Student: Dasclu Claudia Cristina

Seminar Instructor: Prof. Dr. Habil Mihai Stroe

Faculty of Foreign Languages, Bucharest
3rd Year, Group 1

Walt Whitman - Grass Poetics : Song of Myself between

Realsim and Egyptian Mysteries (part 2)

Let your soul stand cool and composed

before a million universes. (Walt Whitman)

Walt Whitman was born on 31 May 1819 in West Hills (town Huntington), Long
Island. He is the most representative poet of the 19th American literature, or rather, Americas
world poet and the inventor of the free verse. Being a humanist, Walt Whitmans concepts and
ideas oscilate between two literary movements transcendentalism and realism but also
express the authors prophetic vision on democracy. His major, monumental work, the volume
Leaves of grass comprises an unique vision concerning life and death, individuality and
society, self and selves. Song of myself is the most famous poem in this volume, a vast
combination of autobiographical elements, sermon and poetic meditation whose origins are
believed to be deeply rooted in the Egyptian mythology.
The aim of this essay is to discuss the connections between Walt Whitmans
admiration and tendency towards Egyptology and the creation of his literary masterpiece
Song of Myself. This paper will take into account and try to clarify the significance of the
major themes in the poem, especially in section 2 and the liaison which establishes between
the authors poetic vision and elements of the Egyptian culture. Another important subject of
analysis is the realistic nature of the work, as opposed to Egyptoplogy, which creates
confusion concerning its genuine sources .

