One similarity between Emerson’s essays and Whitman’s “Song of Myself” (a similarity I would guess to be unintentional) is their tendency to contain single phrases that act as “keys” to unlock the meaning of the longer, more abstract piece.
“Song of Myself”, while significantly long, breaks down well into its numbered sections, but even within sections individual stanzas, or individual lines, often seem to outline the poem’s larger themes. It seems like you can flip to any page, point a random finger, and have it lie on a line that exuberantly deals with love, or nature, or sex, or the self, or the collective world, or all of the above… “O span of youth! ever-push’d elasticity!” (1170) celebrates the power of man, specifically at a young age, and the next line goes on to celebrate manhood with equal zeal. Earlier, Whitman claims “to touch my person to some one else’s is about as much as I can stand” (617). Here, again, he is celebrating something, this time the joy and connection that comes from his own sexuality. The pattern goes on and on.
The same goes for Emerson; his essays contain many individual sentences that sum up exactly what he is explaining at length. In “Self-Reliance”, his paragraphs are littered with assurances to “trust thyself” (270) and claims such as “no law can be sacred to me but that of my nature” (271) and “no greater men are now than ever were” (285). He reiterates and elaborates on the theme that is explicit in his title. Unlike novels, which seem to build slowly toward a large, implicit theme, Emerson and Whitman embarked on something else: a call for our attention, and a choice of loaded words meant to be remembered.
The connection you draw between the authors is interesting. The article I recently read for my blog post also discussed a relation between Emerson and Whitman in the context of race issues. In "Slavery and Abolitionism," Martin Klammer argues that Whitman's egalitarianism and identification with slaves is influenced by his reading of Emerson, which "may have prompted Whitman toward a sense of his own divinity which he recognized as connected to the divinity of all others." Comparing authors reveals how many writers were in conversation with each one another through their writing and how their writing was influenced by other contemporaries discussion of similar relevant issues.
ReplyDeleteThe connection you draw between the authors is interesting. The article I recently read for my blog post also discussed a relation between Emerson and Whitman in the context of race issues. In "Slavery and Abolitionism," Martin Klammer argues that Whitman's egalitarianism and identification with slaves is influenced by his reading of Emerson, which "may have prompted Whitman toward a sense of his own divinity which he recognized as connected to the divinity of all others." Comparing authors reveals how many writers were in conversation with each one another through their writing and how their writing was influenced by other contemporaries discussion of similar relevant issues.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the points you both make. However, I think that Whitman is more willing to write lines that are deeply perplexing and difficult, than Emerson is. Emerson is certainly thinking deep and complex thoughts, but my sense is that every sentence is interpretable, and can be related to the topic of the whole essay without too much struggle. With Whitman, though, there are many passages and lines that defy easy interpretation, and perhaps deny any interpretation. Section 50 gives an interesting example, of "that in me--I do not know what it is---/....it is without name--it is a word unsaid.../"
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