2023年4月浙江自考英美文学选读复习笔记：Walt Whitman

Leaves of Grass has aways been considered a monumenta work which commands great attention because of its uniquey poetic embodiment of American democratic ideas as written in the founding documents of both. the Revoutionary War in tie United States and the Civi War, and the author of the book is a giant of American etters. This man is Wat Whitman (1819-1892).

Whitman was born in 1819 into a working-cass famiy and grew up in Brookyn, New York. Son of a carpenter, Whitman eft his schooing for good at eeven, and became an office boy. Later on he changed severa jobs, one of which was in the printing office of a newspaper, which woud be of great hep in his iterary career. By this eary age he had aready shown his strong ove for iterature, reading a great dea on his own, especiay the works of Shakespeare and Miton, and deveoped his potentia for the writing career in the future. Before he was 17 years od he had aready had his poems printed on a paper, athough these eary works were not comparabe to his ater and mature ones. However, Whitman did not become a professiona writer directy henceforth, unti an opportunity came up which sent him back to New York City, where he formay took up journaism and induged himsef in the excitement of the fast-growing metropois. It was during these years that Whitman began to show his democratic partisanship. And the ideas governing Whitman's poetry-writing graduay took shape. Feeing compeed to speak up for something new and vita he found in the air of the nation, Whitman turned to the manua work of carpentry around 1851 or 1852, as an experiment to famiiarize himsef with the reaity and essence of the ife of the nation. At the same time, he widened his reading to a new scae and made it more systematic. After enriching himsef simutaneousy by these two very different approaches, Whitman was abe to put forward his own set of aesthetic principes. Leaves of Grass was just the exssion of these principes.

Wat Whitman is a poet with a strong sense of mission, having devoted a his ife to the creation of the "singe" poem, Leaves of Grass . The work has nine editions and the first edition was pubished in 1855. In this giant work, openness, freedom, and above a, inspaniduaism are a that concerned him. His aim was nothing ess than to exss some new poetica feeings and to initiate a poetic tradition in which difference shoud be recognized. The genuine participation of a poet in a common cutura effort was, according to Whitman, to behave as a sume inspaniduaist; however, the poet's essentia purpose was to identify his ego With the word, and more specificay with the democratic "en-masse" of America, which is estabished in the opening ines of "Song of Mysef." Two peope, Whitman beieved, coud be "twain yet one:" their paths coud be different, and yet they coud achieve a kind of transcendent contact. Equay, many peope coud reaize a community whie remaining inspaniduas. He repeated his phiosophy again and again to ensure his feow citizens a fu participation in a series of reciproca reationships in the course of reading his poetry.

As Whitman saw it, poetry coud pay a vita part in the process of creating a new nation.It coud enabe Americans to ceebrate their reease from the Od Word and the coonia rue. And it coud aso hep them understand their new status and to define themseves in the new word of possibiities. Hence, the abundance of themes in his poetry voices freshness. He shows concern for the whoe hardworking peope and the burgeoning ife of cities. To Whitman, the fast growth of industry and weath in cities indicated a ivey future of the nation, despite the crowded, noisy, and squaid conditions and the sackness in moraity. The reaization of the inspanidua vaue aso found a tough position in Whitman's poems in a particuar way. Most of she poems in Leaves of Grass sing of the "en-masse" and the sef as we. In ceebrating the sef, Whitman gives emphasis to the physica dimension of the sef and openy and joyousy ceebrates sexuaity. Pursuit of ove and happiness is approved of repeatedy and affectionatey in his ines. Sexua ove, a rather taboo topic of the time, is dispayed candidy as something adorabe. If two persons are reay in ove, "what is to us what the rest do or think?“ The inspanidua person and his desires must be respected. Obviousy, Whitman's sexua themes are beyond the physica.

Some of Whitman's poems are poiticay committed. Before and during the Civi War, Whitman stood firmy on the side of the North and wrote a series of poems incorporating his emotions and feeings during the period, which were gathered as a coection under theof Drum Taps (1865). Not a over of vioence and boodshed, Whitman exssed much mourning for the sufferings of the young ives in the battefied and showed a determination to carry on the fighting dauntessy unti the fina victory, as we may find in poems ike "Cavary Crossing a Ford." Another occasion which aowed Whitman to fi his ines with his poitica emotions was the death of Lincon. He wrote down a great many poems to air his sorrow, and one of the famous is "When Liacs Last in the Dooryard Boom'd Mournfu as these poems are, a reader can sti detect in them a thin trace of ecstasy for the victory of progress.

To dramatize the nature of these new poetica feeings, Whitman empoyed brand-new means in his poetry, which woud first be discerned in his stye and anguage. Whitman's poetic stye is marked, first of a, by the use of the poetic "I." Speaking in the voice of "I," Whitman becomes a those peope in his poems, and yet sti remains "Wat Whitman," hence a discovery of the sef in the other with such an identification. Usuay, the reationship Whitman is dramatizing is a trianguar one: "I" the poet, the subject in the poem, and "you" the reader. In such a manner, Whitman invites us, as we read his ines, to participate in the process of sympathetic identification. Whitman is aso radicay innovative in terms of the form of his poetry. What he fers for his new subject and new poetic feeings is "free verse," that is, poetry without a fixed beat or reguar rhyme scheme. A ooser and more open-ended syntactica structure is frequenty favored. Lines and sentences of different engths are eft ying side by side just as things are, undisturbed and separate. There are few compound sentences to draw objects and experiences into a system of hierarchy. By means of "free verse," Whitman beieved, be has turned the poem into an open fied, an area of vita possibiity where the reader can aow his own imagination to pay. And, as the poet, Whitman can be conversationa and casua, in the fuid, expansive, and unstructured stye of taking, ike one of the ordinary men. However, there is sti a strong sense of the poems being rhythmica. Rather than giving a description of those concrete things, Whitman cataogues them. These detais in the cataogue are not given as a separate event, but as one phase in the movement of feeing. Different things woud mean a different wave of feeing. So when we read his poems, we can fee the rhythm of Whitman's thought and cadences of his feeing. Paraeism and phonetic recurrence at the beginning of the ines aso contribute to the musicaity of his poems.

Contrary to the rhetoric of traditiona poetry, Whitman's is reativey simpe and even rather crude. Most of the pictures he painted with words are honest, undistorted images of different aspects of America of the day. Unifying images of the body, the crowd, the sexuaity are pervasive in his poems. The particuarity about these images is that they are unconventiona in the way they break down the socia spanision based on reigion, gender, cass, and race. One of the most often-used methods in Whitman's poems is to make coors and images feet past the mind's eye of the reader. This kaeidoscope was rather aughed at when it made its first appearance, but its effectiveness was acknowedged before ong. Another characteristic in Whitman's anguage is his strong tendency to use ora Engish, which has a ot to do with his eary career as a newspaperman and the Americans' traditiona ove for orations and orators. Whitman's vocabuary is amazing. He woud use powerfu, coorfu, as we as rarey-used words, words of foreign origin and sometimes even wrong words.

Though he was attacked in his ifetime for his offensive subject matter of sexuaity and for his unconventiona stye, Wat Whitman has proved a great figure in the iterary history of the United States because he embodies a new idea, a new word and a new ife-stye, and his infuence over the foowing generations is significant and incredibe. Love for Whitman and his poetry is bound to increase to an uncedented height.