Walt Whitman. Philosophical basics of his work

Walt Whitman. Philosophical rudimentss of his work

Ekaterinburg, 2009

Introduction

When holding to believe about the doctrine of Americanness, who else could come to one ‘s head other than Walt Whitman. One of the most read, most gratifying authors of American Literature so much debated and gossiped about, predating his ain common people ‘s and the universe ‘s age by light years in front, throwing himself in the face of his modern-day readers, at last strike harding down all the remains of the long-suffered Puritan constitutions and values that the state has carried as a load for far excessively long. One merely can non except Whitman without holding to do a remark about his poesy & # 8211 ; his art & # 8211 ; he merely can non be ignored, for he and his art does non let that.

The purpose of our work is to analyse characteristics of Walt Whitman & # 8217 ; s manner. We will analyze his literary techniques, such as initial rhyme, anaphora, & # 171 ; free & # 187 ; poetry etc. In our work we will seek to demo philosophical rudimentss of his plants.

Our undertakings are:

– To look into the singularity of his manner

– To analyse some of his plants in order to qualify his poetic techniques

– To carry on a elaborate analysis of philosophical rudimentss of his plants

We will besides suggest some of his verse forms because we wanted to demo distinctive features of his manner.

& # 171 ; Leafs of Grass & # 187 ;

If we want to speak about philosophical rudimentss of Walt Whitman, we should analyse them all in common because they are all connected and you can happen several of them in one verse form at the same clip.

First of all we will get down our probe with one of his greatest verse form & # 171 ; Leafs of Grass & # 187 ; .

The rubric & # 171 ; Leafs of Grass & # 187 ; is used by Whitman to typify the immortality of the psyche, the mechanical existence, and that all things are in a province of flux Whitman says in the last chapter:

& # 171 ; I bequeath myself to the soil to turn from the grass I love & # 187 ;

He loves the grass so much as portion of nature, assimilates himself to nature, and considers the immortality of the psyche in nature because of his belief and his ain inspiration and individualism.

Whitman ‘s thought of nature can be accepted refering the universe of decease since nature is inextricably linked with mortal existences and in harmoniousness with the head. That greatest harmoniousness is thought to be the immortality of the psyche in nature. In other words, its harmonisation is based on the medieval thought that & # 171 ; The will of God creates nature & # 187 ; .

He thought that this is a dark cryptic universe, and that human existences contribute to the universe of decease by their domination of nature. The universe of human being is a alone animal in a helter-skelter existence. Firm in this belief, Whitman in his philosophical attack to Nihilism described himself as the immortality of the psyche in the great existence. He said in his first chapter:

& # 171 ; I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall presume,

For every atom belonging to me as God belongs to you. & # 187 ; ( P. 1 ) .

This is the release of the head from the doctrine of a controlling God, which was current in the plantation period of J. Edwards ( 1703 & # 8211 ; 1758 ) . To elaborate this subject, Whitman wrote his verse form, in which he propounded his thoughts.

& # 171 ; The ambiance is non a aroma,

It has no gustatory sensation of the distillment, and it is odourless,

It is for my oral cavity everlastingly, I am in love with it,

I will travel to the bank by the wood and go undisguised and bare,

I am huffy for it to be in contact with me. & # 187 ; ( P. 2 ) .

Whitman ‘s nature is good, non evil. The watercourse of this thought is accepted by J. Rousseau ( 1712 & # 8211 ; 1778 ) & # 171 ; As a human nature is good in nature & # 187 ; which is an perfectly optimistic and of all time frontier spirit.

Whitman pursues each personal develop & # 8211 ; meant by demoing how people relate. For illustration: looking Forth on paving and land, or outside of paving and land, & # 171 ; Belonging to the winders of the circuit of circuits. & # 187 ; ( P. 78 ) .

From this point of position, he looks over the natural phenomenon of circuits, and God is defined by the relationship of human nature to the circuits.

Whitman thought that inspiration was equal to the dualism of the psyche and the personality, and wrote:

& # 171 ; Apart from the pulling and haling bases what I am,

Stand amused, complacent, feel foring, thought, unitary,

Looks down, is vertical, or bends an arm on an intangible certain remainder.

Looking with side-curved caput funny what will come next.

Both in and out of the game and observation and wondering at it.

Backward I see in my ain yearss where I sweated through fog with linguists and rivals.

I have no mocking or statements, I witness and wait. & # 187 ; ( P. 6 ) .

Whitman considered the relation of phenomenon and the personality. His head was non closed to the worlds in which his personality asserted the method of the audience and inactive province status and tried to reach the refusing phenomenon.

& # 171 ; Leafs of grass & # 187 ; belongs to no peculiar accepted signifier of poesy. Whitman described its signifier as & # 171 ; a new and national declamatory expression. & # 187 ; Whitman was a poet bubbling with energy and burdened with esthesiss, and his poetic vocalizations uncover his inventions. His poesy seems to turn organically, like a tree. It has the enormous verve of an oak. Its growing follows no regular form: & # 171 ; Song of Myself & # 187 ; , for illustration, seems at first about recklessly written, without any attending to organize. Whitman & # 8217 ; s poesy, like that of most prophetic authors, is unplanned, disorganised, sometimes stillborn, but however distinctively his ain.

Walt Whitman & # 8217 ; s Poetical Techniques

In his verse form he used some particular poetical techniques.

Alliteration

& # 171 ; Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking & # 187 ; : & # 171 ; ‘And thenceforward all summer in the sound of the sea. ‘ This usage of initial rhyme of the creates a sound of the sea & # 8230 ; which is really effectual. This is by no means the lone usage of initial rhyme in the verse form. Other groupings such as ‘sterile littorals, ‘ ‘briers and blackberries, ‘ ‘Listened long and long, ‘ ‘sweetest vocal and vocals, ‘ and ‘singer lone ‘ occur throughout the verse form & # 187 ; ( Kimmel 9/16/96 ) .

