Chapter 3 Romanticism 5 Whitman Dickinson Contents n

Chapter 3 Romanticism (5) Whitman Dickinson

Contents n 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Walt Whitman (1819 -1892) Life experience (p 88) Thoughts and ideas influencing him: (last paragraph on p 89) His ideas about poet and poetry Features of his literary ideas and thoughts in his poetry(p 91) His poetic features Appreciation of “One’s-Self I Sing”

Contents n 1. 2. 3. 4. Emily Dickinson (1830 -1886) Life experience (p 96 -97) Thoughts and ideas reflected in her works Her literary features Understanding and appreciation of Success is counted sweetest. . . *Differences between Whitman and Dickinson in their outlook and their literary forms

Walt Whitman (1819 -1892) Pictures of Walt Whitman

n n n 1. 2. Life Experience (p 88) Thoughts and ideas influencing him: (last paragraph on p 89) His ideas about poet and poetry About poet: He states that the greatest poet breathes into the world the grandeur and life of universe. “He is a seer, ” he says, “he is individual… he is complete in himself. ” He sees the poet as taking over what had used to be the job of a minister, a clergyman, the Church. About the poetry: Along with Emerson, he agrees that art should be based organically on nature; poetry grows out of nature. “The rhyme and uniformity of perfect poems shoe the free growth of metrical laws, and bud from them as unerringly and loosely as lilacs or roses on a bush, and take shapes as compact as the shapes of chestnuts and oranges, and melons and pears, and shed the perfume impalpable to form. ”

Features of his literary ideas and thoughts in his poetry(p 91) n n n The Transcendental ideas pervade all Whitman’s poems. general mysticism and anti-rationalism, pantheism, and theory of “the Great Chain of Being” are among the most important. Whitman embraces idealism. He relies on insight and intuition. Unity, unreality of time and space, evil as only an appearance emerging into good. He extols the ideals of equality and democracy and celebrates the dignity, the self-reliance spirit, and the joy of the common man. He praises the expansion of America. However, in later years, he sees the failure of democracy and the social and moral corruption in America. He still think these curable by self-reform of the individual.

His poetic features n 1. 2. 3. 4. His Leaves of Grass contains over four hundred poems, in which lines gave free rein to his imagination in his life-long attempt to celebrate life in the new world. He broke the poetic conventions: One of the principles of his technique is parallelism or a rhythm of thought in which the line is the rhythmical unit. Another principle of his versification is phonetic recurrence, that is, the systematic repetition of words and phrases at the beginning of the line, in the middle or at the end. The above two principles coordinate with and reinforce each other. He broke free the traditional iambic pentameter and wrote “free verse”. His poetry is also sexual. The language is exotic and vulgar.

Appreciation of “One’s-Self I Sing” Understanding the poem n Although the poet sings of the self as “a simple separate person, ” he also sees it as part of “the word Democratic, ” which represents the mass of people. He sings of “the Form complete, ” the female as well as the male, of “Life immense in passion, pulse, and power, ” and the “Modern Man. ” n

n This small (nine-line) poem is really a preface to all the others in Leaves of Grass. Whitman says he will sing of all physiology (the branch of biology dealing with the functions and processes of living organisms), for neither the physiognomy (outward appearance) nor the brain is worthy of being celebrated independently. He lists the subjects and themes he will deal with: “One’s-self” (the unit of self or individuality), “physiology. . . the Form complete” (the kinship of the body and the spirit which he will emphasize throughout Leaves), and “Life”—in short, the “Modern Man, ” who, according to Whitman, is conscious of “self” but at the same time is aware of being part of the large mass of democracy.

Critical Analysis of Themes n ( Whitman’s major concerns in this poem) First, Whitman’s major concern was to explore, discuss, and celebrate his own self, his individuality and his personality. Second, he wanted to eulogize democracy and the American nation with its achievements and potential. Third, he wanted to give poetical expression to his thoughts on life’s great, enduring mysteries—birth, death, rebirth or resurrection, and reincarnation.

n n The Self To Whitman, the complete self is both physical and spiritual. The self is man’s individual identity, his distinct quality and being, which is different from the selves of other men, although it can identify with them. The self is a portion of the one Divine Soul. Whitman’s critics have sometimes confused the concept of self with egotism, but this is not valid. Whitman is constantly talking about “I, ” but the “I” is universal, a part of the Divine, and therefore not egotistic. The Body and the Soul Whitman is a poet of these elements, the body and the soul in man. He thought that we could comprehend the soul only through the medium of the body. To Whitman, all matter is as divine as the soul; since the body is as sacred and as spiritual as the soul, when he sings of the body or its performances, he is singing a spiritual chant.

