Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions (91 page)

ENDNOTES

FIRST EDITION (1855)

1
(p.
₇
) [Preface]: The bracketed titles of this section and the following twelve poems were provided by Whitman in later editions of
Leaves of Grass.
In the 1855 edition, Whitman did not provide a title for the preface and wrote “Leaves of Grass” as a header for the first six poems, leaving the last six without any title (see “Publication Information”).

2
(p. 9)
His spirit
responds
to his country’s spirit
...
he incarnates its geography and natural life and rivers and lakes:
Whitman here shows how the poet’s patriotism and spirit take actual shape. It is the first instance of one of Whitman’s favorite themes: the connection between physicality and spirituality. His interest in this subject is evinced by his inclusion of his phrenological chart in advertisements for
Leaves of Grass.
(Phrenology, a popular pseudoscience of Whitman’s day, was based on the assumption that intellectual and emotional qualities could be manifested on the body as bumps on the head.) On page 17 of the “[Preface],” Whitman names phrenologists (along with lexicographers) as among the “lawgivers of poets.”

3
(p. 10)
Of all nations the United States with veins full of poetical stuff most need poets and will doubtless have the greatest and use them the greatest:
For Whitman, the “need” here is particularly urgent. The 1850S were a time of unprecedented political corruption. A series of weak presidencies (Millard Fillmore, president 1850-1853; Franklin Pierce, 1853-1857; and James Buchanan, 1857-1861) eroded Americans’ confidence in leadership. Just a few months before the printing of the First Edition, Pierce’s failed leadership helped set the stage in “Bleeding Kansas” for what amounted to a local civil war between pro-slavery and abolitionist settlers.

4
(p. 13)
This is what you shall do:
The following passage is inspired by Paul’s dictates in Romans 12:1-21. The rolling lines and stately rhythms of many of Whitman’s writings were inspired by passages from the Bible, particularly Psalms and the Gospels.

5
(p. 27)
The soul of the largest and wealthiest and proudest nation ... his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it:
These powerful lines are the foundation of Whitman’s philosophy of literature: The poet must reflect his people, and the people embrace their poet. As he brought forth subsequent editions of
Leaves of Grass
without receiving the general support of the American public, Whitman realized he would not experience this symbiotic relationship with his readers during his lifetime (see note 130, to “A Backward Glance o‘er Travel’d Roads,” his end-of-career response to the demands of the “[Preface]”).

6
(p. 29)
loveroot, silkthread, crotch and vine:
This is the reader’s introduction to Whitman’s use of “sexualized” plant life. All four words are names of plants, though they bring to mind parts of the human body as well. Whitman’s suggestiveness here has led critics to hypothesize about the tie between “grass” and pubic hair, especially in the next few pages of “Song of Myself.”

7
(p. 31)
plumb in the uprights, ... braced in the beams:
These are carpenter’s terms. Whitman’s father was a skilled carpenter, and Whitman himself worked in the trade while getting
Leaves of Grass
ready for publication. In addition to using carpentry terms throughout his poems, Whitman often includes the terminology of printing, his first real profession and a trade that remained dear to him throughout his life.

8
(p. 32)
But they are not the Me myself
In the following section, Whitman differentiates between soul and self (“the other I am”), spiritual and physical Walt. He sees a symbiotic relationship between the two, which is typical of the connections between physical and spiritual realms throughout
Leaves of Grass.

9
(p. 33)
and elder and mullen and pokeweed:
The preceding section has been subject to a myriad of interpretations, many of them concerned with the sexuality of the passage; for the infamous “oral sex” interpretation, as well as others, see Edwin Haviland Miller’s Walt
Whitman’s “Song of Myself ”: A Mosaic of Interpretations,
Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989, pp. 59-67. The intimacy and moment of revelation shared by the “me” and “you” of the passage need not be purely sexual, however; it might well be a dialogue between the “self and the ”soul“ that is referenced in the section immediately preceding this one in ”Song of Myself.“

10
(p. 36)
there the
pistol
had fallen:
When the grandson of American statesman Henry Clay shot himself in New Orleans, Whitman was there to report it. The ”still photo“ feeling of many of the images in ”Song of Myself was inspired by Whitman’s years as a journalist.

11
(p. 39)
Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore
...
They do not think whom they souse with spray:
The “swimmers” passage has intrigued many of Whitman’s readers, including Thomas Eakins (who painted “The Swimming Hole” in 1885). Especially intriguing is the number twenty-eight (or twenty-nine). In Walt Whitman’s America (see “For Further Reading”), David Reynolds provides a telling example of Whitman’s “encoded” language in his reference to Pete Doyle, with whom he began a friendship in 1865, as “16.4” (the letter numbers of his initials); there is reason to believe, then, that the number twenty-eight holds significance (whether it has something to do with the lunar or female reproductive cycle or with Whitman’s age when he experienced a particularly important event).