Anaphoras

Anaphoras: repeat of words or phrases at beginnings of lines.

& # 171 ; Crossing Brooklyn Ferry & # 187 ; : & # 171 ; ‘Others will come in & # 8230 ; / Others will watch & # 8230 ; / Others will see ‘ and besides ‘Just as you feel & # 8230 ; / Just as you are refresh ‘d & # 8230 ; / Just as you stand & # 8230 ; / Just as you look & # 8230 ; ‘ & # 187 ; ( Barham 9/17/96 ) .

& # 171 ; One of the first instances in which he uses anaphora extensively in Drum-Taps
is in the subdivision titled & # 171 ; Poet, & # 187 ; in which the first four lines begin with ‘I hear, ‘ and lines 8 & # 8211 ; 12 Begin with ‘I see, ‘ while the full first 13 lines begin with ‘I. ‘ He is making one big sound and ocular image in those lines, with each line being a separate image, but all tied together by their common beginning. In this instance, lines all beginning with the same word besides help to put up a beat, as the reader is inclined to read all of the ‘I ‘s with the same sum of emphasis, like reading off points on a list. Through the usage of anaphora in this manner, Whitman can show one subject in several different lines, with several different thoughts, while holding a definite nexus between each idea. In the first subdivision of ‘Give Me the Splendid Sun, & # 8217 ; Whitman begins the first 11 lines with ‘Give me. ‘ Although in each line he is inquiring for a different thing, the full idea expressed in the lines together is his desire for ‘nature ‘s cardinal sanenesss. ‘ With the common beginning in these lines, he is showing all of his values at one time in 11 lines, with 11 different thoughts & # 187 ; ( Minis 9/17/96 ) .

& # 171 ; Free & # 187 ; poetry

Definition: poetry that, while free of rime and a consistent beat, may use other structural and sound elements, such as anaphora and chiasmus.

Whitman may hold picked up on Emerson ‘s line in & # 171 ; The Poet & # 187 ; : & # 171 ; For it is non metres, but a meter-making statement that makes a poem. & # 187 ;

But he besides may hold found theoretical accounts in & # 171 ; Proverbial Philosophy, & # 187 ; a free poetry verse form that Tupper published in 1838, and in a verse form by George Lippard ( Reynolds ) .

Catalogs

& # 171 ; In many of Whitman ‘s verse forms, like Children of Adam
, he lists many things at one time. In Children of Adam
, subdivision 9, he lists over 80 parts of the organic structure, both male and female. He does this listing technique once more in Song of the Open Road
, when he tells of all the things he passes and sees on his journey & # 187 ; ( Baldwin 9/17/96 )

They show a infantile joy in calling things ( Matthiessen 518 ) .

Possibly they besides betray a desire to integrate everything in a verse form, as Melville tried to make in Moby-Dick
.

Whitman may hold borrowed the thought from modern-day travel literature, including books called Mississippi in Gobs
and New York in Chunks
( Reynolds ) .

& # 171 ; In ‘Drum-Taps ‘ the smaller transitions which make up the whole verse form seem to give all different positions of the war. The position of the female parent, male parent, kid, wound chest of drawers, slave adult female, and even a streamer are all given. In bend, the reader is fed a catalog of assorted feelings about war. Besides, in ‘Drum-Taps ‘ and peculiarly in the transition ‘First O Songs for a Prelude, ‘ there is a catalog. Whitman lists and lists all different people with changing businesss and how they are acquiring ready for war. Thy attorney, the machinist, and salesman are all mentioned. It would be easy to see Whitman & # 8217 ; s usage of the catalog as merely ‘show [ ing ] infantile joy in calling things ‘ ( Matthiessen 518 ) . However, I see it as Whitman ‘s manner of showing catholicity. Everyone is traveling through this same event, and everyone is experiencing emotions about the war. The catalog shows common links among worlds & # 187 ; ( Plonk 9/19/96 ) .

Chiasmus

Definition: a mirror form in words, sounds, or other elements.

See & # 171 ; Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, & # 187 ; lines 71 & # 8211 ; 74: & # 171 ; SOOTHE! Soothe! Soothe! & # 187 ; / CLOSE on its moving ridge soothes the moving ridge BEHIND / And once more another BEHIND embrace and imbrication, everyone CLOSE, / But my love SOOTHES non me, non me. & # 187 ;

See & # 171 ; By the Bivouac ‘s spasmodic fire & # 187 ; : & # 171 ; By the Bivouac ‘s spasmodic fire & # 8230 ; / A emanation & # 8230 ; / A solemn and decelerate emanation & # 8230 ; / By the Bivouac ‘s spasmodic fire & # 187 ; ( Daigneault 9/20/96 ) .

See Psalm 124:7: & # 171 ; Our psyche is ESCAPED as a bird out of the SNARE of the Fowlers: the SNARE is broken, and we are ESCAPED. & # 187 ;

Circles and Cycles

Drum-Taps
: & # 171 ; He begins the verse form with a short preliminary and so begins stating of the twelvemonth 1861 and how all the work forces were holding to go forth their occupations and married womans to travel fight in the war. Then he starts stating about the war itself. He describes horses traversing Fords and ground forces corps processing to conflict. In one subdivision, he speaks of a soldier who watches his friend acquire fatally wounded. The soldier holds a vigil all dark for his friend and so buries him when he dies. In another subdivision, he describes a soldier ‘s household & # 8211 ; his female parent, male parent, and sister & # 8211 ; when they receive a missive stating them that he has been injured in conflict. Whitman brings out the true emotion of the households during this clip. After depicting all of the different parts to the war, at the terminal of the verse form, Whitman comes full circle as he does in all his plants by declaring that the war is over and that there is peace throughout the state. In this mode, Whitman completes his poetic narrative, and the reader is fulfilled & # 187 ; ( Jake adult male 9/19/96 ) .

