I am not sure how the last part of the assertions made by Whitman might apply to me. But, I felt the truth of what he says about God’s presence everywhere during a day long ramble yesterday on Staten Island.
On Monday, November 6, 2017, I attended a performance of A German Requiem, to Words of the Holy Scriptures (“Ein deutsches Requiem, nach Worten der heiligen Schrift”) by Johannes Brahms at Carnegie Hall in New York. The work was composed between 1865 and 1868 and consists of seven movements. The work is, as noted in a Wikipedia entry, “sacred but non-liturgical,” which can be seen in the fact that it is not in Latin and is not based on the Latin mass.
The program notes state:
Unlike the traditional Requiem, a prayer for the dead, Ein deutsches Requiem speaks to the mourners, comforting them and reminding them that the inevitability of death makes it a part of life. … Bypassing the traditional prayers for the dead, Brahms selected his text from the German Lutheran Bible and the Apocrypha. In so doing, he expressed his own feelings toward death, which were not governed by a formal sense of religion. Ein deutsches Requiem focuses on the needs of the living — Brahms had considered calling it a “human” requiem — on the brevity of life and the expectation of “evige Freude,” eternal joy.
This brought to mind other famous requiems, namely Mozart’s and Berlioz’s requiems. Both use the traditional liturgy and, what is most notable, both are masses for the DEAD. They are solemn, mournful — without, I would say, a hint of joy, and, in the case of the Berlioz requiem (which is a masterpiece), I would say, scary, almost terrifying.
I could not help thinking also about the parallels with Walt Whitman and his views of death. Below are some excerpts from the text of the Brahms requiem and some observations about Whitman’s views on death and excerpts from his poems.
Selig sind, die da Leid tragen, denn sie sollen getröstet werden. (Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted.) – Matthew 5:4
Die mit Tränen säen, werden mit Freuden ernten. Sie gehen hin und weinen und tragen edlen Samen, und kommen mit Freuden und bringen ihre Garben. (They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.) – Psalm 126:5,6
Denn alles Fleisch ist wie Gras und alle Herrlichkeit des Menschen wie des Grases Blumen. Das Gras ist verdorret und die Blume abgefallen. (For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away.) – 1 Peter 1:24
Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit; aber ich will euch wieder sehen und euer Herz soll sich freuen und eure Freude soll neimand von euch nehmen. (And ye now therefore have sorrow; but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.) – John 16:22
Ich will euch trösten, wie Einen seine Mutter tröstet. (As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.) – Isaiah 66:13
Siehe, ich sage euch ein Geheimnis: Wir werden nicht alle entschlafen, wir werden aber alle verwandelt werden; und dasselbige plötzlich, in einem Augenblick, zu der Zeit der letzten Posaune. Denn es wird die Posaune schallen, und die Toten wervandelt werden. Dann wird erfüllet werden das Wort, das geschrieben steht: Der Tod is verschlungen in den Sieg. Tod, wo ist dein Stachel? Hölle, wo ist dein Sieg? (Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed … then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is they sting? O grave, where is they victory?) – 1 Corinthians 15:51, 52, 54, 55
Walt Whitman is a great poet of the joys of life, but he is equally a great poet of death. Few poets have been immersed in the mystery of death or lived so close to death as he did. Fewer still have treated death with such an eloquent voice or created such an awesome persona. Death is a major component of the richness and variety of Leaves of Grass. …. Whitman’s poetry illustrates the universal truth that death is not only the most overwhelming and the least understood event of our existence but also the most intriguing. He realized from the outset of his poetic career that if his poetry were to reflect the essence and scope of our life experiences — and those of his own life — it must speak of death openly, imaginatively, and unswayed by clichés or established doctrines. He became a sensitive student of death and dying, familiar with disease, anguish, violence, and the displays of both fear and courage among the many dying persons he observed.
