights
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Note the observational and reportorial quality of Whitman's poetry.
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