Envelope

& # 171 ; Passage to India & # 187 ; : & # 171 ; O & # 8230 ; Of you & # 8230 ; Of you & # 8230 ; Of you & # 8230 ; O & # 187 ;

Psalm 70:1 & # 8211 ; 5: & # 171 ; Make hastiness & # 8230 ; . Let & # 8230 ; Let & # 8230 ; Let & # 8230 ; Make haste. & # 187 ;

Genre

Whitmanhad written sensational narratives ; airy plants, chauvinistic plants, scriptural narratives, and works on societal issues.

& # 171 ; If Leafs of Grass
was the epoch ‘s most expansive verse form, go oning the largest assortment of voices and subjects, it was mostly because it was written by one who had unabashedly tried his manus at virtually every genre that had been popularized by old American authors & # 187 ; ( Reynolds 106 ) .

Grammatical temper

Section 9 of & # 171 ; Crossing Brooklyn Ferry & # 187 ; is a mirror image of Section 3, except that temper of Section 9 is imperative, and that of Section 3 is declarative.

Imagination

Still pictures suggest immortality of images, as on Greek Urn, and may reflect involvement in picture taking. Whitman uses unpoetic objects and makes them poetic.

He besides uses hideous analogies: & # 171 ; the cow scranching with down caput surpasses any statue & # 187 ; resembles Thoreau ‘s description of the & # 171 ; cheap and natural music of the cow & # 187 ; in Walden
.

Drum-Taps
: & # 187 ; Whitman uses [ phrases ] like ‘the immature work forces falling in and build uping, / The mechanics armament, ( the trowel, the jack-plane, the blacksmith ‘s cock, toast aside with precipitation ) . ‘ This usage of imagination allows Whitman to do descriptive scenes that the reader can attach himself to and see & # 187 ; ( Aron 9/19/96 ) .

& # 171 ; Another technique Whitman makes usage of is that of imagination: ‘We primeval woods droping, we the rivers stemming, annoying we and piercing deep the mines within & # 8230 ; we the virgin dirt up heaving & # 8230 ; ‘ The extended usage of imagination serves to widen the reader ‘s range of comprehension for the image that Whitman is painting. The content is driven by the images like still snap coming together to organize a movie & # 187 ; ( Premakumar 9/17/96 ) .

Line length

Lines in & # 171 ; Crossing Brooklyn Ferry & # 187 ; suggest tides.

Length of lines in Section 1 suggests inundation tide because each is longer than the one preceding it.

Sections besides suggest inundation tide because they grow longer in groups of three: a, a+b, a+b+c, vitamin D, d+e, d+e+f, g, g+h, g+h+i

Elsewhere, Whitman frequently achieves an aural consequence by composing progressively longer lines, proposing enlargement of idea.

& # 171 ; In most of Whitman ‘s verse forms, the form is non rhythmic, yet the form lies in the length of the lines. In one poetry, the first line is of typical length, and the 2nd line is extended a little longer than the first. The form continues with the 3rd and 4th lines each going longer than their predecessor. The ground seems to be to construct up a flood tide in each of Whitman ‘s poetries, and the fifth and concluding line is the decision of the poetry. This manner puts a greater accent on each poetry and provides the reader with assorted illumination flood tides & # 187 ; ( Atkinson 9/12/96 ) .

Musicality

Whitman was inspired by opera.

He portrays himself as a bard, singing for the common people.

Onomatopoeia

& # 171 ; Beat! Beat! Drums! & # 187 ; : & # 171 ; Throughout the verse form, he non merely repeats, ‘Beat! Beat! Drums! & # 8211 ; Blow! Bugles! Blow! ‘ but he uses the words in the stanzas that incorporate some sort of sound. He uses words like ‘burst, ‘ ‘pound, ‘ ‘rumble, ‘ ‘rattle, ‘ and ‘thump. ‘ I can tie in sounds with each of these words. I can hear the membranophones beating and the bugles blowing & # 187 ; ( Patterson 9/17/96 ) .

& # 171 ; One illustration of this can be seen in ‘Song of the Banner at Daybreak ‘ when the flag expresses its voice by ‘Flapping, rolling, rolling, rolling & # 8230 ; ‘ & # 187 ; ( Daugherty 9/19/96 ) .

Oratory

Whitman lived at a clip of great speechmakers, such as Daniel Webster.

He may hold been influenced by grass-roots reformists ‘ oratory ( Reynolds ) .

Analogues

Definition: fluctuations on a subject, frequently linked by anaphora ( the repeat of a word or phrase at the beginning of lines ) .

& # 171 ; Song of Myself & # 187 ; : & # 171 ; Have you reckoned a thousand estates much? have you reckoned the Earth much? Have you & # 8230 ; & # 187 ;

& # 171 ; Crossing Brooklyn Ferry & # 187 ; : & # 171 ; I see & # 8230 ; I see & # 8230 ; I see & # 8230 ; & # 187 ;

See Ecclesiastes 3:2 & # 8211 ; & # 8230 ; : & # 171 ; A clip to be born, and a clip to decease: a clip to works, and a clip to tweak up that which is planted & # 8230 ; & # 187 ;

Character

& # 171 ; ‘Persona, ‘ as defined by A Handbook to Literature
, is a mask created by an writer and through which a narration is told. Intrinsic in the construct of character is that the writer ‘s ain positions are masked by the implied writer through which he/she speaks ( 385 ) . Another reading of ‘persona, ‘ the Jungian position, is that character is a set of attitudes adopted by an single to suit himself for the societal functions he sees as his ( Simpson 598 ) & # 8230 ; . Both of these accounts of character are applicable to Whitman ‘s plant & # 187 ; ( Hundley 1 ) .

Punctuation

& # 171 ; Section 9 of & # 171 ; Passage to India & # 187 ; includes 29 lines. Twenty-five of these lines end either in a inquiry or exclaiming grade. The consequence of this punctuation is that Whitman depicts the deep emotion that he pours into his composing & # 187 ; ( Lasher 9/17/96 ) .