“Death is a vital part of [Whitman’s]s gospel of universal brotherhood and sisterhood, of his luminous vision of the progressive unfolding of the human race … and of his profound spirituality. And it is a vital element in the yearning for love that permeates the poems. … He viewed death as an eternal and benign mystery. … At times his poems treat death gladly, as if to embrace it; at times they treat it quizzically.
Throughout Leaves of Grass he proclaimed his faith that death was not a plunge into the terminal nada and was convinced that we can live our life fully only if we are prepared to welcome death as a transition in a continued, but still mysterious, process of spiritual evolution. Underlying this conviction was his belief that death promises some kind of future continuity for everyone—and particularly for himself. And, as the poems reveal, this belief did not come easily but was part of a trying personal and ideological struggle. Moreover, he felt that a profound respect for death was fundamental to his aesthetic and to all great art. … [Whitman’s] “Song of Myself” contains some of the most affecting death scenes in all poetry. — Harold Aspiz, So Long! Walt Whitman’s Poetry of Death (The University of Alabama Press, 2004)
Whitman had an intimate acquaintance of death as a volunteer nurse in Civil War hospitals. — Roger W. Smith
From the beginning Whitman seems to have recognized his ability to comfort the ailing immigrants and later the hospitalized horse-car drivers and injured firemen and soldiers by speaking with them in the humble manner that characterized his — and their — humble origins and by entering into their mode of thinking. — Harold Aspiz, So Long! Walt Whitman’s Poetry of Death
The grave—the grave—what foolish man calls it a dreadful place? It is a kind friend, whose arms shall compass us round about, and while we lay our heads upon his bosom, no care, temptation, nor corroding passion shall have power to disturb us. Then the weary spirit shall no more be weary; the aching head and aching heart will be strangers to pain; and the soul that has fretted and sorrowed away its little life on earth will sorrow not any more.
I do not dread the grave. There is many a time when I could lay down, and pass my immortal part through the valley of the shadow, as composedly as I quaff water after a tiresome walk. For what is there of terror in taking our rest? What is there here below to draw us with such fondness? Life is the running of a race—a most weary race, sometimes. Shall we fear the goal, merely because it is shrouded in a cloud?
– “The Tomb-Blossoms,” The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, January 1842
I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
— Leaves of Grass
I know I am deathless,
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter’s
compass,
I know I shall not pass like a child’s carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night.
— Leaves of Grass
[A carlacue (variant of curlicue) is a fancifully curved or spiral figure.]
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again, look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am, or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged,
Missing me one place, search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
— Leaves of Grass
If all came but to ashes of dung,
If maggots and rats ended us, then Alarum! for we are betray’d,
Then indeed suspicion of death.
Do you suspect death? if I were to suspect death I should die now,
Do you think I could walk pleasantly and well-suited toward annihilation?
— Leaves of Grass
Great is Death—sure as Life holds all parts together, Death holds all parts together,
Death has just as much purport as Life has,
Do you enjoy what Life confers? you shall enjoy what Death confers,
I do not understand the realities of Death, but I know they are great,
I do not understand the least reality of Life—how then can I understand the realities of Death?
— Leaves of Grass
I do not know what follows the death of my body,
But I know well that whatever it is, it is best for me,
And I know well that what is really Me shall live just as much as before.
— Leaves of Grass
O the beautiful touch of Death, soothing and benumbing a few moments, for reasons;
O that of myself, discharging my excrementitious body, to be burned, or rendered to powder, or buried,
My real body doubtless left to me for other spheres,
My voided body, nothing more to me, returning to the purifications, further offices, eternal uses of the earth.
— Leaves of Grass
Whereto answering, the sea,
Delaying not, hurrying not,
Whisper’d me through the night, and very plainly before day-break,
Lisp’d to me the low and delicious [italic added] word death,
And again death, death, death, death,
Hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor like my arous’d child’s heart,
But edging near as privately for me rustling at my feet,
Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and laving me softly all over,
Death, death, death, death, death.