n Personalism Whitman used the term “personalism” to indicate the fusion of the individual with the community in an ideal democracy. He believed that every man at the time of his birth receives an identity, and this identity is his “soul. ” The soul, finding its abode in man, is individualized, and man begins to develop his personality. The main idea of personalism is that the person is the be-all of all things; it is the source of consciousness and the senses. One is because God is; therefore, man and God are one —one personality. Man’s personality craves immortality because it desires to follow the personality of God. This idea is in accord with Whitman’s notion of the self. Man should first become himself, which is also the way of coming closer to God. Man should comprehend the divine soul within him and realize his identity and the true relationship between himself and God. This is the doctrine of personalism.

n Democracy Whitman had a deep faith in democracy because this political form of government respects the individual. He thought that the genius of the United States is best expressed in the common people, not in its executive branch or legislature, or in its churches or law courts. He believed that it is the common folk who have a deathless attachment to freedom. His attitudes can be traced to the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century because he thought that the source of evil lay in oppressive social institutions rather than in human nature. The function of literature is to break away from the feudal past of man and artistically to urge the democratic present.

Princes and nobles hold no charm for Whitman; he sings of the average, common man. He follows Emerson in applauding the doctrine of the “divine average” and of the greatness of the commonplace. A leaf of grass, to Whitman, is as important as the heavenly motion of the stars. Whitman loves America, its panoramic scenery and its processional view of diverse, democratically inclined people. He loved, and reveled in, the United States as a physical entity, but he also visualized it as a New World of the spirit. Whitman is a singer of the self as well as a trumpeter of democracy because he believes that only in a free society can individuals attain selfhood.

Whitman emphasized individual virtue, which he believed would give rise to civic virtue. He aimed at improving the masses by first improving the individual, thus becoming a true spiritual democrat. His idea of social and political democracy—that all men are equal before the law and have equal rights—is harmonized with his concept of spiritual democracy—that people have immense possibilities and a measureless wealth of latent power for spiritual attainment. In fact, he bore with the failings of political democracy primarily because he had faith in spiritual democracy, in creating and cultivating individuals who, through comradeship, would contribute to the ideal society. This view of man and society is part of Whitman’s poetic program.

More information about Whitman n n Whitman shares the Romantic poet’s relationship with nature. To him, as to Emerson, nature is divine and an emblem of God. The universe is not dead matter, but full of life and meaning. He loves the earth, the flora and fauna of the earth, the moon and stars, the sea, and all other elements of nature. He believes that man is nature’s child and that man and nature must never be disjoined. ) Whitman’s concept of the ideal poet is, in a way, related to his ideas on time. He conceives of the poet as a time-binder, one who realizes that the past, present, and future are “not disjoined, but joined, ” that they are all stages in a continuous flow and cannot be considered as separate and distinct. These modem ideas of time have given rise to new techniques of literary expression—for example, the stream-of-consciousness viewpoint. )

n n Whitman believed that the cosmos, or the universe, does not consist merely of lifeless matter; it has awareness. It is full of life and filled with the spirit of God. The cosmos is God and God is the cosmos; death and decay are unreal. This cosmic consciousness is, indeed, one aspect of Whitman’s mysticism. Mysticism is an experience that has a spiritual meaning which is not apparent to the senses nor to the intellect. Thus mysticism, an insight into the real nature of man, God, and the universe, is attained through one’s intuition. The mystic believes in the unity of God and man, man and nature, God and the universe. To a mystic, time and space are unreal, since both can be overcome by man by spiritual conquest. Evil, too, is unreal, since God is present everywhere.

n Man communicates with his soul in a mystical experience, and Whitman amply expresses his responses to the soul in Leaves of Grass, especially in “Song of Myself. ” He also expresses his mystical experience of his body or personality being permeated by the supernatural. Whitman’s poetry is his artistic expression of various aspects of his mystical experience. Whitman deals with death as a fact of life. Death in life is a fact, but life in death is a truth for Whitman; he is thus a poet of matter and of spirit. ) It implied that the true reality is the spirit and that it lies beyond the reach or realm of the senses. The area of sensory perceptions must be transcended to reach the spiritual reality. This is transcendentalism.