Whitman & # 171 ; utilizations exclamation points often, making excess accent on lines. The beautiful things in life become magnificent, and sad become tragic & # 187 ; ( Minis 9/17/96 ) .

Whitman believed that poesy should be spoken, non written, and this basic standard governed the construct and signifier of his poesy. He used repeat and reiterative devices ( as, for illustration, in & # 171 ; Out of the Cradle Endlessly swaying, & # 187 ; the lines & # 171 ; Loud! Loud! Loud! & # 187 ; and & # 171 ; Blow! Blow! Blow! & # 187 ; ) He besides employed elements of the opera ( the aria and the recitative ) in his verse form.

He besides was a maestro of ebullient phrases and images: & # 171 ; The beautiful untrimmed hair of Gravess & # 187 ; ( & # 171 ; Song of Myself, & # 187 ; subdivision 6 ) is inordinately descriptive. Conversely, another description of the grass in the same subdivision of the same verse form, where it is described as & # 171 ; the hankie of the Lord, & # 187 ; is fiddling.

Whitman brought verve and picturesqueness to his descriptions of the physical universe. He was peculiarly sensitive to sounds and described them with acute consciousness. His position of the universe was dominated by its alteration and fluidness, and this histories for his frequent usage of & # 171 ; ing & # 187 ; signifiers, either present participial or gerund.

Whitman & # 8217 ; s linguistic communication is full of his eccentricities: he used the word & # 171 ; presidential & # 187 ; for presidential term, & # 171 ; pave & # 187 ; for paving, and he spelled Canada with a K.

& # 171 ; Leafs of grass & # 187 ; contains archaic looks & # 8211 ; for illustration, early, betwixt, methinks, haply, and list ( for listen ) . Whitman besides employs many conversational looks and proficient and commercial footings. Wordss from foreign linguistic communications add colour and assortment to his manner.

Peculiarities in Whitman & # 8217 ; s Rhythm and Verse

Whitman & # 8217 ; s usage of beat is noteworthy. A line of his poetry, if scanned in the everyday manner, seems like a prose sentence, or an forward moving ridge of prose beat. Yet his work is composed in lines, non in sentences as prose would be. The line is the unit of sense in Whitman.

Whitman experimented with metre, beat, and signifier because he thought that experimentation was the jurisprudence of the altering times, and that invention was the Gospel of the modern universe. Whitman & # 8217 ; s fancy for trochaic motion instead than iambic motion shows the typical quality of his usage of metre. An iamb is a metrical pes of two syllables, the second of which is accented. A trochee is a metrical pes dwelling of an accented syllable followed by an unacceptable one. The iambic is the most normally used metre in English poesy, partially because of the construction of English address. English phrases usually begin with an article, preposition, or concurrence which merges into the word that follows it, therefore making the lifting inflexion which is iambic. Why, so, did Whitman prefer the trochaic to the iambic metre? It was partially due to the poet & # 8217 ; s desire for bombastic look and oratorical manner, since the trochee is more suited for facile look than the iambic metre. Whitman besides liked to make things that were unusual and fresh.

Imagery & # 8211 ; a Particular Technique of Walt Whitman & # 8217 ; s

Imagination means a nonliteral usage of linguistic communication. Whitman & # 8217 ; s usage of imagination shows his inventive power, the deepness of his centripetal perceptual experiences, and his capacity to capture world outright. He expresses his feelings of the universe in linguistic communication which mirrors the present. He makes the past semen alive in his images and makes the future seem immediate. Whitman & # 8217 ; s imagination has some logical order on the witting degree, but it besides delves into the subconscious, into the universe of memories, bring forthing a stream-of-consciousness of images. These images seem like parts of a dream, images of fragments of a universe. On the other manus, they have solidity ; they build the construction of the verse forms.

The Use of Symbols in Whitman & # 8217 ; s Works

A symbol is an emblem, a concrete object that stands for something abstract ; for illustration, the dove is a symbol of peace ; the cross, Christianity. Literary symbols, nevertheless, have a more peculiar intension. They sometimes signify the entire significance, or the different degrees of significance, which emerge from the work of art in which they appear. A white giant is merely an carnal & # 8211 ; but in Melville & # 8217 ; s Moby Dick it is a God to some characters, evil incarnate to others, and a enigma to others. In other words, it has an extended intension which is symbolic.

In the mid & # 8209 ; 1880s, the Symbolist motion began in France, and the witting usage of symbols became the favourite pattern of poets. The symbolists and Whitman had much in common ; both tried to construe the existence through centripetal perceptual experiences, and both broke away from traditional signifiers and methods. But the symbols of the Gallic symbolists were extremely personal, whereas in Whitman the usage of the symbol was governed by the objects he observed: the sea, the birds, the lilacs, the Calamus works, the sky, and so on. Nevertheless, Whitman did hold an affinity with the symbolists ; they even translated some of his verse form into Gallic.

Whitman & # 8217 ; s major concern was to research, discourse, and observe his ain ego, his individualism and his personality. Second, he wanted to eulogise democracy and the American state with its accomplishments and possible. Third, he wanted to give poetical look to his ideas on life & # 8217 ; s great, digesting enigmas & # 8211 ; birth, decease, metempsychosis or Resurrection, and reincarnation.

The Self

To Whitman, the complete ego is both physical and religious. The ego is adult male & # 8217 ; s single individuality, his distinguishable quality and being, which is different from the egos of other work forces, although it can place with them. The ego is a part of the one Divine Soul. Whitman & # 8217 ; s critics have sometimes confused the

construct of ego with self-importance, but this is non valid. Whitman is invariably speaking about «I, » but the «I» is cosmopolitan, a portion of the Divine, and hence non narcissistic.

The Body and the Soul

Whitman is a poet of these elements in adult male, the organic structure and the psyche. He thought that we could grok the psyche merely through the medium of the organic structure. To Whitman, all affair is every bit godly as the psyche ; since the organic structure is as sacred and every bit religious as the psyche, when he sings of the organic structure or its public presentations, he is singing a religious chant.