— “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking.”
And if the memorials of the dead were put up indifferently everywhere, even in the room where I
eat or sleep, I should be satisfied,
And if the corpse of any one I love, or if my own corpse, be duly rendered to powder, and poured
in the sea, I shall be satisfied,
Or if it be distributed to the winds, I shall be satisfied.
— Leaves of Grass
Death is beautiful from you, (what indeed is finally beautiful except death and love?)
O I think it is not for life I am chanting here my chant of lovers, I think it must be for death,
For how calm, how solemn it grows to ascend to the atmosphere of lovers,
Death or life I am then indifferent, my soul declines to prefer,
(I am not sure but the high soul of lovers welcomes death most,)
Indeed O death, I think now these leaves mean precisely the same as you mean.
— Leaves of Grass
My dead absorb or South or North—my young men’s bodies absorb, and their precious precious blood,
Which holding in trust for me faithfully back again give me many a year hence,
In unseen essence and odor of surface and grass, centuries hence,
In blowing airs from the fields back again give me my darlings, give my immortal heroes,
Exhale me them centuries hence, breathe me their breath, let not an atom be lost,
O years and graves! O air and soil! O my dead, an aroma sweet!
Exhale them perennial sweet death, years, centuries hence.
— Leaves of Grass
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,
I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war,
But I saw they were not as was thought,
They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer’d not,
The living remain’d and suffer’d, the mother suffer’d,
And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer’d,
And the armies that remain’d suffer’d.
– “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”
I make a scene, a song, brief (not fear of thee,
Nor gloom’s ravines, nor bleak, nor dark—for I do not fear thee,
Nor celebrate the struggle, or contortion, or hard-tied knot),
Of the broad blessed light and perfect air, with meadows, rippling tides, and trees
and flowers and grass,
And the low hum of living breeze—and in the midst God’s beautiful eternal right hand,
Thee, holiest minister of Heaven—thee, envoy, usherer, guide at last of all,
Rich, florid, loosener of the stricture-knot call’d life,
Sweet, peaceful, welcome Death.
“Death’s Valley” (published in Harper’s Monthly Magazine, April 1892):
This extraordinarily powerful, lyrical movement never fails to move me. I had long thought that the lyrics must mean something like: Let’s face it, everyone is going to die; death and decay are inevitable. But the words from scripture are actually consoling:
Denn alles Fleisch ist wie Gras und alle Herrlichkeit des Menschen wie des Grases Blumen. Das Gras ist verdorret und die Blume abgefallen.
So seid nun geduldig, lieben Brüder, bis auf die Zukunft des Herrn. Siehe, ein Ackermann wartet auf die köstliche Frucht der Erde und is geduldig darüber, bis er empfahe den Morgenregen und Abendregen.
Aber des Herrn Wort bleibet in Ewigkeit.
Die Erlöseten des Herrn werden wieder kommen, und gen Zion kommen mit Jauchzen; ewige Freude wird über ihrem Haupte sein; Freude und Wonne werden sie ergreifen und Schmerz und Seufzen wird weg müssen.
(For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away.
Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandmen waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.
But the word of the Lord endureth for ever.
Those whom the Lord delivers shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.)
