Leaves of Grass Totally Explained

Everything about Leaves Of Grass totally explained

Leaves of Grass (1855) is a poetry collection by the American poet Walt Whitman. Among the poems in the collection are "Song of Myself," "I Sing the Body Electric," "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," and in later editions, Whitman's elegy to the assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." Whitman spent his entire life writing Leaves of Grass, revising it in several editions until his death.

Overview

This book is notable for its delight in and praise of the senses during a time when such candid displays were considered immoral. Where much previous poetry, especially English, relied on symbolism, allegory, and meditation on the religious and spiritual, Leaves of Grass (particularly the first edition) exalted the body and the material world. Influenced by the Transcendentalist movement, itself an offshoot of Romanticism, Whitman's poetry praises nature and the individual human's role in it. However, Whitman doesn't diminish the role of the mind or the spirit; rather, he elevates the human form and the human mind, deeming both worthy of poetic praise.

Publication history and origin

Initial publication

Leaves of Grass has its genesis in an essay called The Poet by Ralph Waldo Emerson, published in 1845, which expressed the need for the United States to have its own new and unique poet to write about the new country's virtues and vices. Whitman, reading the essay, consciously set out to answer Emerson's call as he began work on the first edition of Leaves of Grass. Whitman, however, downplayed Emerson's influence, stating, "I was simmering, simmering, simmering; Emerson brought me to a boil".
   On May 15, 1855, Whitman registered the title Leaves of Grass with the clerk of the United States District Court, Southern District of New Jersey, and received its copyright. The first edition was published in Brooklyn at the Fulton Street printing shop of two Scottish immigrants, James and Andrew Rome, who Whitman had known since the 1840s, on July 4, 1855. Whitman paid for and did much of the typesetting for the first edition himself. The book didn't include the author's name, instead offering an engraving by Samuel Hollyer depicting the poet in work clothes and a jaunty hat, arms at his side. Early advertisements for the first edition appealed to "lovers of literary curiosities" as an . Sales on the book were few but Whitman wasn't discouraged.
   The first edition was very small, collecting only twelve unnamed poems in 95 pages. Whitman once said he intended the book to be small enough to be carried in a pocket. "That would tend to induce people to take me along with them and read me in the open air: I'm nearly always successful with the reader in the open air." About 800 were printed, though only 200 were bound in its trademark green cloth cover.
   The title Leaves of Grass was a pun. "Grass" was a term given by publishers to works of minor value and "leaves" is another name for the pages on which they were printed.

Republications

There have been held to be either six or nine editions of Leaves of Grass, the count depending on how a given scholar distinguishes between issues and editions. Scholars who hold that an edition is an entirely new set of type will count the 1855, 1856, 1860, 1867, 1871-72, and 1881. Others add in the 1876, 1888-89, and 1891-92 (the "deathbed edition"). Whitman continually revised his masterwork, adding, shifting, and occasionally removing poems.
   It was Emerson's positive response to the first edition that inspired Whitman to quickly produce a much-expanded second edition in 1856, and would become more critical of the work.
   The publishers of the 1860 edition, Thayers and Elbridge, declared bankruptcy shortly after its publication and were almost unable to pay Whitman. "In regard to money matters", they wrote, "we are very short ourselves and it's quite impossible to send the sum". Whitman received only $250 and the original plates made their way to Boston publisher Horace Wentworth. When the 456-page book was finally issued, Whitman said, "It is quite 'odd,' of course", referring to its appearance: it was bound in orange cloth with symbols like a rising sun with nine spokes of light and a butterfly perched on a hand.
   The 1867 edition was intended to be, according to Whitman, "a new & much better edition of Leaves of Grass complete — that unkillable work!" He assumed it would be the final edition. The edition, which included the Drum-Taps section and its Sequel and the new Songs before Parting, was delayed when the binder went bankrupt and its distributing firm failed. When it was finally printed, it was a simple edition and the first to omit a picture of the poet.
   The eighth edition in 1889 was little changed from the 1881 version, though it was more embellished and featured several portraits of Whitman. The biggest change was the addition of an "Annex" of miscellaneous additional poems.

"Deathbed edition"

As 1891 came to a close, Whitman prepared a final edition of Leaves of Grass, writing to a friend upon its completion, "L. of G. at last complete—after 33 y'rs of hackling at it, all times & moods of my life, fair weather & foul, all parts of the land, and peace & war, young & old". This last version of Leaves of Grass was published in 1892 and is referred to as the "deathbed edition". In January 1892, two months before Whitman's death, an announcement was published in the New York Herald:

Walt Whitman wishes respectfully to notify the public that the book Leaves of Grass, which he's been working on at great intervals and partially issued for the past thirty-five or forty years, is now completed, so to call it, and he'd like this new 1892 edition to absolutely supersede all previous ones. Faulty as it is, he decides it as by far his special and entire self-chosen poetic utterance.