Nature

Whitman portions the Romantic poet & # 8217 ; s relationship with nature. To him, as to Emerson, nature is godly and an emblem of God. The existence is non dead affair, but full of life and significance. He loves the Earth, the vegetations and zoologies of the Earth, the Moon and stars, the sea, and all other elements of nature. He believes that adult male is nature & # 8217 ; s kid and that adult male and nature must ne’er be disjoined.

Time

Whitman & # 8217 ; s construct of the ideal poet is, in a manner, related to his thoughts on clip. He conceives of the poet as a time-binder, one who realizes that the yesteryear, nowadays, and hereafter are & # 171 ; non disjoined, but joined, & # 187 ; that they are all phases in a uninterrupted flow and can non be considered as separate and distinguishable. These modem thoughts of clip hold given lift to new techniques of literary look & # 8211 ; for illustration, the stream-of-consciousness point of view.

Cosmic Consciousness

Whitman believed that the universe, or the universe, does non dwell simply of exanimate affair ; it has consciousness. It is full of life and filled with the spirit of God. The universe is God and God is the universe ; decease and decay are unreal. This cosmic consciousness is, so, one facet of Whitman & # 8217 ; s mysticism.

Mysticism

Mysticism is an experience that has a religious significance which is non evident to the senses nor to the mind. Therefore mysticism, an penetration into the existent nature of adult male, God, and the existence, is attained through one & # 8217 ; s intuition. The mysterious believes in the integrity of God and adult male, adult male and nature, God and the existence. To a mysterious, clip and infinite are unreal, since both can be overcome by adult male by religious conquering. Evil, excessively, is unreal, since God is present everyplace. Man communicates with his psyche in a mystical experience, and Whitman amply expresses his responses to the psyche in Leaves of Grass
, particularly in & # 171 ; Song of Myself. & # 187 ; He besides expresses his mystical experience of his organic structure or personality being permeated by the supernatural. Whitman & # 8217 ; s poesy is his artistic look of assorted facets of his mystical experience.

Bardic Symbols

No 1, even after the 4th or 5th reading, can feign to state what the & # 171 ; Bardic Symbols & # 187 ; symbolize. The poet walks by the sea, and turn toing the impetus, the froth, the surges and the air current, efforts to coerce from them, by his frenetic call, the the [ sic ] true solution of the enigma of Existence, ever most to a great extent and in darkness felt in the grand ocean presence. All is confusion, waste and sound. It is in vain that you attempt to garner the poet ‘s full significance from what he says or what he hints. You can merely take safety in occasional transitions like this, in which he wildly laments the infirmity and inefficiency of that art which above all others seeks to do the psyche seeable and hearable:

O, baffled, lost,

Bent to the really Earth, here predating what follows,

Terrified with myself that I have dared to open my oral cavity,

Aware now, that amid all the blab, whose reverberations recoil

upon me, I have non one time had the least thought who or

what I am,

But that before all my insolent poems the existent one still stands untasted, untold, wholly unapproachable,

Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory

marks and bows,

With rolls of distant ironical laughter at every word I

hold written or shall compose,

Striking me with abuses till I fall incapacitated upon the sand.

If so, we were compelled to think the significance of the verse form, we should state it all lay in the compass of these lines of Tennyson & # 8211 ; the saddest and profoundest that of all time were written:

Break, interruption, interruption,

On thy cold grey rocks, O sea!

And I would that my lingua could express

The ideas that arise in me! 1

An aspiration of deaf-and-dumb person words without relevance, without absolute meaning, and full of & # 171 ; Godhead desperation 2
. & # 187 ;

We think it has been an mistake in Whitman to fling signifiers and Torahs, for without them the poet diffuses. He may travel rapidly frontward with urges, but he is spent before he reaches the reader ‘s bosom through his baffled apprehension. Steam topic, is a mighty force ; steam free, is an intangible vapour, merely capable of delicate chromaticities and beauty with the Sun upon it. But O, poet! there is non a Sun in every sky.

The subject of love

Subjects of sex and gender have dominated Leafs of Grass from the really beginning and hold shaped the class of the book ‘s response. The first edition in 1855 contained what were to be called & # 171 ; Song of Myself, & # 187 ; & # 171 ; The Sleepers, & # 187 ; and & # 171 ; I Singing the Body Electric, & # 187 ; which are & # 171 ; about & # 187 ; gender ( though of class non entirely ) throughout. From the really beginning, Whitman wove together subjects of & # 171 ; manfully love & # 187 ; and & # 171 ; sexual love, & # 187 ; with great accent on intensely passionate attractive force and interaction, every bit good as bodily contact ( touch, embracing ) in both. Simultaneously in sounding these subjects, he equated the organic structure with the psyche, and defined sexual experience as basically religious experience. He really early adopted two phrenological footings to know apart between the two relationships: & # 171 ; amorousness & # 187 ; for man-woman love & # 171 ; adhesion & # 187 ; for & # 171 ; manfully love. & # 187 ; Although Whitman did non in the 1855 Preface call direct attending to this component in his work, in one of his anon. reappraisals of his book ( & # 171 ; Walt Whitman and His Poems, & # 187 ; 1855 ) he wrote of himself and the 1855 Leafs: & # 171 ; The organic structure, he teaches, is beautiful. Sexual activity is besides beautiful & # 8230 ; . Sexual activity will non be put aside ; it is a great ordination of the existence. He works the musculus of the male and the pullulating fiber of the female throughout his Hagiographas, as wholesome worlds, impure merely by calculated purpose and attempt & # 187 ; ( Poetry and Prose 535 ) .