The focus of this “choral-orchestral setting of the shortened Catholic Mass for the Dead in Latin … is on eternal rest and consolation. … Fauré wrote of the work, ‘Everything I managed to entertain by way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem, which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest.’ … He told an interviewer: ‘It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death and someone has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience.’ (Wikipedia)
“Every soul has its own individual language, often unspoken, or lamely feebly haltingly spoken; but a true fit for that man, and perfectly adapted to his use.—The truths I tell to you or any other may not be plain to you, because I do not translate them fully from my idiom into yours.—If I could do so, and do it well, they would be as apparent to you as they are to me; for they are truths.—No two have exactly the same language, and the great translator and joiner of the whole is the poet, He has the divine grammar of all tongues, and says indifferently and alike How are you friend? to the President in the midst of his cabinet, and Good day my brother, to Sambo, among the hoes of the sugar field and both understand him and know that his speech is right.—”
— Walt Whitman, Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts (New York University Press, 1984), vol. 1, pp. 60-61
This is characteristic Whitmanesque language. So bracing. So original. So simple and straightforward. Utterly sincere and spontaneous. Utterly unaffected. It feels like language made anew in the workshop of the consciousness. It is almost childlike in its simplicity yet profound in its implications. If feels as if not only were a new poetic language and grammar being invented, but as if the world were being seen anew with fresh eyes. Yet, not pompously from on high, but from the level of a friend of yours or mine — of the president or a slave — who can be so greeted without ceremony.
Critic Harold Bloom has observed that “Only a few poets in the language have surpassed [Walt Whitman’s poem] ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’.”
I believe that it is Whitman’s greatest poem, which is saying something. Close rivals for that distinction among Whitman’s poetry might be “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” and “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.”
I have posted here (above) two musical settings of “Lilacs.”
German composer Paul Hindemith, who lived in the United States for over a decade, set Whitman’s text to music to mourn the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The work, an oratorio, was titled “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d: A Requiem for those we love” (1946).
I have heard this work performed live once, at Carnegie Hall. It never fails to move me. The ninth track on the recording posted here, “Sing on! you gray-brown bird,” brings tears to my eyes.
The recording posted here is by the Robert Shaw Chorale, which commissioned the work, with the mezzo-soprano Jan DeGaetani. It is my favorite performance.
Also posted here is American composer Roger Sessions’s setting of the poem (1977), a cantata. It is noted in a Wikipedia entry that
The University of California at Berkeley commissioned American neoclassical composer Roger Sessions to set the poem as a cantata to commemorate their centennial anniversary in 1964. Sessions did not finish composing the work until the 1970’s, dedicating it to the memories of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and political figure Robert F. Kennedy. Sessions first became acquainted with Leaves of Grass in 1921 and began setting the poem as a reaction to the death of his friend, George Bartlett, although none of the sketches from that early attempt survive. He returned to the text almost fifty years later, composing a work scored for soprano, contralto, and baritone soloists, mixed chorus and orchestra. The music is described as responding “wonderfully both to the Biblical majesty and musical fluidity of Whitman’s poetry, and here to, in the evocation of the gray-brown bird singing from the swamp and of the over-mastering scent of the lilacs, he gives us one of the century’s great love letters to Nature.”
This recording is of a performance conducted by Seiji Ozawa.
“On the Beach at Night Alone” is the second movement from Ralph Vaughan Williams’s “A Sea Symphony” (written between 1903 and 1909; first performed in 1910).
The text of “A Sea Symphony” comes from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.
“On the Beach at Night Alone” is a poem by Whitman.
I find this symphony extremely moving and impressive, and this movement has never failed to hold me in awe. I can feel a sense of identity with, and the vicarious experience of, being a walker on the beach (which Whitman often was).
ON the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef
of the universes and of the future.
A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in
different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the
brutes,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any
globe,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d,
And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.
Here is my attempt at explaining the poem. Comments are welcome. I am not a poetry expert.
— Roger W. Smith
The poet is walking on the beach at night.
“[T]he old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song.”
The old mother is the sea.
Singing her husky song … the surf roars.
(No fancy words here; Whitman uses the plainest.)
He thinks of the “clef” (key) of the “universes” (multiple universes) and the future (what is now and what is to come, linking the past and the future).
He sees that “A vast similitude interlocks all.”
He sees that things that we often think of as not alike, different, separate: the animate and inanimate … celestial bodies far out in space, the living and the dead, different peoples and nations, are all part of life, having the same life force.
The “vast similitude” is like a giant blanket covering and enveloping anything that ever has existed, does exist, or can be contemplated.