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Firstly, in order to understand and try to interpret Walt Whitmans poem, I think that it is
very important to know the context and the literary background on which he created Song of
Myself. A vital factor in my analysis is the literary movement that so much influenced him,
namely Transcendentalism. Trancendentalism was a movement in literature and philosophy
that flourished in the 19th century, in the American space, a philosophical and literary
movement, centered in Concord and Boston, which was prominent in the intellectual and
cultural life of New England from 1836 until just before the Civil War. It was inaugurated in
1836 by a Unitarian discussion group that came to be called the Transcendental
Club.(Abrams, 326). The main idea of this curent can be described as such: the human
being has knowledge about himself and the world around him that transcends or goes
beyond what they can hear, feel, taste, touch or see. This knowledge comes from imagination
and intuition, it is not attained through senses or logic. Another transcendentalist belief is that
social institutions or communities corrupt the purity of individuals and destroy their identity.
The spiritual entity of the self is also characteristic for this literary period. Transcendentalists
believed that the self comprises ideas, experiences, pshichological states and spiritual insights,
that this ego serves as an instrument which can be used in order to create powerful
relationships between the human being, nature and universe. In my opinion, Walt Whitman is
enthusiastically expressing these ideas in his works. Known as the creator of the American
cult of self-celebration, his poetry mediates at length on most of the beliefs and practices that
where central for transcendentalists.
Secondly, the next step in my interpretation would be to provide some chronological
information with regard to the volume and the poem which I am going to analize. In 1855,
Whitman published the first edition of Leaves of Grass , a slim volume consisting of
twelve untitled poems and a preface. A year later, he published a second edition, to which he
added some other poems. Throughout time, he revised and enlarged the volume, publishing
more editions of this book. The most significant poem in this volume is Song of Myself; to
my mind, it represents the core of Whitmans artistic vision. Nontheless, several critical
studies have recently called attention to the influence of Egyptology in this litrary work,this
being a source that I find very interesting and debatable.
According to Stephen Tapscott, Walt Whitman had shown a great interest in
Egyptology throughout his life : Evidence in the notebooks shows that he knew, either
thorugh books or lectures, the works of several of the most proeminent writers on Egypt,
including Champollion. (Tapscott, 50). Should this be the original source of Song of
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Myself? I think that it is very probable for Whitman to have borrowed concepts, images and
a linguistic structure from his knowledge of Egyptian traditions. An argument in favour of this
idea can be the following: it seems that, due to his profound immersion in the Egyptian lore,
he actually started to imaginatevly identify himself with Osiris (or Asar), the god of vegetative
regeneration, the afterlife, underworld and the dead : there were days when Whitman
paraded on Broadway, with a red shirt on, open in front to show the scented herbage of his
breast (Shepherd, 74). Having taken into account these information, I think that now we can
look at Song of Myself from a different perspective.
Stephen Tapscott points out that even the earliest editions of Song of Myself seem to
contain images and a language that deals with the process of deschiphering, most probably a
secret that is hidden in the code-words of the poem: translating the hints of the natural life
of the Self in the open air (Tapscott, 53). This thing has much to do with the Egyptian
hyerogliphic system in which Whitman was so much intersted. This system allows natural
objects to point beyond themselves to metaphorical meanings. In his vision, nature is like a
book which contains all the secrets and answers at the questions a man can ask. The poet
allows the world to be in naked contact with him, until he can feel at one with what before
had been separate.
In sction 2 of his poem, Whitman breaks out of enclosures, whether they be phisical
or mental ones. Whitman once said the Literature is full of parfumes . I think that this is a
very interesting statement which will be useful in the interpretation of the second part of the
poem. In my opinion, the parfumes that the author mentions have to do with the fact that
writers, poets, artists offer us through their work a filttered version of how to view and
understand the world around us. We are tempted to live with the ideas and conceptions of
those who have come before us, which means that we live according to a toxic and
unproductive means of understanding the space in which we live. Nevertheless, through his
work, he comes with a solution to this problem, namely that we should break out of the
traditional pattern The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it. (Whitman
3) and open up our senses in order for our perception to engulf the true virtues of live in a
pure and undistilled way; we should breathe the atmosphere and the world in only to breathe
it back as creation. In Whitmans vision, that is what a real and genuine poet is expected to do.
So, in section 2 of Song of Myself the authentic self expresses its identity and
declares its separateness from civilization and its closeness to nature. The impact between
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idividuality and civilization is powerful. In Whitmans poem, houses and rooms represent the
idea of community, of society Houses and rooms are full of parfumes, the shelves are
crowded with parfumes (Whitman 3) , the parfumes stand for the idividual self and the
whole atmosphere illustrates the universal self. The poet is allured to let his self fuse with the
idea of the other selves but he manages to preserve his own identity. It is clear that there exists
an impenetrable connection between these elements because the self seems to be part of all of
them.
Moving forward, the reader witnesses the profound admiration, the intense adulation
that Whitman experiences with regard to nature. He feels an overwhelming desire, he yearns
for the nature to be in absolute contact with him I will go to the bank by the wood and
become undisguised and naked/ I am mad for it to be in contact with me. (Whitman 3). He
wants to reveal his true spirit, to give away masks and other cannons that are imposed by
society and unite himself with the natural elements that sourround him. The roots and vines
seem now part of the same exotic flow that he feels in his own naked body which he offers up
as a precious gift : Echoes, ripples,buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread,crotch and vine.
(Whitman 3). To my mind, this offering can be interpreted as being rooted in the Egyptian
mythology. For Whitman, the idolized god to whom he gives his spirit is represented by
nature; consequently, nature becomes an almighty entity; a connection can be made here with
Osiris because, besides the underworld which he governed, he was also associated with
regeneration, vegetation and the cycles observed in nature, for example floods in the Nile.
Thats why he was also described as the "Lord of love" (The Oxford Guide 302), "He Who is
Permanently Benign and Youthful" . (Wilson 302)
Section 2 of Song of Myslef continues to develop its ideas with the evocation of all
the five senses: smell: The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and darkcolord sea-rocks,and of hay in the bar,, hearing: The sound of the belchd words of my
voice loosd to the eddies of the wind, touch: A few light kisses, a fw embraces, a reaching
around of arms,, sight: The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs
wag, and taste: The smoke of my own breath, (Whitman 3) a smoke that possibly
symbolizes the new fire, the unknown and blissful flow which he now discovers within. It
becomes clearer and clearer that he integrates himself in the natural space; he expresses the
ultimate joy that he feels through his senses, a joy that intensifies with each moment that
passes. He is bewitched by the experimentation of this physical and yet spiritual sensations.
Whitman then brings into discussion the morning and sunrise which give an air of freshness
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and optimism to the whole work. It is the part of the day which suggests a new beginning:
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising/ from bed and meeting the
sun. (Whitman 3) From an Egyptian perspective, the sun can be related with the solar deity
Ra. He was often considered to be the King of all Gods and one of the central gods of the
Egyptian pantheon, but also the creator of every source of life. So, this meeting with Ra
would represent in the whitmanesque vision the encounter with the ultimate creator of every
living being.
Moving on, the tone of the poem becomes more realistic and serious, drifitng away
from any ancinet idea. Whitman adopts now another position with regard to his audience. He
gently mcoks those who believe that they are able to master the art of reading and
interpretation, asking an apparently innocent question: Have you practisd so long to learn
to learn to read?/ Have you felt so proud to get at at the meaning of poems? (Whitman 3)
He points out that the true inspiration comes from our respiration, that the poem or song
results from the process of breathing the atoms of the air and exhaling them back into the
world as creation. That means that the material of litrature lies in everything that sourrounds
us, in every natural element or fragrance. Poems are written with our bodies, as much as our
minds, with the air oxygenating the blood and pomping it to our brain and every part of our
body. Whitman then invites us to spend a day and night with him as we read Song of
Myself, a poem that does not hide its meaning, but requires occult hermeneutics to
understand it (where the term hermeneutics refers to the thory of text interpretation,a wider
discipline that includes written, verbal and nonverbal communication). According to Leon
Surrete, the occult hemeneutic is based upon a relatively simple binary set of an exoteric or
manifest meaning appearent to be unitiated, and on a esoteric or latent meaning encrypted
beneath the surface meaning. (Surrete 27). Taking this information into account, in my
opinion, Whitman believes his poem to contain the nature of the divine itself, a nature that can
only be revealed to those who are prepared for it. For him, this is a mythological journey, an
awakening, a poetical rebirth that enables him and the initiated reader to discover the origin
of all poems, that means the primordial source of art and literature. Whitmans opinion is
that this is a poem which does not need to become a creed, but a guide in experiencing the
world with our own eyes and selves. He wants his work to be a transformative experience that
gives the reader the tool to see the world anew, and to see it for himself directly, unfiltered by
exegets, critics or some canon ideas.

