Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions (92 page)

27
(p. 78)
Here and there with dimes on the eyes walking:
For an earlier version of this passage, see “The House of Friends” (p. 739). The early version was first published in the
New York Tribune
of June 14, 1850.

28
(p. 83)
And slept while God carried me through the lethargic mist, / And took my time.... and took no hurt from the foetid carbon:
Whitman had read enthusiastically about pre-Darwinian evolutionary theory in the years leading up to
Leaves of Grass.
“Lethargic mist” and “foetid carbon” are references to pre-human ages, earlier even than the period of “monstrous sauroids” (Whitman probably means dinosaurs) he refers to in the next few lines.

29
(p. 90)
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world:
The title of Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” (1955), written 100 years after the publication
of Leaves of Grass,
was inspired by this line.

30
(p. 91)
I stop some where waiting for you:
The lack of end punctuation here is intentional, as the poem and its message were not supposed to have an end. The last word “you” circles back to the first word (“I”), as Whitman’s personal epic continues as the reader’s own.

31
(p. 91)
I pass so poorly with paper and types:
Whitman begins “[A Song of Occupations]” with allusions to his own first occupation in the printing industry. When he first wrote the poem, he was engaged in newspaper publishing and would continue to be—hence the “unfinished business” of “cold types” and “wet paper.”

32
(p. 101)
Woman in your mother or lover or wife:
This is one of many examples in which Whitman ties femaleness with motherhood first but leaves out references to a father figure as far as masculinity is concerned. See also the body-skimming passage at the end of “I Sing the Body Electric” (p. 254), in which Whitman looks at the male form in detail but fixates upon the maternal elements of women. In “[There Was a Child Went Forth]” (p. 138), Whitman speaks lovingly of his mother, but his father is described as “mean” and even “unjust.”

33
(p. 111)
I am the actor and the actress:
The dream sequence that starts here demonstrates extraordinary fluidity of identity. The poet is neither male nor female—or perhaps he is both. While the imagery remains heterosexual, the speaker now has the opportunity to identify his lover as a “he.” Whitman, who was gay but not completely “out,” is thus able to write about same-sex love under the guise of heterosexual passion.

34
(p. 112)
and the best liquor afterward:
It is difficult to determine the precise nature of this passage, a convolution of natural and sexual imagery. But it is a moment of bliss and resolution after a particularly difficult “exposure” passage in which the poet seemed to find himself “naked” and confronting deep-set anxieties.

35
(p. 112)
through the eddies of the sea:
This is the first of four “dream sequence” passages. The description of the swimmer sounds like the poet himself, who also identified himself as the “twenty-ninth swimmer” in “[Song of Myself].” This particular scene, with its shipwreck and washed-up bodies, was inspired by Whitman’s witnessing of the wreck of the
Mexico
off Hempstead Beach in 1840.

36
(p. 114) Now of the old
war-days:
The second dream sequence evokes scenes from Revolutionary War days. In the first stanza, Washington becomes emotional over the battle of Brooklyn Heights on August 27, 1776; next, Washington is once again teary-eyed, this time over bidding his troops farewell after America’s victory.

37
(p. 114)
as we sat at dinner together:
The third dream sequence, like the previous two, concerns the longing for missed human connections, and the grief over loss. Here, the mother figure mourns the disappearance of the aborigine—perhaps regretting the lost bond with indigenous American culture.

38
(p. 115)
Now Lucifer was not dead .... or if he was I am his sorrowful terrible heir:
The powerful “Black Lucifer” passage was deleted after 1855. Whitman evokes the Bible’s Lucifer, who, by fearlessly confronting God and fighting for his freedom from the ultimate master, became a revolutionary hero for the Romantic poets. Whitman thus vilifies the slave (“Black Lucifer”) who chooses to defy his master (the “sportsman” or hunter of the passage). Written during a time when slave revolts were on the increase, the passage is deliberately incendiary. “The vast dusk bulk that is the whale’s bulk” may well be the latent power of the enslaved masses waiting to arise—though the phrase is also sexually provocative, and may have been inspired by Melville’s 1851 novel
Moby Dick.

39
(p. 119) and duly return to you: A rephrasing of the Bible, Job 1:21: “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither” (King James Version). Here, as in “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” (p. 400), the darkness and quiet of the maternal womb is evoked as a desirable place to which to return.

40
(p. 119)
whether those who defiled the living were as bad as they who defiled the dead?:
The poem begins and ends with indictments against those who “corrupt” their bodies and “defile” the living and the dead. Here masturbation (“corruption”) seems to be viewed negatively, which contrasts with the opinion dominating “Bunch Poem” of 1856 (retitled “Spontanous Me” in 1867).

41
(p. 127)
This is a face of bitter herbs .... caoutchouc, or hog’s lard:
In these lines, the poet compares human faces with items that speak of inner troubles—a face that evokes the putridity of a vomit-inducer (emetic), the addictive pull of laudanum (a mixture of opium and alcohol), the hardness of caoutchouc (crude rubber), and the soft greasiness of hog’s lard.

42
(p. 128)
that emptied and broke my brother:
Mental-health problems plagued the Whitman family, so it is possible that there is biographical truth to these lines. Walt’s older brother, Jesse, was eventually confined to and died in an insane asylum in 1870; his youngest brother, Edward, was mentally retarded at birth (and possibly afflicted with Down’s syndrome or epilepsy).

43
(p. 133)
[Europe: The 72d and 73d Years of These States]:
Whitman is reacting with favor to the revolutions going on in Austria, Hungary, Germany, and Italy; they were set off by the dethroning of Louis-Philippe of France in 1848, when the second French Republic was declared.