“Two New Old Books That Show Walt Whitman’s Different Selves”
New York Times Book Review
August 30, 2017
hi, Zack —
This review by Ted Genoways is okay, but nothing more. Why did it take the NYTBR so long to review [two hitherto lost works by Walt Whitman] “The Life and Adventures of Jack Engle” and “Manly Health and Training”?
I thoroughly disagree with James McWilliams (“Against Rediscovery: Why the ‘Lost Novel’ Phenomenon Hurts Readers,” Paris Review, May 22, 2017). In the case of a Whitman or James Joyce, the discovery of a lost work or fragment, or of a lost letter, is cause for rejoicing.
I also feel that Genoways gives Whitman’s lost works “Jack Engle” and “Manly Health and Training,” which you have unearthed — remarkably — shorter shrift than they deserve.
June 20th.—ON the “Mary Powell,” enjoy’d everything beyond precedent. The delicious tender summer day, just warm enough—the constantly changing but ever beautiful panorama on both sides of the river—(went up near a hundred miles)—the high straight walls of the stony Palisades—beautiful Yonkers, and beautiful Irvington—the never-ending hills, mostly in rounded lines, swathed with verdure,—the distant turns, like great shoulders in blue veils—the frequent gray and brown of the tall-rising rocks—the river itself, now narrowing, now expanding—the white sails of the many sloops, yachts, &c., some near, some in the distance—the rapid succession of handsome villages and cities, (our boat is a swift traveler, and makes few stops)—the Race—picturesque West Point, and indeed all along—the costly and often turreted mansions forever showing in some cheery light color, through the woods—make up the scene.
This is vintage, typical Whitman. A man who loved every minute of his life — savored it. Reminds one of this as it applies to our own lives. Knew how to express this beautifully. Felt and appreciated things keenly as few do.
jaunt (noun) — a short excursion or journey for pleasure
I WAS asking for something specific and perfect for my city,
Whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name.
Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly,
musical, self-sufficient,
I see that the word of my city is that word from of old,
Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays, superb,
Rich, hemm’d thick all around with sailships and steamships, an
island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,
Numberless crowded streets, high growths of iron, slender, strong,
light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies,
Tides swift and ample, well-loved by me, toward sundown,
The flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger adjoining islands,
the heights, the villas,
The countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters, the
ferry-boats, the black sea-steamers well-model’d,
The down-town streets, the jobbers’ houses of business, the houses
of business of the ship-merchants and money-brokers, the river-streets,
Immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a week,
The carts hauling goods, the manly race of drivers of horses, the
brown-faced sailors,
The summer air, the bright sun shining, and the sailing clouds
aloft,
The winter snows, the sleigh-bells, the broken ice in the river,
passing along up or down with the flood-tide or ebb-tide,
The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form’d, beautiful-
faced, looking you straight in the eyes,
Trottoirs throng’d, vehicles, Broadway, the women, the shops and
shows,
A million people—manners free and superb—open voices—
hospitality—the most courageous and friendly young men,
City of hurried and sparkling waters! city of spires and masts!
City nested in bays! my city!
What hurrying human tides, or day or night!
What passions, winnings, losses, ardors, swim
thy waters!
What whirls of evil, bliss and sorrow stem, thee!
What curious questioning glances—glints of
love!
Leer, envy, scorn, contempt, hope, aspiration!
Thou portal—thou arena—thou of the myriad
long-drawn lines and groups!
(Could but thy flagstones, curbs, facades tell
their inimitable tales);
Thy windows, rich and huge hotels—thy side-
walks wide;
Thou of the endless sliding, mincing, shuffling
feet!
Thou, like the parti-colored world itself—like
infinite, teeming, mocking life!
Thou visor’d, vast, unspeakable show and
lesson!
The following are some present day thoughts of my own occasioned by the above two poems of Walt Whitman. “Mannahatta” was Whitman’s stomping grounds during what was probably the most creative period of his life. It is my adopted city; my feelings parallel Whitman’s.
