Influences on Walt Whitman, a Causal Analysis
When the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville toured the United States in 1831, he was enthralled with the freedom that democracy afforded U.S. citizens. In his classic Democracy in America, Tocqueville catalogued the equality among people of differing social status, the power of the judiciary, and the open exchange of ideas via newspaper and spoken word. He contrasted the United States with Russia and asked what type of people a democratic society such as ours would produce. Although supportive of democracy, he warns us that “democracy hides one’s descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart.”
Americans, however, were more optimistic of their own condition and cherished a tradition unknown to Tocqueville. The first generation of post-revolutionary Americans looked nostalgically back to the heroes of the American Revolution. Even the next few generations revered figures such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Marquis de Lafayette. Although Americans had a rich tradition, Tocqueville was right in his prophecy that democracy forces one to look inward. The eminent American R. W. Emerson wrote, “Every one for himself, driven to find all his resources, hopes, rewards, society and deity within himself.” However, he, like most Americans, disagreed with Tocqueville’s assertion that democracy would result in alienation. Regardless of whether or not Americans were traditional and companionable or modern and self-reliant, they were in a unique position, participants in the first large-scale test of democracy. Being an American in the nineteenth century meant balancing between the past and the forward-looking present. It is this curious mixture of tradition and the cutting-edge that made “America’s Poet” Walt Whitman the man he was.
Growing up in the 1820’s, Whitman’s parents trained him as a radical Democrat. In the spirit of the post-Revolutionary War idealists, Whitman, Sr. instructed Walt and his brothers that one should stand up for the working class tradesmen, farmers, and “the people,” and that banks and blue-collared people were nemeses. Whitman later apotheosized these laborers throughout “Song of Myself” and in “A Song for Occupations,” in which he exclaims
In the labor of engines and trades and the labor of fields I find the developments,
And find eternal meanings.
In the traditional democratic spirit, Whitman’s father told stories about American history and held him in awe throughout lengthy panegyrics about revolutionary heroes such as Washington, whom Whitman idolized his entire life, attributing to him “courage, alertness, patience, faith.” Later in his life, he venerated a democratic hero of his own time, Abraham Lincoln, in various lectures and in his classic poem “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” as well as the sad "O Captain! My Captain!"
Another formative factor in Whitman’s life was the essays, novels, and lectures from many freethinking individualists of the time. Whitman’s parents were supporters of feminist and reformer Frances Wright. At a young age, Walt attended her lectures and read her novel A Few Days in Athens, in which she writes, “The first and last thing I would say to man is think for yourself.” This line of thought is evident in Whitman’s “When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” in which the speaker abandons lectures and sermons for participation in learning. Walt also read his parents’ issues of the egoistical Free Enquirer and the French thinker Count Constantine de Volney’s The Ruins, an attack on Christianity. Whitman later said, “trouble not concerning the existence of god,” a reference to the Count’s work. Walt adopted Wright’s value of free thought and Volney’s heresy. Never in his life did he unthinkingly accept an idea. A product of their literature, Walt was a staunch believer in the individual’s mind, the “I over the Not-I,” as he put it.
Several scientific and medical “marvels” in the 1840’s promised to change lives; these fads affected Whitman as well. Whitman regularly engaged in hydropathy, or water cure, when it became popular in New York. This treatment purported to flush the body of poisons via enemas and long “exomosis” soaks in distilled water. Advocates of hydropathy also encouraged healthy eating and the drinking of unadulterated water. After experiencing the joys of this fad, Walt vowed to live a clean, moderate lifestyle, both dietary and physical. He began a strict exercise regimen and rarely drank alcohol or fatty foods. The strong, healthy individual that hydropathy encouraged is evident throughout Whitman’s entire lexicon of poetry. At the same time, the pseudo-science phrenology claimed to help one reach his full potential by “depressing” and “elevating” different bumps in the skull. Whitman visited popular phrenologists and wrote letters to newspapers praising this “breakthrough.” The idea of “Animal Magnetism” attracted Whitman as well. Proposed by Orson Fowler, a leading phrenologist, this theory claimed that all living things radiate electricity, connecting all creatures in a vast magnetic web of life. It bridged mind and matter and accounted for uncanny phenomena such as telepathy. Whitman viewed this theory as the connection between the “I” and the “Not-I,” and frequently refers to it in his poetry. When he “sings the body electric” and speaks of sexuality as magnetic, he alludes to the now-discarded theory of Animal Magnetism.
The most profound effect on Whitman’s life was a result of his closeness to death. When he was a child, he visited his mother’s family’s burial ground, “two or three score graves.” From then on, he would be obsessed with the notion of death. During his schooldays, he was shocked after learning that the frigate Fulton had exploded, leaving fifty crewmembers dead. Later on, during his apprenticeship at the journal Patriot, he worked with a known grave robber, who likely told Walt sepulchral stories and showed him his bone collection. His preoccupation with death is evident in various poems, such as “The Dead Emperor.” Once the Civil War broke out, Whitman spent most of his time caring for wounded soldiers in Washington D.C. There he experienced firsthand the fading of human life. He records his feelings of sorrow in “Song of Myself,” in which he mourns the countless lives lost during battle. At the same time, his nearness to death made him nearly insensitive to it. In his poetry, he even exalts death, exclaiming
Great is death…Sure as life holds all parts together death holds all parts together;
Sure as the stars return again after they merge in the light, death is as great as life.
Testament to the profound impact that death and loss had on Whitman, this curious love-hate relationship with death is a common theme throughout Leaves of Grass.
Whitman was undoubtedly one of the most mysterious and intriguing figures of the nineteenth century. He, like most Americans, faced a peculiar crossroads of old beliefs and new ones. Whether or not democracy would thrive depended on them to create a tradition for future Americans. This generation passed democracy’s test, inventing ways to make life easier, ensuring rights for all citizens, and, in the case of Whitman, writing our nation’s song. Whitman’s society prompted him to write the best collection of poetry America had yet produced. Leaves of Grass would be passed down to future generations of Americans, reminding them that we are at that same crossroads. Whitman reminds us to cherish our history and to look forward to anything we might face as Americans.
Sources:
Kaplan Justin. Walt Whitman: A Life. New York. Simon and Schuster.