Whitman added other sex verse forms to his book in 1856, including & # 171 ; Poem of Procreation & # 187 ; ( now & # 171 ; A Woman Waits for Me & # 187 ; ) and & # 171 ; Bunch Poem & # 187 ; ( & # 171 ; Spontaneous Me & # 187 ; ) . At the terminal of the volume he included, without permission, Emerson ‘s missive praising the 1855 Leaves ( its & # 171 ; great power, & # 187 ; and & # 171 ; free and weather thought & # 187 ; ) , and alongside it he published his ain missive in answer. He may hold been misled by the nature of Emerson ‘s congratulations to stress the centrality of his subjects of adhesion and amorousness: & # 171 ; As to manfully friendship, everyplace observed in The States, there is non the first breath of it to be observed in print. I say the organic structure of a adult male or adult female, the chief affair, is so far rather unsaid in verse forms ; but the organic structure is to be expressed, and sex is & # 187 ; ( Poetry and Prose 529 ) .

It was non until the 1860 edition of Leafs that Whitman gathered the verse forms observing gender into the bunch & # 171 ; Enfans d’Adam & # 187 ; ( & # 171 ; Children of Adam & # 187 ; ) and the verse forms observing & # 171 ; manfully love & # 187 ; into & # 171 ; Calamus. & # 187 ; When Whitman came to Boston to see his book through the imperativeness at that place, Emerson tried to carry him to retreat the sex poems, but Whitman refused. He likely understood that if he truly desexed Leaves it would be like self-castration. Although Emerson ne’er publically withdrew his indorsement of Whitman, he passed up chances to reiterate it. Emerson ‘s silence together with Whitman ‘s loss of his occupation at the Interior Department in 1865, charged with composing & # 171 ; indecorous verse forms, & # 187 ; were early warning marks that he and his Leafs were embarked on a hard route in front.

In subsequent editions of Leaves, Whitman revised and shifted his verse form of amorousness and adhesion, but by and big his dominant subjects became non the organic structure but the psyche, non youth but old age & # 8211 ; and decease. His experience in the Civil War infirmaries seems to hold provided a turning point for Whitman ‘s focal point. He even claimed, in & # 171 ; A Backward Glance O’er Travel ‘d Roads & # 187 ; ( 1888 ) , that the war revealed to him, & # 171 ; as by flashes of lightning, & # 187 ; the & # 171 ; concluding reasons-for-being & # 187 ; of his & # 171 ; passionate vocal & # 187 ; ( Poetry and Prose 516 ) . In his Civil War verse forms, Drum-Taps ( 1865, subsequently included in the 1867 Leaves ) , the & # 171 ; Calamus & # 187 ; subject runs throughout & # 8211 ; & # 171 ; cropping out & # 187 ; as Whitman himself said of it in his 1876 Preface to Two Rivulets ( Prose Works 2:471 ) . Whitman critics have non failed to detect in & # 171 ; Drum-Taps & # 187 ; the poet ‘s subject of adhesion & # 8211 ; the joy in the physical transmuted by the war into hurting and anguish & # 8211 ; in such verse forms as & # 171 ; The Wound-Dresser, & # 187 ; & # 171 ; Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night, & # 187 ; and & # 171 ; A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown. & # 187 ;

In 1868 W.M. Rossetti published a British edition of Whitman ‘s poesy, Poems by Walt Whitman. In consequence, this was an expurgated Leafs, with & # 171 ; Song of Myself, & # 187 ; & # 171 ; Children of Adam, & # 187 ; and & # 171 ; Calamus & # 187 ; omitted, except for a few verse form of the & # 171 ; Calamus & # 187 ; bunch placed in a subdivision entitled & # 171 ; Walt Whitman. & # 187 ; In malice of Rossetti ‘s gutting of the book, it established Whitman ‘s repute in England and attracted many fervent supporters. Some, when they became familiar with the verse forms purged by Rossetti, became even more fervent, while others turned hostile. The former included Anne Gilchrist, who fell in love with Whitman and wrote an article & # 171 ; An Englishwoman ‘s Estimate of Walt Whitman & # 187 ; ( Boston 1870 ) , particularly praising Whitman ‘s sex verse forms. Algernon Swinburne wrote a verse form in congratulations of Walt Whitman in Song Before Sunrise ( 1871 ) , but aloud reversed himself in his 1887 essay, & # 171 ; Whitmania, & # 187 ; after meeting all of Leaves. John Addington Symonds read Whitman ‘s verse forms as a immature adult male, and, bowled over, found his manner to the whole of & # 171 ; Calamus. & # 187 ; He would subsequently strike up a correspondence with Whitman in Camden, pressing him on the existent significance of his & # 171 ; Calamus & # 187 ; verse forms, taking Whitman finally to answer in a ill-famed missive in 1890 claiming to hold had six illicit kids during his & # 171 ; reasonably & # 187 ; & # 171 ; times south & # 187 ; ( Poetry and Prose 958 ) .

Although in the 5th edition ( 1871 & # 8211 ; 1872 ) of Leaves, Whitman seemed temporarily to lose his manner in determining Leafs to incorporate his new work ( & # 171 ; Passage to India & # 187 ; and related verse forms ) , some ten old ages subsequently, in the 6th edition ( 1881 & # 8211 ; 1882 ) , he adopted his earlier pattern of incorporating the verse form of a life-time into a individual construction. Before the book could be distributed by its publishing house in Boston, nevertheless, it was found to be immoral by the Society for the Suppression of Vice ; because Whitman refused to take the violative parts, the book was withdrawn and published in Philadelphia. The Boston censors found violative non merely the whole of & # 171 ; A Woman Waits for Me, & # 187 ; & # 171 ; The Dalliance of the Eagles, & # 187 ; and & # 171 ; To a Common Prostitute, & # 187 ; but besides passages critical to the life of a figure of Whitman ‘s greatest plants, including & # 171 ; Song of Myself. & # 187 ; But the & # 171 ; Calamus & # 187 ; bunch with its vocals of & # 171 ; manfully love & # 187 ; was left integral!