“Mannahatta”: Mannahatta is derived from the aboriginal name for the place, most likely meaning island of many hills. Whitman chose to sometimes call Manhattan “Mannahatta” and to call Long Island “Paumanok,” also derived from a Native American word.
“nested in nests of water-bays, superb, Rich”
The fact of Manhattan’s being surrounded by water is one of its greatest and most appealing attributes. (This is also stressed by Herman Melville in the opening chapters of Moby-Dick). The rivers and bays act as a natural counterweight to urban sprawl.
“hemm’d thick all around with sailships and steamships”
Not true anymore, for the most part. Too bad. But, Manhattan Island, being bounded on all sides by water, retains a unique appeal because of this.
“an island sixteen miles long”
Sixteen miles from Battery Park (the southern tip of Manhattan Island) to Spuyten Duyvil (the northern end of the island).
“Numberless crowded streets”
Still true. Crowded, which is a blessing. You don’t find lonely, deserted spots or forsaken places. Crowed, yes, but the crowds usually aren’t oppressive.
Space is limited in Manhattan. Tall buildings reaching to the skies create a sense of awe.
“Tides swift and ample, well-loved by me, toward sundown, The flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger adjoining islands, the heights, the villas”
Still true. There are islands, rivers with eddies, great vistas. All can still be seen by someone who strolls along the East River, the Battery, the banks of the Hudson, or the rarely visited but wonderful stretches of parkland at the upper tip of the island.
“the lighters, the ferry-boats”
Ferries still run, to the delight and for the convenience of many. A lighter is a barge used in unloading or loading ships. In one of Whitman’s greatest poems, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” there is a reference to a “belated lighter.”
“The down-town streets, the jobbers’ houses of business, the houses of business of the ship-merchants and money-brokers, the river-streets”
The small businesses are mostly gone, but there are still “river-streets.” Yet, access to the rivers is not so convenient anymore, since highways on the East and West Sides impede (but do not entirely prevent) access.
“Immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a week”
New York is still a city of immigrants, thank God. Mostly immigrants speaking, it seems, practically every imaginable tongue.
“The carts hauling goods, the manly race of drivers of horses”
Whitman loved to ride with and become acquainted with the drivers of horse drawn omnibuses on the main thoroughfares of Manhattan.
“The summer air, the bright sun shining, and the sailing clouds aloft”
So true, still. See photo below.
Central Park; photograph by Roger W. Smith
The winter snows, the sleigh-bells, the broken ice in the river, passing along up or down with the flood-tide or ebb-tide”
Herman Melville, in Moby-Dick (Chapter LXXXVII), also mentions ice breaking up on the Hudson: “A low advancing hum was soon heard; and then like to the tumultuous masses of block-ice when the great river Hudson breaks up in Spring, the entire host of whales came tumbling upon their inner center. …” I myself have observed this (once) during wintertime on the Hudson. The river froze over, and I can remember the hissing and popping sounds as the ice was breaking up slowly.
“The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form’d, beautiful- faced, looking you straight in the eyes”
People in Manhattan — pedestrians passing — still look at you, often, with friendly eyes, not averting their gaze. There is a wonderful openness about them. The City fosters it.
“Trottoirs throng’d, vehicles, Broadway”
It is still the case that the streets are thronged, with cars, pushcarts, bicycles. I love it. It drives the city traffic engineers crazy.
Trottoir is the French word for sidewalk. Whitman, who was not well versed in foreign languages, loved to use foreign words, on occasion, mostly French ones. He has been faulted for this. Some people can’t realize that one is not required to always say “sidewalk” when another word might be substituted. For various reasons, including a delight in language.
“the women, the shops and shows”
Manhattan is a wonderful place for shopping and window shopping. The “shows” continue to go on. And on. The women — a friend of mine, Charles Pierre, once remarked — are Manhattan’s “last great natural resource.” They range from classic beauties to exotic looking women with natural beauty of all backgrounds and races.