Emily Dickinson (1830 -1886) n Pictures

Life experience: (p 96 -97) n Thoughts and ideas reflected in her works 1. Dickinson’s poetry is a clear illustration of her religiousethical and political-social ideas. 1. 1 Calvinism with its doctrine of predestination and its pessimism pressed her during her childhood and adolescence and colored her work. 1. 2 On the ethical level, Dickinson emphasizes free will and human responsibility. 1. 3 Realizing that poetic interpretation of life conflicted with religious dogma, she affirms personality. 2. Nature is portrayed as both gaily benevolent and cruel in her poetry. The power and majesty of nature and the cold indifference of nature are both revealed. 3. She holds that beauty, truth, and goodness are ultimately one n

Her literary features n n n Her choice of words, her verbal constructions and even her spellings break the conventions. Her poetry abounds in telling images that are erotic and self-evident. Her poetic idioms are noted for her laconic brevity, directness, and plainest words. Her expressions are severely economic. The tone is sometimes tragic. Her poetry concerns mainly themes of death and immortality.

Understanding and appreciation of Success is counted sweetest n Synopsis The speaker says that "those who ne'er succeed" place the highest value on success. (They "count" it "sweetest". ) To understand the value of a nectar, the speaker says, one must feel "sorest need. " She says that the members of the victorious army ("the purple Host / Who took the flag today") are not able to define victory as well as the defeated, dying man who hears from a distance the music of the victors.

Metrical pattern n The three stanzas of this poem take the form of iambic trimeter--with the exception of the first two lines of the second stanza, which add a fourth stress at the end of the line. (Virtually all of Dickinson's poems are written in an iambic meter that fluctuates fluidly between three and four stresses. ) As in most of Dickinson's poems, the stanzas here rhyme according to an ABCB scheme, so that the second and fourth lines in each stanza constitute the stanza's only rhyme.

Appreciation ( analysis of the form of homilies employed in it) n n Many of Emily Dickinson's most famous lyrics *take the form of homilies, or short moral sayings, which appear quite simple but that actually describe complicated moral and psychological truths. "Success is counted sweetest" is such a poem; its first two lines express its homiletic point, that "Success is counted sweetest / By those who ne'er succeed" (or, more generally, that people tend to desire things more acutely when they do not have them).

n n The subsequent lines then develop that axiomatic truth by offering a pair of images that exemplify it: the nectar--a symbol of triumph, luxury, "success"-can best be comprehended by someone who "needs" it; the defeated, dying man understands victory more clearly than the victorious army does. The poem* exhibits Dickinson's keen awareness of the complicated truths of human desire (in a later poem on a similar theme, she wrote that "Hunger--was a way / Of Persons outside Windows-- / The Entering-takes away--"), and it shows the beginnings of her terse, compacted style, whereby complicated meanings are compressed into extremely short phrases (e. g. , "On whose forbidden ear").

Simple Analysis n n n Victory/Success& Defeat In a sense, Dickinson's poem must be about the realization of true victory in the midst of defeat. For how can one truly understand happiness without the accompaniment of sadness? Or love without hate? In the beginning of her poem, she talks about how success cannot be realized without at first knowing the desperation that comes along with losing. This supports the rest of the argument in her poem. And as most people should know, the color purple has always been affiliated with royalty. Isn't it possible that this poem is about a soldier fighting for his kingdom/country? In this case, it is a soldier realizing success (think: line one) by the agonizing price of losing his life. Perhaps this poem does have a bitter tone to it, but it has more of a sadness and a truth being brought into the picture, as well. And that is the beauty of this poem.

Differences between Whitman and Dickinson in their outlook and their literary forms In outlook: Whitman seems to keep his eyes on society at large; Dickinson explores inner life of the individual. Whereas Whitman is “national” in his outlook, Dickinson is “regional”. n In Literary terms: Whitman’s poems are full of endless, all-inclusive catalogs, while Dickinson’s full of concise, direct, and simple diction and syntax. n

Assignments n n n n Tell the differences between Whitman and Dickinson in their outlook and their literary forms. Tell the poetic features of Walt Whitman and those of Emily Dickinson. In Walt Whitman’s One’s Self I Sing, What is “Self” meant? What is the difference between “physiology” and “physiognomy”? What does “Form Complete” mean, and what “the Modern Man” do? List themes in Walt Whitman’s One’s Self I Sing. What is mainly concernd by Whitman in One’s Self I Sing? To analyze briefly the form of homily used in Success is counted sweetest by Emily Dickinson. In Success is counted sweetest by Emily Dickinson, what is the color “purple” associated with? Then what does “purple host” indicate? Who is “he” in the last stanza of Success is counted sweetest.