Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions (93 page)

12
(p. 234)
Enough! enough! enough!:
In 1855 the following lines appeared instead of this one:

13
(p. 244)
The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there:
In 1855 this section read: “Our rendezvous is fitly appointed .... God will be there and wait till we come” (p. 84). The alterations that culminate in the present shaping of these lines (which appeared first in 1876) demonstrate Whitman’s turn from more intimate, informal relationships to universal prototypes for love: The rendezvous morphs from one between Whitman and us, the readers, to Whitman and God, who becomes his “great Camerado, the lover true.”

14
(p. 251)
I stop somewhere waiting for you:
Perhaps the most significant change in editions of “Song of Myself ” after 1855 was the addition of end punctuation to this line. The new period at the end of the sentence seems unfortunate: The open-endedness of the line in 1855 was a perfect affirmation of the poet’s message.

15
(p. 252)
Children of Adam:
This group of poems (then “Enfans d‘Adam”) and “Calamus” both appeared first in the 1860 edition, and Whitman himself hinted at the relationship between these collections. While the “Calamus” cluster has as a focus manly friendship and af fection, the poems in “Children of Adam” involved heterosexual love and the products of connections between men and women (as the title suggests). Readers have long noted the coherence of the poems in the “Calamus” cluster, which seem to tell a personal tale of the poet’s own love and losses, while the “Children of Adam” poems are varied and seem less intimate. Whitman may have purposefully juxtaposed what was important for the individual (the deep emotions of “Calamus”) and the human race as a whole (the emphasis on procreation and continuity in “Children of Adam”); perhaps unconsciously, he demonstrates his sympathies for homosexual expression in the finessed quality of the “Calamus” cluster.

16
(p. 254)
From sex, from the warp and from the woof
Following this line, these two lines were omitted after 1860:

17
(p. 254)
I Sing the Body Electric:
This poem, along with “The Dalliance of the Eagles” (p. 425), “A Woman Waits for Me” (p. 263), and several others, came under attack in 1882. Publisher James R. Osgood of Boston asked Whitman to alter several lines and passages on the grounds that the poems violated the public statutes concerning obscene literature. Whitman consented to a few changes, but when Osgood claimed they weren’t drastic enough, Whitman wrote back: “The whole list and entire is rejected by me, and will not be thought of under any circumstances.” He immediately wrote the essay “A Memorandum at a Venture,” a condemnation of the two prevailing attitudes toward sex in America: suppression and exploitation. It was published in June 1882 in the North American Review.

18
(p. 261)
For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves:
With these two lines and the following section, Whitman made a major addition to this poem in 1856. In section 9, Whitman seems to trace his hand over the human body; when one reads the passage, one gets the sensation that the poet is lovingly “touching” the reader from head to toe. Though he claims equal interest in all human bodies in the fourth line of section 9, the anatomical “tour” certainly favors the male form. When he does finally get to “womanhood,” his description is more maternal than sensual-and notably shorter. D. H. Lawrence was one admirer of Whitman who nevertheless found reasons to question Whitman’s take on women, citing the poet’s “‘Athletic mothers of these States—‘ Muscles and wombs. They needn’t have had faces at all”
(Studies in Classic American Literature,
1923).

19
(p. 263)
They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike, retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves:
These lines depicting women as confident, active, and aggressive seem wonderfully progressive even today, though critics have pointed out that Whitman “masculinized” these female objects of his affection. A friend of many early suffragettes, including Fanny Wright and Lucretia Mott, Whitman was probably familiar with many of the writings on the “new womanhood.”
The Illustrated Family Gymnasium
(published in 1857 by Fowler and Wells, who sold Whitman’s First Edition in their bookstore) even contained images of uncorseted women lifting barbells.

20
(p. 264)
I dare not withdraw till I deposit what has so long accumulated within me:
These surprisingly aggressive lines have offended many readers. In an 1883 diary entry, feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote of this poem: “He speaks as if the female must be forced to the creative act, apparently ignorant of the natural fact that a healthy woman has as much passion as a man, that she needs nothing stronger than the law of attraction to draw her to the male.” Some have looked more critically at this rape-like scene, while others see it as further evidence that Whitman simply did not know how to describe a heterosexual love scene.

21
(p. 267)
I toss it carelessly to fall where it may:
The condemnation of masturbation—the “solitary vice”—was a major goal of American social reformers in the 1840S and ’50S. Through the last twenty lines, the poet wrestles with guilt even as he equates the act and the elements with beautiful, organic imagery. The last six lines reference a story from Genesis 38 that is traditionally used to explain the condemnation of masturbatory practices: Onan was put to death by God for “spilling his seed” and thus defying God’s order to mankind to “be fruitful, and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). The speaker of “Spontaneous Me” may be as self-absorbed and greedy about his seed as Onan; notably, however, Whitman’s protagonist escapes Onan’s punishment.