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In conclusion, through Song of Myself , Walt Whitman reflects his individuality

and his powerful self. But for him, the self is both universal and individual, an idea that
creates confusion. He wants to preserve his own identity, but in the same time he wants to
merge with the nature, the universe and with divinity. Whether we speak of an Egyptian
divinity or of a Christian one, the meaning of the poem does not change. In the worldview of
this unique persona, humankind and nature interpenetrate each other in the most mystical and
intimate way. The cycle of birth, death, transformation and trancendence is forever repeating.
I reached the conclusion that this poem oscilates between these two different aspects: the
ancient, immemorial nature of it and realism, that stands for novelty. Song of Myself may
be concealing souces of a primitive religion and tradition, but in the same time it innovates the
American literature through its optimistic tone, the tone of celebration.

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Bibliography

1. Abrams, Meyer Howard; A Glossary of literary terms; Heinle & Heinle, United States
of America, 1999
2. Burden of Egypt, The, J. A. Wilson, p. 302, University of Chicago Press, 4th imp 1963
3. Oxford Guide, The : Essential Guide to Egyptian Mythology, Edited by Donald B.
Redford, p302-307, Berkley, 2003, ISBN 0-425-19096-X
4. Shepherd, Esther: Possible sources of some of Whitmans Ideas and Symbols in
Hermes Trismegistus and other works, Modern Language Quarterly, XIV (March,
1953), 74
5. Topscott, J. Stephan, Leaves of Grass: Whitman`s Egypt in Song of Myself;
6. Whitman, Walt; Song of Myself; Digireads.com; 2006

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