Walt Whitman - The Democratic Poet and His Prose on
Democracy - A Comparison of Whitman′s Concept of the
Poet′s Role in Developing a National Identity in "Preface
1855 - Leaves of Grass" and "From Democratic Vistas" 1871

von: Sonja Richter

Content

I. Introduction page 3-4

II. Preface 1855 – Leaves of Grass page 5

i. The Poet’s Role page 5-9
ii. The Poet’s Language page 10-12
iii. The Poet’s Themes page 13-15

III. From Democratic Vistas (1871) page 16-17

i. The State of the Nation page 17-20
ii. A National Literature for America page 20-24
iii. The Poet’s Role in Developing a National Identity page 25-27

IV. Poetry – The New Religion page 28-29

V. Conclusion page 30

VI. Bibliography page 31

“For the great Idea, the idea of perfect and free individuals,
For that, the bard walks in advance, leader of leaders.”¹

I. Introduction

When the 52-year-old Walt Whitman published his essay “From Democratic Vistas”² in 1871, the end of the Civil War, which had marked the climax of the separation between the Northern and Southern States, was only six years ago. The wounds of this five-year-war of brother against brother, which had cost 618,000 casualties on both sides,³ were certainly not healed and the question of re-unification was still un-answered. During the 1860s and 1870s the United States were changing tremendously. Due to the Civil War, the Reconstruction Era and the following Gilded Age,⁴ America was turning into a modern, industrialized country where materialism seemed to be the finite answer. Though Whitman fully acknowledged this materialistic development of his country when he stated, “not the least doubtful am I on any prospects of their [United States’] business, material success,”⁵ he nevertheless saw beyond the simple answers of wealth and prosperity. Whitman realized that the United States found themselves at a turning point, which was to decide upon their democratic future.

At this point in time, Whitman wrote his essay “From Democratic Vistas” on the outlooks of America’s future democracy. According to him, this future lied in a democratic nationality and a spiritual union that could only be achieved through a national literature, because “democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology.”⁶ Therefore Whitman argued that the “fundamental want to-day in the United States […] is of a class […] of native authors, literatures […] modern, fit to cope with our occasions, lands, permeating the whole mass of American mentality, taste, belief.”⁷ The call for a national literature led by the American poet was not something new in Whitman’s written work. Already in his “Preface 1855 – Leaves of Grass,” published six years before the beginning of the Civil War, he had formulated that America “with veins full of poetical stuff most need[s] poets.”⁸ Nevertheless, there is a noticeable difference between the general role of the poet in his 1855 preface and the urgent need of national literary figures in times of re-unification that Whitman put forth in his 1871 essay, in which he insisted that “two or three really original American poets […] would give more compaction and more moral identity, (the quality to-day most needed,) to these States, than all its Constitutions, legislative, and judicial ties.”⁹ While Whitman’s poet in the 1855 preface obtained the role of an observer of the country and her common people for they “are essentially the greatest poem”¹⁰ themselves, the poet’s role in “From Democratic Vistas” changed into an active builder of democracy for “great literature penetrates all, gives hue to all, shapes aggregates and individuals.”¹¹ This change of role is due to Whitman’s personal experiences during the Civil War. The healing process of re-unification after the war was not simply a materialistic or institutional reunion for Whitman, but rather an act of forming a sense of nationhood within the American people again. This was the poet’s task. Being no longer an observer from the outside, Whitman’s challenged poet was forced to take up an active stand in the nation-building process after the Civil War.

II. Preface 1855 – Leaves of Grass

When Walt Whitman published his first collection of poems under the title “Leaves of Grass” in 1855, he opened with a theoretical essay on poetry. Interestingly, the essay was not so much concerned with lyrical style and form, but rather with the content of contemporary poetry and the role of the poet in American society. Whitman, who himself had challenged the conventions of poetic expression, was eager to call upon new themes and roles for the American poet. Stronger than any of his contemporaries, Whitman emphasized on the importance of a national literature. Whitman’s “cultural revolution” was to be led by the great American poet, a figure yet to come. By “predicting and defining the functions of the poet and the form and range of poetry,”¹² Whitman strongly influenced the development of American poetry far into the twentieth century.

II.i. The Poet’s Role

In his 1855 preface Whitman put great emphasize on the strong ties that exist between the American poet, his country and its common people . This connection appears to be unbreakable for the poet’s “country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it,”¹³ as Whitman concluded. Whitman’s trinity of country, people, and poet repeatedly gains its inspiration from within itself. The United States are not “merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations” and are in themselves “essentially the greatest poem.”¹⁴ Furthermore, America’s outstanding personalities are not people from the elite, as it is the case in other countries, but her common people, who Whitman regarded as “unrhymed poetry”¹⁵ as well. The third angle in this symbiotic triangular is the poet, whose work is inspired by the close relationship to his country and his people.

[...]

1 Walt Whitman, By Blue Ontario’s Shore, in: Leaves of Grass and Other Writings Walt Whitman, Michael Moon (ed.), W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, London, 2002, p. 292.

2 “From Democratic Vistas” mainly consists of two other essays – entitled “Democracy” (1867) and “Personalism” (1868).

3 Paul S. Boyer (ed.), The Oxford Companion to United States History, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001, p. 132.

4 The title of Mark Twain’s novel “The Gilded Age” gave name to an era remembered as a time of corrupt and issueless politics, corporate domination, and oppressive treatment of the less fortunate.

5 W.W., From Democratic Vistas, in: Leaves of Grass, Michael Moon (ed.), 2002, p. 758.

6 W.W., From Democratic Vistas, in: Leaves of Grass, Michael Moon (ed.), 2002, p. 759.

7 Ibid, p. 759.

8 W.W., Preface 1855 – Leaves of Grass, in: Leaves of Grass, Michael Moon (ed.), 2002, p. 619.

9 W.W., From Democratic Vistas, in: Leaves of Grass, Michael Moon (ed.), 2002, p. 762.

10 W.W., Preface 1855 – Leaves of Grass, in: Leaves of Grass, Michael Moon (ed.), 2002, p. 616.

11 W.W., From Democratic Vistas, in: Leaves of Grass, Michael Moon (ed.), 2002, p. 760.

12 Sculley Bradley and Harold W. Blodgett, Introduction, in: Leaves of Grass, Michael Moon (ed.), 2002, pp. xlvii.

13 W.W., Preface 1855 – Leaves of Grass, in: Leaves of Grass, Michael Moon (ed.), 2002, p. 636.

14 Ibid, p. 616.

15 Ibid, p. 617.