In & # 171 ; A Backward Glance, & # 187 ; Whitman made his concluding appraisal of the sex poems that had given him so many jobs. Writing a spot after the most recent effort to ban his book, whitman affirms boldly & # 8211 ; & # 187 ; Leafs of Grass is professedly the vocal of Sexual activity and Amativeness, and even Animality & # 8230 ; . Of this characteristic & # 8230 ; I shall merely state the adopting rule of those lines so gives breath of life to my whole strategy that the majority of the pieces might every bit good have been left unwritten were those lines omitted & # 187 ; ( Poetry and Prose 518 ) . A similar claim might hold been made for the & # 171 ; Calamus & # 187 ; verse forms of adhesion ; that no such claim was made was attributable, certainly, to the fact that they had ne’er inspired public contention as had the sex poems.

The subject of decease.

Whitman trades with decease as a fact of life. Death in life is a fact, but life in decease is a truth for Whitman ; he is therefore a poet of affair and of spirit.

Whitman & # 8217 ; s view on decease is brooding of his belief in Transcendentalism. In & # 171 ; Song of Myself & # 187 ; , Whitman uses the scientific rule of Thermodynamicss to asseverate that there is life after decease, because energy can non be destroyed ; merely transformed. In stanza six, he writes & # 171 ; And what do you believe has become of the adult females and kids? / they are alive and good someplace, / The smallest sprouts shows there is truly no decease & # 187 ; . Death contends that life remains long after decease, and to happen him now all 1 must make is look & # 171 ; under your boot-soles & # 187 ; .

Lincoln & # 8217 ; s decease influenced Whitman & # 8217 ; s works a batch excessively.

The decease of Abraham Lincoln had a profound impact on Walt Whitman and his authorship. It is the topic of one of his most extremely regarded and critically examined pieces, & # 171 ; When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed & # 187 ; ( 1865 & # 8211 ; 1866 ) and one of his best-known verse forms, & # 171 ; O Captain! My Captain! & # 187 ; ( 1865 & # 8211 ; 1866 ) . Whitman besides delivered ( periodically ) one-year public talks marking Lincoln ‘s decease beginning in April 1879. Although the two ne’er met, Whitman and Lincoln, both profoundly committed to the Union, remain intertwined in Whitman ‘s authorship and in American mythology.

Whitman intensely admired Lincoln from the late 1850s onward, noting at one point, & # 171 ; After my beloved, dear female parent, I guess Lincoln gets about nearer me than anybody else & # 187 ; ( Traubel 38 ) . On the Friday of 14 April 1865, when John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln at Ford ‘s Theater in Washington, D.C. , Whitman was in New York and read about the blackwash in the day-to-day newspapers and supernumeraries.

His first verse form reacting to Lincoln ‘s decease came merely a twosome of yearss subsequently when he added to Drum-Taps ( 1865 ) , already in imperativeness, a short piece titled & # 171 ; Hushed Be the Camps To-day & # 187 ; ( 1865 ) . Although it ends solemnly with & # 171 ; the heavy Black Marias of soldiers, & # 187 ; this public memorialization of Lincoln ‘s funeral & # 8211 ; spoken to the poet by and for Union soldiers & # 8211 ; asks us to & # 171 ; celebrate & # 187 ; his decease as it remembers & # 171 ; the love we bore him. & # 187 ; & # 171 ; Hushed Be the Camps To-day & # 187 ; is non one of Whitman ‘s best-known verse forms, but it is important non simply because it was his first poetic word on Lincoln ‘s decease, but besides because it exemplifies the primary characteristics that by and large characterize Whitman ‘s poetic intervention of Lincoln ‘s decease: as in & # 171 ; Lilacs, & # 187 ; the verse form mourns for the dead but celebrates decease ; it identifies Lincoln ‘s decease with the coming of peace ; and it remembers Lincoln non because he was a great leader or vanquisher but because he was well-loved. The verse form besides associates Lincoln with the war ‘s ordinary soldiers, an association that prefigures & # 171 ; Lilacs & # 187 ; and its intervention of Lincoln ‘s decease as a metonymy for all the war dead.

& # 171 ; Hushed Be the Camps To-day & # 187 ; and the other Lincoln verse form ( & # 171 ; Lilacs, & # 187 ; & # 171 ; O Captain! , & # 187 ; and & # 171 ; This Dust Was Once the Man & # 187 ; [ 1871 ] ) ne’er reference Lincoln by name. As some critics have noted, Whitman had no demand in the postbellum epoch to mention straight to Lincoln because his readers would easy acknowledge these verse forms as laments for President Lincoln. Later, after the immediateness of Lincoln ‘s decease had faded into historical memory, Whitman identified the topic of these verse forms by grouping the four of them together, foremost in a bunch titled & # 171 ; President Lincoln ‘s Burial Hymn & # 187 ; in an extension to Passage to India ( 1871 ) and later in the & # 171 ; Memories of President Lincoln & # 187 ; bunch in the 1881 edition of Leaves of Grass. Other critics believe that the deficiency of direct mention to Lincoln indicates the poet ‘s effort to turn to cosmopolitan subjects.

Whitman does, of class, use Lincoln ‘s decease to speak about topics beyond the events at Ford ‘s Theater, including the topic of decease itself. In & # 171 ; Lilacs, & # 187 ; Whitman reconciles himself and the state to Lincoln ‘s decease and decease in general by forging the historical fact of the blackwash and entombment into a religious embracing of decease in which decease becomes both a personal and a national regeneration and cleaning. The intervention of Lincoln ‘s decease in & # 171 ; Lilacs & # 187 ; is celebrated for its symbolism and its formal, musical qualities. Indeed the verse form unrelentingly transforms its historical content into symbols. Lincoln as a individual disappears merely to re-emerge as a & # 171 ; western fallen star & # 187 ; and as the elicited metonymic associations of the verse form other symbols and images & # 8211 ; casket, lilacs, cloud, and the anchorite thrush ‘s vocal.