22
(p. 270)
Once I Pass’d Through a Populous City:
In Whitman’s Manuscripts
: Leaves of Grass (1860)
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955, p. 64), Fredson Bowers includes an early manuscript draft of this poem, originally titled “Enfans d‘Adam. 9,” that alters the sexuality of the love interest:

23
(p. 274)
Calamus:
(See note 15, above, to Children of Adam.) Fitting for a collection of poems within
Leaves of Grass,
“Calamus” takes its name from an herb with pointy, narrow leaves. Whitman explained his choice to his English editor, William Michael Rossetti: “Calamus is a common word here. It is the very large & aromatic grass, or rush, growing about water-ponds in the valleys—spears about three feet high—often called ‘sweet flag’—grows all over the Northern and Middle States”
(The Correspondence,
vol. 1, p. 347). Whitman’s stress here is clearly on the universality of the plant, but there is another reason it may have caught his attention: The shape of its floral spike is suggestive of an erect phallus. Indeed, he had already sexualized “sweet-flag” in “Song of Myself (section 24). Considering that the poems in the ”Calamus“ cluster are held together by the sentiment of ”male bonding” (Whitman used the phrenological term ”adhesiveness“ to refer to this attachment between men), the choice of plant seems especially fitting.

24
(p. 276)
Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand:
The teachings of Jesus in the Gospels (particularly the Book of John) inform Whitman’s message and language throughout this poem. This high, majestic tone permeates several of the poems new to the 1860 edition of
Leaves of Grass:
Consider also “To One Shortly to Die” (p. 585, originally part of the “Messenger Leaves” cluster) and “Ages and Ages Returning at Intervals” (p. 268; “Enfans d‘Adam. 12” in 1860).

25
(p. 279)
Here, out of my pocket, some moss which I pull’d off a live-oak in Florida as it hung trailing down:
This is the first mention of the live oak in the Calamus series. The action of ”pulling off “ a twig is significant, particularly because it is the central act of ”I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing” (p. 286).

26
(p. 280)
Not in any or all of them O adhesiveness!:
Adhesiveness was a phrenological term for same-sex friendship. On the phrenological maps of the human mind published in Fowler and Wells’s
Illustrated Family Gymnasium,
“adhesiveness” occupied a large site and thus had tremendous potential for affecting a person’s behavior. Whitman claimed he scored a 6 (the highest number) in “adhesiveness” on the phrenological chart he included in early editions of
Leaves of Grass.

27
(p. 281)
The Base of All Metaphysics:
This poem shows Whitman in the role of professor—an unusual one for him, since, as he wrote in ”Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand,“ “in any roof’d room of a house I emerge not, nor in company, /And in libraries I lie as one dumb” (p. 276). For an interesting juxtaposition, see ”When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” (p. 423).

28
(p. 286)
I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing:
This is possibly the first poem written for the ”Calamus” series; it is also credited with being the second in the ”Live Oak with Moss” series (see note 23, above). The poet is clearly comparing himself with the strong, solitary tree—though he has doubts about his ability to remain so. The doubt of the last line introduces the theme of yearning that runs throughout the ”Live Oak with Moss” grouping.

29
(p. 290)
A Glimpse:
The “Calamus” cluster was written and first published during what might be called Whitman’s bohemian years. On September 8,1858, he wrote an article entitled ”Bohemianism in Literary Circles” for the
Brooklyn Times;
after he was fired from the newspaper the next year, he began frequenting New York’s first bohemian meeting place, Pfaff’s Cellar. The restaurant/bar/café, at the corner of Broadway and Bleecker, was a second home to actors like Ada Clare and radical journalists such as Henry Clapp (whose
Saturday Press
published several of Whitman’s poems). “A Glimpse” is thought to be a description of the poet meeting a lover—perhaps Fred Vaughan—at Pfaff’s.

30
(p. 291)
I Dream’d in ’a Dream:
In
Whitman’s Manuscripts: Leaves of Grass (1860)
(p. 114), Fredson Bowers includes this earlier, more focused version of the poem’s first lines:

31
(p. 298)
I see the tracks of the railroads:
Whitman fully embraced progress in the name of democracy. In the following five lines, he celebrates two new wonders: the American rail system, which had grown quickly after 1830, and the electric telegraph. When Whitman first published this poem in 1856, Americans were still experimenting with various methods of telegraphing; by 1866 the first permanently successful transatlantic cable had been laid. Whitman’s poem “Passage to India,” published in 1871, applauds this technological advancement.

32
(p. 305) Song of the Open Road: The title and subject of this poem were particularly influential on the Beat poets of the 1950S Jack Kerouac embraced Whitman’s ideas of the romance and freedom of travel and the joys of the journey (rather than the destination) in his 1957 novel
On the Road.

33
(p. 309)
Something there is in the float of the sight of things:
Whitman also uses the word “float” in “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”—in the passage “I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution” (p. 319). The connotation is of a disembodied vision or knowledge, though the poet seems to be purposefully elusive here.

34
(p. 316)
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry:
From the mid-1840S to 1862 (when he left New York to help with the Civil War effort), Whitman rode the Brooklyn ferry almost daily. For Whitman and many of his fellow New Yorkers, the ferry was a necessary “frame” to the working day: The eight-minute trip from Brooklyn’s Fulton Street to Manhattan’s Fulton Street, and then back again, was the commute between Brooklyn’s bedroom communities and Manhattan’s workplaces. From the early 1600S until it closed some years after the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883, the Brooklyn Ferry represented an important “passage” that was, for Whitman and others, also a destination in itself: Even while riders moved toward a destination, they were part of a common, shared experience.