12
(p. 39)
shuffle and breakdown:
An example of how Whitman used his journalism to inspire his poetry. In an editorial for the New York Au
rora,
Whitman describes butchers in the marketplace: ”With sleeves rolled up, and one comer of their white apron tucked under the waist string—to whoever casts an enquiring glance at their stand, they gesticulate ... and when they have nothing else to do, they amuse themselves with a jig, or a break-down. The capacities of the ’market roarers’ in all the mystery of a double shuffle, it needs not our word to endorse“ (1842).

13
(p. 43)
must sit for her daguerreotype:
In the middle of this collage of everyday life, Whitman introduces one of his fascinations: the new and popular art of photography. Starting in the 1840s, daguerreotype studios lined Broadway. Matthew Brady and Gabriel Harrison were among the best, and Whitman’s favorites. Whitman was allegedly the most photographed nineteenth-century American poet; more then X images of him are available at the Walt Whitman Archive (see ”For Further Reading“).

14
(p. 43)
The opium eater reclines with rigid head and just-opened lips:
Opium use was at an all-time high in Whitman’s New York, particularly in slum areas such as Five Points. Though there is no evidence that Whitman ever experimented with opium, he certainly saw it in use. Whitman had a fear of addictions that may be rooted in his father’s alleged alcoholism; the poet was active in the popular Temperance Movement through the early 1840S.

15
(p. 47)
I cock my hat as I please indoors or out:
From his own cocky image on the frontispiece of
Leaves of Grass,
to his order in the ”[Pref ace]“ to ”take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men,“ Whitman defied the polite conventions of hat wear of his day. Clothes did indeed make the man, according to Whitman: For him, the reflection of the inner self in outer wear was analogous to the connection between the spiritual and the physical.

16
(p. 52) Walt
Whitman,
an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos: This line, approximately halfway into the first poem in the 1855 First Edition of
Leaves of Grass,
is the poet’s first use of his name. Thus one can identify the ”anonymous“ author only if one has read into the heart of the poem—a point that calls into question whether some reviewers had actually read ”Song of Myself “ in its entirety (in the
New York Tribune
of July 23, 1855, Charles A. Dana writes of ”our nameless bard“).

17
(p. 52)
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!:
These lines appear on the title page of the City Lights edition of Allen Ginsberg’s X poem ”Howl,“ a poem meant to respond to and extend Whitman’s message 100 years after the First Edition of
Leaves of Grass.

18
(p. 56) I hear the bravuras of birds: Throughout this passage, Whitman ”hears“ traditional musical instruments and sounds in nature. Thus he also listens to the fish-pedlars’ “recitative” (a term normally reserved for opera singers), the anchor-lifters’ ”refrain“ (or repeated chorus), and the drum-like ”solid roll of the train.”

19
(p. 58)
I have instant conductors all over me ... lead it harmlessly
through me: Whitman’s idea here is inspired by his knowledge of such popular pseudosciences as the study of animal magnetism, a phenomenon in which electrical impulses flow through the body.

20
(p. 63)
Where triphammers crash .... where the press is whirling its cylinders:
In this line, Whitman includes references to the art of printing. These are wonderfully appropriate to the 1855 edition
of Leaves of Grass,
which he helped typeset.

21
(p. 63) or
a good game of base-ball:
Whitman was a fan of the new sport, the rules and features of which were standardized in the 1840S by members of the New York Knickerbocker Club. Though the birthplace of baseball is still in question, many argue that it was Whitman’s beloved Brooklyn.

22
(p. 67)
the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steamship, and death chasing it up and down the storm :
On December 22, 1853, the ship
San Francisco
set sail for South America; from December 23 to January 5 it was rudderless. Many lost their lives. Whitman probably read about this event in the New York Tribune of January 21, 1854.

23
(p. 68)
I am the mashed fireman with breastbone broken:
As a journalist in the 1840S, Whitman was well aware of the terrible fires that ravaged Manhattan throughout that decade. In the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of February 2.4, 1847, he described a scene to which he had been an eyewitness: ”When my eyes caught a full view of it, I beheld a space of several lots, all covered with smoldering ruins, mortar, red hot embers, piles of smoking, half-burnt walls—a sight to turn a man’s heart sick.... the most pitiful thing in the whole affair was the sight of shivering women, their eyes red with tears, and many of them dashing wildly through the crowd, in search, no doubt, of some member of their family, who, for what they knew, might be burned in smoking ruins near by.”

24
(p. 69)
I tell not the fall of Alamo:
Whitman’s years as a newspaper reporter continue to flavor this section, which tells a lesser-known tale of a bloodier battle than the battle of the Alamo, which ended on March 6, 1836. In late March of that year some 400 Americans were murdered after they surrendered to the Mexicans near Goliad, Texas.

25
(p. 70)
Did you read in the seabooks of the oldfashioned frigate-fight?:
Whitman here describes a Revolutionary War sea battle that took place on September 23, 1779, between the American ship the
Bon homme Richard and the British Serapis.
He was interested in preserving important moments in American history in his poem.

26
(p. 76)
Magnifying and applying come I:
In this bold passage, the poet claims that gods and priests have made too little of the divinity of man. Whitman’s self-education in world religions is evinced by this passage, which runs through the names of gods from Jehovah to Manito (an Algonquin god), Odin (the chief Norse deity), and Mexitli (an Aztec war god).