44
(p. 135)
[A Boston Ballad]:
This poem is Whitman’s vigorous and sarcastic protest against the way state and federal authorities handled the case of Anthony Burns in 1854. Burns was an African and a slave belonging to Charles Suttle of Alexandria, Virginia. He escaped on a Boston-bound ship in early 1854; in May he was arrested, and after a weeklong trial, Judge Edward Loring ruled that Burns had to return to his master. Antislavery agitators like Wendell Phillips championed Burns as a martyr and led rallies. Because most of Boston protested the ruling, federal troops were called in to escort Burns back to the ship. Crowds jeered, and the American flag was hung upside down. On July 4 activists held a huge rally in Framingham, Massachusetts. It was there that Henry David Thoreau delivered a powerful address, “Slavery in Massachusetts,” and William Lloyd Garrison burned copies of the Fugitive Slave Law and the Constitution.

45
(p. 138)
And clap the skull on top of the ribs, and clap a crown on top of the skull:
The poet sarcastically bids the silent, passive onlookers to glue the corrupt King George III together again and set him up for the United States Congress to “worship.”

46
(p. 139)
The father, strong, selfsufficient, manly, mean, angered ... the tight bargain, the crafty lure:
These lines have been cited in support of the theory that Whitman had a troubled relationship with his father. Alternately, maternal imagery in this poem is comforting and attractive, from the image of the Quaker mother to the “mother” schooner with the “baby” boat “slacktowed astern.”

47
(p. 142)
thirty-six years old in 1855:
The birth date, height, and age correspond to factual data on Whitman.

DEATH-BED EDITION (1891-1892)

1
(p. 147)
Come, said my Soul:
Whitman “framed” the experience of reading the “Death-bed” Edition with this introductory poem (which also appeared on the title pages of the two variants of the 1876 Centennial Edition—
Leaves of Grass:
Author’s
Edition, with Portraits and Intercalations
and
Leaves of Grass: Author’s Edition, with Portraits from Life—as
well as
Complete Poetry and Prose
of X888) and “So Long!”, the farewell poem for every edition since 1860.

2
(p. 165)
the word En-Masse:
The first lines of the first poem in the “Death-bed” Edition recall the message of the first poem in the 1855
Leaves of Grass
(“[Song of Myself]”): The poem celebrates Whitman himself and through him all others. Here Whitman seems to be simplifying and modifying his earlier, more blatantly egotistical statement.

3
(p. 173)
temperate, chaste, magnetic:
Throughout the 1850S, Whitman was intrigued by several developing pseudosciences. Animal magnetism was the study of the flow of “electricity” within the human body, including how this energy might be exchanged with the help of mediums or machines.

4
(p. 173)
To a Certain Cantatrice:
The poem was dedicated to Marietta Alboni (1823-1894), an Italian contralto who visited America in 1852 and 1853. Whitman often referred to his love for opera; as he wrote for the Atlantic
Monthly,
“but for the opera, I could never have composed Leaves of Grass.”

5
(p. 175)
I Hear America Singing:
Whitman’s vision of himself as a “singer” and “chanter of songs” was in part inspired by the popularity of family singing groups in mid-nineteenth-century America. In the
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
of April 3,1846, Whitman wrote: “We have now several American vocal bands that in true music really surpass almost any of the
artificial
performers from abroad: there are the Hutchin sons, the Cheneys, the Harmoneons, the Barton family, and the Ethiopian serenaders—all of them well trained, and full of both natural and artistic capacity.”

6
(p. 183)
camerado:
One of Whitman’s variants for “comrade,” this word carries a suggestion of intimacy and tenderness. Whitman often associated the word “camerado” with “adhesiveness,” a term from phrenology that designates a love and closeness between friends (and one of Whitman’s code words for homosexual love).

7
(p. 190)
and us two only :
In 1860 four lines were included between this and the next line; they were omitted from all succeeding editions. The original lines are typical of the strong “adhesive” sentiments of the 1860
Leaves of Grass—
feelings that Whitman chose to tone down or leave out of later editions.

8
(p. 190)
Song of Myself-
See the “Publication Information” section of this edition. Major changes over the years include the addition of stanza numbers in 1860 and the addition of section numbers in 1867. After 1855 (see p. 29) Whitman also began substituting dashes and more regular punctuation for his original ellipses, the length of which he sometimes modified to signify the length and depth of pauses. Additionally, he modified and toned down many of the more provocative passages. Many believe that the 1855 version of “Song of Myself” has a spontaneous, vital quality that is missing from the more ordered later editions. The later “Song of Myself ” is, however, easier to read, and the poetry often has a more graceful, even feel.

9
(p. 214)
Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son:
This important identifying line went through several transitions before achieving its current smoothness and combination of universality and specificity. In 1855 it was the energetic but clumsy “Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos” (p. 52); in 1867 it became the stronger statement “Walt Whitman am I, of mighty Manhattan the son”; in 1871 the line became overcrowded again: “Walt Whitman am I, a Kosmos, of mighty Manhattan the son.” The line achieved its final version in 1881.

10
(p. 218)
I hear the traind’d soprano (what work with hers is this?):
This line was toned down significantly in 1867. In 1855 it read: “I hear the trained soprano .... she convulses me like the climax of my love-grip” (p. 57). In 1867 the line became “I hear the trained soprano- (what work, with hers, is this?).”

11
(p. 233)
And feel the dull intermitted pain:
The alterations made to this passage illustrate that over time Whitman’s style became more condensed and focused but also lost some of its specificity and energy. Consider the nonspecific imagery of the first stanza of section 37 and compare it to this section’s appearance in 1855: