Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions (26 page)

 

Great is wickedness .... I find I often admire it just as much as I
admire goodness:
Do you call that a paradox? It certainly is a paradox.

The eternal equilibrium of things is great, and the eternal
overthrow of things is great,
And there is another paradox.

 

Great is life .. and real and mystical .. wherever and whoever,
Great is death .... Sure as life holds all parts together, death
holds all parts together;
Sure as the stars return again after they merge in the light, death
is great as life.

Leaves of Grass

Including

SANDS AT SEVENTY...
ist Annex,
GOOD-BYE MY FANCY... 2d
Annex,
A BACKWARD GLANCE O‘ER TRAVEL’D ROADS,
and
Portrait from
Life.

 

 

 

 

COME, said my Soul,
¹
Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one,)
That should I after death invisibly return,
Or, long, long hence, in other spheres,
There to some group of mates the chants resuming,
(Tallying Earth’s soil, trees, winds, tumultuous waves,)
Ever with pleas’d smile I may keep on,
Ever and ever yet the verses owning—as, first, I here and now,
Signing for Soul and Body, set to them my name,

 

“Laughing philosopher”—68 years old, 1887, photo taken by George C. Cox
in New York, New York. Courtesy of the Library of Congress,
Charles E. Feinberg Collection. Saunders #95.

INTRODUCTION

TO “DEATH-BED” EDITION

In the thirty-six years between the First Edition of
Leaves of Grass
and the so-called “Death-bed” Edition, Whitman’s original collection of twelve poems grew to more than 400 poems. Each of the original twelve appeared in some form in the “Death-bed” Edition. Other poems were created from lines extracted from other works: “Youth, Day, Old Age and Night,” for example, is comprised of lines 19 through 22 of “[Great Are the Myths].”
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The 1860 poem “States!” was excluded from the final edition of
Leaves;
instead it formed the basis for “Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice” and “For You, 0 Democracy.” Most of the new poems were inspired by national events as much as by Walt’s personal history. Just as he had prophesied in the 1855 preface, the poet’s spirit “responds to his country’s spirit.” Whitman’s
Leaves of Grass
was an ever-developing idea, itself a song that evolved as organically as its title suggests, along with the singer and his subject.

For those interested in the complex publication history of Whitman’s poems, the section “Publication Information” at the end of this book provides dates and title changes. Below is a list of editions Whitman published during his lifetime:

Most readers are introduced to the “Death-bed” Edition as “the” Whitman text and are confounded by the book’s actual prior history. Why did Whitman revise
Leaves of Grass
so frequently? Here was a man who
needed
to sell his work, without family money, rich friends, or another substantial income; here was a newspaper editor and journalist who was skilled at (and even enjoyed) the task of editing; here was a poet striving to write a people’s poetry, always ready to respond to new stimuli and revise his definitions. The year before his death, however, Whitman apparently realized that he would have to put his various editions in some preferential order. He thus gave his blessing to the “Death-bed” Edition, published as indicated on the title page in “1891-‘2.” “As there are now several editions of L. of G., different texts and dates, I wish to say that I prefer and recommend this present one,” Whitman notes on the verso of the title page. The “Death-bed” Edition thereby became the staple of Whitman anthologies.

The editors of the authoritative
Leaves of Grass:
A
Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems
(see “For Further Reading”) note that there is a major problem with accepting Whitman’s pronouncement: The text approved by Whitman was not necessarily the same one that later bore his letter of approval. About a hundred presentation copies of the “approved” edition that were issued were actually the uncorrected 1888
Leaves of Grass
poems; later, the corrected 1889 plates were issued with the same green cloth binding used for the uncorrected 1888 plates (for more details, see volume I of the
Variorum,
pp. xxiv-xxv). To avoid problems and confusion, the current edition is based on the
Variorum
text, still the definitive example of Whitman’s actual “Death-bed”
Leaves of Grass.

There are many benefits to beginning one’s study of Whitman with the 1891-1892 edition. These are, after all, the poems Whitman thought best represented a lifetime of writing. Helpful features not included in some prior editions (such as section numbers) make long poems easier to read and study. Several major “clusters” of poems are maintained, important prose pieces (such as “A Backward Glance o‘er Travel’d Roads”) are included, and two annexes (“Sands at Seventy” and “Good-Bye My Fancy”) are added for the first time. It is a large, impressive collection that resists chronological order and often groups poems by “idea.”

—Karen Karbiener

INSCRIPTIONS

One‘s-self I sing, a simple separate person,
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.
²

 

Of physiology from top to toe I sing,
Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I
say the Form complete is worthier far,
The Female equally with the Male I sing.

 

Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,
Cheerful, for freest action form’d under the laws divine,
The Modern Man I sing.

As I ponder’d in silence,
Returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long,
A Phantom arose before me with distrustful aspect,
Terrible in beauty, age, and power,
The genius of poets of old lands,
As to me directing like flame its eyes,
With finger pointing to many immortal songs,
And menacing voice,
What singest thou?
it said,
Know‘st thou not there is but one theme for ever-enduring bards?
And that is the theme of War, the fortune of battles,
The making of perfect soldiers.

Be it so,
then I answer‘d,
I too haughty Shade also sing war, and a longer and greater one
than any,
Waged in my book with varying fortune, with flight, advance and
retreat, victory deferr’d and wavering,
(Yet methinks certain, or as good as certain, at the last,) the field
the world,
For life and death, for the Body and for the eternal Soul,
Lo, I too am come, chanting the chant of battles,
I above all promote brave soldiers.

In cabin’d ships at sea,
The boundless blue on every side expanding,
With whistling winds and music of the waves, the large imperious
waves,
Or some lone bark buoy’d on the dense marine,
Where joyous full of faith, spreading white sails,
She cleaves the ether mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or
under many a star at night,
By sailors young and old haply will I, a reminiscence of the land,
be read,
In full rapport at last.

 

Here are our thoughts, voyagers’ thoughts,
Here not the land, firm land, alone appears,
may then by them be
said,
The sky o‘erarches here, we feel the undulating deck beneath our
feet,
We feel the long pulsation, ebb and flow of endless motion,
The tones of unseen mystery, the vague and vast suggestions of the
briny world, the liquid-flowing syllables,
The perfume, the faint creaking of the cordage, the melancholy
rhythm,
The boundless vista and the horizon far and dim are all here,
And this is ocean’s poem.

Then falter not 0 book, fulfil your destiny,
You not a reminiscence of the land alone,
You too as a lone bark cleaving the ether, purpos’d I know not
whither, yet ever full of faith,
Consort to every ship that sails, sail you!
Bear forth to them folded my love, (dear mariners, for you I fold it
here in every leaf;)
Speed on my book! spread your white sails my little bark athwart
the imperious waves,
Chant on, sail on, bear o‘er the boundless blue from me to every
sea,
This song for mariners and all their ships.