Whitman ‘s handling of Lincoln ‘s decease in the talks diametrically reverses the musical, aeriform, frequently abstract, to a great extent symbolized manner of & # 171 ; Lilacs. & # 187 ; In his talk on the & # 187 ; decease of Abraham Lincoln & # 187 ; ( 1879 ) , Whitman depicts the scene of the slaying with dramatic immediateness, as if he were an eyewitness. The narrative is cliff-hanging, elaborate, and focuses on particulars ( sometimes minutiae ) . Although Whitman was non an eyewitness, his close comrade, Peter Doyle, was at Ford ‘s Theater, and Whitman made impressive usage of Doyle ‘s narrative in his inventive retelling. In the talk, the president ‘s slaying is non a eccentric denouement to an inevitable war but instead the apogee of and solution to all the historic, national struggles of the Civil War epoch. Lincoln ‘s decease becomes a metaphor for the bloody war itself and the flood tide of a exalted tragic play that redeems the Union. Whitman ‘s talk turns Lincoln ‘s blackwash into the ceremonial forfeit that gives new life to the state.

Whitman ‘s Lincoln possessed an undeniably heroic stature. Whitman called him & # 171 ; the grandest figure yet, on all the crowded canvas of the Nineteenth Century & # 187 ; ( Prose Works 2:604 ) . Still, the poet did non simply apotheosise the dead president ; he besides transformed Lincoln and his decease into a symbolic referent for ideas on the war, chumminess, democracy, brotherhood, and decease. Possibly best exemplified by the & # 171 ; Lilacs & # 187 ; lament, Lincoln ‘s decease became the event around which Whitman twined so unhappily and attractively his apprehension of decease ‘s association with love.

The subject of war

If to get down treatment of the war verse forms, we should see how the experience of fratricidal war might impact Whitman as the poet of national brotherhood. This will take to contemplations on the calamity of the Civil War. The verse form of Drum-Taps
& # 8211 ; which proceed from hawkish jubilance, to the existent experience of war, to demobilisation and rapprochement & # 8211 ; might be read as an effort to put the abattoir of the war within a poetic and finally regenerative design. Ask the pupils to compare Whitman ‘s war poems with his earlier verse forms. They are at one time more officially controlled and more realistic & # 8211 ; stylistic alterations that are linked with the war context. & # 171 ; A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown & # 187 ; and & # 171 ; The Artilleryman ‘s Vision & # 187 ; are proto-modern verse forms in which the person appears as an histrion in a play of history he no longer understands nor controls. Whitman ‘s ambivalency about black emancipation is apparent in & # 171 ; Ethiopia Toasting the Colors. & # 187 ; & # 171 ; Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night & # 187 ; and & # 171 ; As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado & # 187 ; are peculiarly effectual in proposing the ways the wartime context of male bonding and chumminess gave Whitman a legitimate linguistic communication and societal frame within which to show his love for work forces.

Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism, which originated with German philosophers, became a powerful motion in New England between 1815 and 1836. Emerson & # 8217 ; s Nature ( 1836 ) was a pronunciamento of American transcendental idea. It implied that the true world is the spirit and that it lies beyond the range or kingdom of the senses. The country of centripetal perceptual experiences must be transcended to make the religious world. American transcendental philosophy accepted the findings of modern-day scientific discipline as mercenary opposite numbers of religious accomplishment. Whitman & # 8217 ; s & # 171 ; Passage to India & # 187 ; demonstrates this attack. The sentimentalist in Whitman is combined with the transcendentalist in him. His pursuit for nonnatural truths is extremely individualistic and therefore his idea, like Emerson & # 8217 ; s, is frequently unsystematic and prophetic.

Personalism

Whitman used the term & # 171 ; personalism & # 187 ; to bespeak the merger of the person with the community in an ideal democracy. He believed that every adult male at the clip of his birth receives an individuality, and this individuality is his & # 171 ; soul. & # 187 ; The psyche, happening its residence in adult male, is individualized, and adult male begins to develop his personality. The chief thought of personalism is that the individual is the be-all of all things ; it is the beginning of consciousness and the senses. One is because God is ; hence, adult male and God are one & # 8211 ; one personality. Man & # 8217 ; s personality craves immortality because it desires to follow the personality of God. This thought is in agreement with Whitman & # 8217 ; s impression of the ego. Man should first go himself, which is besides the manner of coming closer to God. Man should grok the Godhead psyche within him and recognize his individuality and the true relationship between himself and God. This is the philosophy of personalism.

Decision

Walt Whitman & # 8217 ; s accomplishment as a poet and prophesier is genuinely monumental. He exercised a deep influence on his immediate replacements in American letters, and even on modern poets, although he himself was a extremely individualistic poet. As a symbolist, his influence was felt in Europe, where he was considered the greatest poet America had yet produced. His high manner and elevated look found reverberations in Emily Dickinson, Hart Crane, Marianne Moore, and others. Whitman as a stylist is the apogee of the empyreal tradition in America, and even Allen Ginsberg, so different from Whitman in so many respects, follows the Whitman tradition of utilizing invocative linguistic communication. Whitman, though a adult male of his age, an basically nineteenth-century poet, exercised a profound influence on twentieth-century poets and modern poesy in the usage of linguistic communication, in the procedures of symbol and image-making, in exerting great freedom in metre and signifier, and in cultivating the individualistic manner. In many ways Whitman is modern because he is prophetic ; he is a poet non merely of America but of the whole of world. He has achieved the Olympic stature and the rare differentiation of a universe poet.

In our work we analyzed characteristics of Walt Whitman & # 8217 ; s manner. We tried to analyze his literary techniques and besides showed philosophical rudimentss of his plants.

We think that we have done all our undertakings instead good. We achieved a deep analyze of some of his plants and viewed the poetical techniques of Walt Whitman and the singularity of his manner.

List of Literature

1. Allen, Gay W. A Reader ‘s Guide to Walt Whitman
1970.

2. Kinnell, Galway. & # 171 ; Introduction. & # 187 ; The Essential Whitman
New York: The Ecco Press, 1987. 3 & # 8211 ; 12.

3. Whitman, Walt. Leafs of Grass. USA 1961