“A million people—manners free and superb—open voices— hospitality—the most courageous and friendly young men”
This is all so true. The concentration of humanity is wonderful. The people are open and friendly.
“City of hurried and sparkling waters! city of spires and masts! City nested in bays! my city!”
All still true, except for the “masts.” The current in the rivers is swift; they do indeed sparkle in the sunlight.
Whitman’s Broadway would have, in the mid-1850’s, meant an area of the city below 14th Street.
“What hurrying human tides, or day or night!”
“thy side-walks wide;” “Thou of the endless sliding, mincing, shuffling feet!”
The sidewalks in Manhattan are indeed wide and welcoming. No thoroughfare lacks them. The pedestrian is not shunted aside or forced to walk (as is the case in the suburbs) on a faux sidewalk. The sidewalks in the City are always full of trampers, day and night.
Note: “Broadway” was originally published in the New York Herald of April 10, 1888. “Mannahatta” exists in a couple of versions published in Leaves of Grass.
In his [Ralph Waldo Emerson’s] view the material creation is but an emblem of spiritual life. … To trace the operations of a subtle divine Presence in the mysteries of being—to ascend from the visible phenomena to universal laws—to embody the absolute, the unchanging, the perfect in the expressive forms of poetry—these are the problems which have challenged his warmest interest, and made him a retired and meditative sage, instead of a man of affairs. … Relying on certain mystic revelations to the soul of the individual, he shows scarcely any trace of logical faculty. … You look in vain for any consecutive order in the array of his thoughts. … Mr. Emerson’s predominant individualism leads him to ignore the past, and live in the present. … He believes in the perennial influence of inspiration. … The individual soul now conceals the elements of poetry, and prophecy, and the vision of God, as in the days of yore. … With this faith, Mr. Emerson attaches no importance to traditional opinion. … No school of philosophy or religion can hold this broad, untrammeled thinker within its walls. Even the great teachers of humanity do not win his fealty. Hints and monitions he may receive from their works, but authority never. … Mr. Emerson, although a rigid observer of the conventional proprieties of life, has little respect for a formal, imitative, stereotyped virtue. The stamp of nature and originality, in his view, would sanction almost any episode from the regular highway of ethics. He judges of character not by its accordance with any artificial code, but by the test of genuineness and native individuality. He rejects no coin that has the true ring, for want of the sign of some approved mint. An idealist in theory … he cherishes a most persistent and unrelenting attachment to reality. … He unites the dreamy mystical contemplation of an Oriental sage with the hard, robust, practical sense of a Yankee adventurer.
— anonymous, “Ralph Waldo Emerson. Phrenology, Physiology, Biography, and Portrait.,” Phrenological Journal, March 1854, quoted in Floyd Stovall, The Foreground of Leaves of Grass (University Press of Virginia, 1974), pp. 292-293
[Whitman] is the poet of our climate, never to be replaced, unlikely ever to be matched. Only a few poets in the language have surpassed “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”: Shakespeare, Milton, perhaps one or two others. Whether even Shakespeare and Milton have achieved a more poignant pathos and a darker eloquence than Whitman’s “Lilacs,” I am not always certain. The great scene between the mad Lear and the blind Gloucester; the speeches of Satan after he has rallied his fallen legions—these epitomize the agonistic Sublime. And so does this, but with preternatural quietness:
In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings,
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard,
With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig with its flower I break. [from “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” section 3]
— Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (New York: Riverhead Books, 1994), pp. 270-271
Walt Whitman. Concluded formal schooling at age eleven. Subsequently worked as an office boy, printer’s devil (apprentice), compositor (typesetter), schoolteacher, pressman, journalist, and editor. Began writing what would become Leaves of Grass in his early thirties. Published the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855 when he was age 36. A remarkable ontogenesis.
