How does Whitman's poetry express the idea of equality, of democracy? What would bring both the "stockinger" and Emerson to praise Whitman's poetry?ĭoes Whitman reconcile the tension between the individual and the mass? If so, how? amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary"elevated and transformed into art. Emerson wanted no masses at all, "no shovel-handed, narrow-brained, gin-drinking million stockingers or lazzaroni." Whitman, on the other hand, celebrated the masses, including the spinning girl who "retreats and advances to the hum of her big wheel" and the "newly-come immigrants" who "cover the wharf." Yet upon the publication of Leaves of Grass in 1855, Emerson hailed Whitman: "I greet you at the beginning of a great career." Whitman fulfilled Emerson's idea of the poet as inspired seer, "the man without impediment, who sees and handles that which others dream of, traverses the whole scale of experience, and is representative of man, in virtue of being the largest power to receive and to impart." What Whitman received and imparted was the raw experience of a democratic culture which hestanding "Apart. Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself," Sections 1 to 15 from Leaves of Grass, 1855Īre the issues raised in this section somehow reconciled in Whitman's poetry? If you select this text, you will have the opportunity to find out. History and Literature, Toolbox Library, National Humanities Center Text 10 Reading, Topic: Culture of the Common Man, The Triumph of Nationalism - The House Dividing, Primary Resources in U.S.
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