Hi all it is time for another overdue installation of Sunday afternoon coffee-fueled madness.
Before we begin I'd like to comment that Whitman is hella bisexual and I'm living for his commentary on that especially in Song of the Open Road (that's my favorite so far) and nothing can change my mind on that.
Moving on.
STEP 1) Go to this link. Click on the "Document" tab. Scroll through Whitman’s notebook and write down anything you notice- can you make out any words? Images? What might be significant? What is revealed about Whitman through his inner thoughts?
On first observation, I can't make out many of the words. A few are circled like they're legible but I can't really make sense of them. Whitman seems to write a lot like me- very stream of consciousness, lots of things crossed out and replaced as he changed his mind. One of the phrases that I picked out was on page 9, and it says "make them groan and fall around, black clouds- clouds of Death". It looks like it's from the early stages of something called "Ship of Libertad" (liberty?). The description below it said that Whitman was "weathering private storms of his own" when he wrote that, and that it was hinting at a midlife crisis. (#Relatable content.)
The sketches in his notebook are actually really impressive. The first one on page 12 is what really caught my attention, and I almost wonder if it's supposed to be a sketch/self portrait of Whitman himself. The last one on page 18 is by far the strangest in my opinion. It looks like a bizarre skeleton at first, until you look closer and notice the middle section is heart-shaped. I took that and the previous comment about the midlife crisis and read this as a visual representation of living but still feeling dead. This is because the head is a skull and the middle section has what looks like a sword through it, but the thing is still moving (or it looks like it is because of the way the "legs" (I use that word loosely) are drawn). It actually almost looks like it's shrugging, as if to say "I don't know what's going on or what to do with myself but hey, I'm here" (also #relatable content).
I can't tell if I wasn't all that interested in the imaginary conversation or if I just couldn't read it. Though I do wonder why he chose to write an ongoing imaginary conversation. It seems like an odd pastime, though I understand that it wasn't necessarily meant to be published. I kind of get it in the sense of maybe it was just something to do when he was bored or as a way to address a journal to someone (as opposed to "Dear Diary").
STEP 2) Now click on the "Notes" tab . Click on each yellow tag (or click “next”) to see what Whitman actually wrote and why he wrote it. Look back at your original observations and add to them. Again, consider what is significant and what is revealed about Whitman.
According to the page 4 notes (Reconciling Two Religions), Whitman had similar views to Lincoln, for example hating slavery but also being somewhat wary of the abolitionists. Perhaps he chose Lincoln because it felt like someone he could talk to but not argue with, and it could be almost like having a conversation in your head.
On the subject of the "Libertad" writing, it says that he chose the Spanish word instead of English, possibly to comment on "the ideal of freedom not being limited to the borders of his own nation". He then takes the idea of "Libertad" and makes it a ship. This is where the only lines I could really make sense of come in. He talks about the ship being tossed around by "mad winds" and "black clouds", and the comments (that it appears my computer showed me in the document section too) say that the last lines of that writing hint at a midlife crisis. One of the next comments says he was burning out and drinking a lot, so I'm beginning to think that the dark clouds are a metaphor and these poems of his are part of a transition into a darker time in his life.
The notes on the drawings show similar observations to what I saw. The first one, the one that caught my attention the most, most likely wasn't a self portrait but a sketch drawn by a friend (or, more specifically, a drinking buddy). Apparently he was known to take out his notebooks and pass them around, so the pictures and sketches in there are likely from many different people. The last one, the odd skull-heart-man-thing, has the title "An Allegory of America?". It calls the drawing "grotesque" and talks about the background of a sea with a rising or setting sun, which I hadn't noticed. It poses the question of if it's meant to represent America in its halfway position, which makes sense when put together with his conflicted stance on slavery and abolitionism. However, I wonder what the figure would mean in relation to that. Is it Whitman himself, is it the people of America, is it Lincoln? Is it part of the allegory of America? I'm really not sure, but the drawing is somewhat mesmerizing.
The second cup of coffee that fueled this blog post.
Credit to myself
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