By the time this last edition was completed, Leaves of Grass had grown from a small book of 12 poems to a hefty tome of almost 400 poems. As the volume changed, so did the pictures of Whitman used to illustrate them—the last edition depicts an older Whitman with a full beard and jacket, appearing more sophisticated and wise.

Analysis

Particularly in "Song of Myself", Whitman emphasized an all-powerful "I" who serves as narrator. The "I" tries to relieve both social and private problems by using powerful affirmative cultural images. The emphasis on American culture helped reach Whitman's intention of creating a distinctly American epic poem comparable to the works of Homer. Originally written at a time of significant urbanization in America, Leaves of Grass responds to the impact urbanization has on the masses.

Critical response and controversy

When the book was first published, Whitman was fired from his job at the Department of the Interior after Secretary of the Interior James Harlan read it and said he found it very offensive. Critic Rufus Wilmot Griswold reviewed Leaves of Grass in the November 10, 1855, issue of The Criterion, calling it "a mass of stupid filth" and categorized its author as a filthy free lover. Griswold also suggested, in Latin, that Whitman was guilty of "that horrible sin not to be mentioned among Christians", one of the earliest public accusations of Whitman's homosexuality. Griswold's intensely negative review almost caused the publication of the second edition to be suspended. Whitman included the full review, including the innuendo, in a later edition of Leaves of Grass. though even he urged Whitman to tone down the sexual imagery in 1860.
   On March 1, 1882, Boston district attorney Oliver Stevens, wrote to Whitman's publisher, James R. Osgood, that Leaves of Grass constituted "obscene literature". Urged by the New England Society for the Suppression of Vice, his letter said: "We are of the opinion that this book is such a book as brings it within the provisions of the Public Statutes respecting obscene literature and suggest the propriety of withdrawing the same from circulation and suppressing the editions thereof." Stevens demanded the removal of the poems "A Woman Waits for Me" and "To a Common Prostitute", as well as changes to "Song of Myself", "From Pent-Up Aching Rivers", "I Sing the Body Electric", "Spontaneous Me", "Native Moments", "The Dalliance of the Eagles", "By Blue Ontario’s Shore", "Unfolded Out of the Folds", "The Sleepers", and "Faces".
   Whitman rejected the censorship, writing to Osgood, "The list whole & several is rejected by me, & won't be thought of under any circumstances." Osgood refused to republish the book and returned the plates to Whitman when suggested changes and deletions were ignored. Its first printing, released on July 18, sold out in a day.
   Not all responses were negative, however. Critic William Michael Rossetti considered Leaves of Grass a classic along the lines of the works of William Shakespeare and Dante Alighieri. A woman from Connecticut named Susan Garnet Smith wrote to Whitman to profess her love for him after reading Leaves of Grass and even offering her womb should he want a child.
   Whitman firmly believed he'd be accepted and embraced by the populace, especially the working class. Years later, he'd regret not having toured the country to deliver his poetry directly by lecturing. "If I'd gone directly to the people, read my poems, faced the crowds, got into immediate touch with Tom, Dick, and Harry instead of waiting to be interpreted, I'd have had my audience at once," he claimed.

Adaptations and allusions

The anthology was featured in the film The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love as the girls bond over reading it, and it also is the basis of some of the narration of the film.
   The phrase "leaves of grass" also made an appearance in The Notebook. Whitman's poems played a role in the movie as well, with Noah (the main character) having read them growing up to recover from a stutter. A professor at Ally's college also writes the phrase on the chalkboard and asks the question, "Do I contradict myself?" Whitman's great-grand-niece, Veronica Whitman, told the Brooklyn Eagle the inclusion was "a real thrill. [Whitman] would have wanted to be in a major motion picture."
20th century British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams's choral work Toward the Unknown Region features lyrics from the first poem, Darest Thou Now O Soul in book XXX (Whispers of Heavenly Death). Vaughan William's Sea Symphony is a massive work for full-scale choir, the first such composition to use the choir as an integral part of the symphony; the entirety of the text is excerpts or (in the case of the third movement) a complete poem from Leaves of Grass.
   American novelist Michael Cunningham, author of the Virginia Woolf tribute The Hours (1998), wrote a set of three novels called Specimen Days. The book includes direct quotations from Leaves of Grass, an admiration for New York, and the personification of Whitman himself as a side character in the first story.
   The collection was poked fun at in Richard Greenberg's play "The Violet Hour". Struggling author Denis McCleary begs his friend and publisher John Pace Seavering to publish his novel, equating it to the anthology saying "It's a last text. It's like "Leaves of Grass"! After people read my book, they won't need to read anymore, they'll live!", which John responds to with "It's my impression that people continue to read even after Leaves of Grass". Denis tartly replies, "Don't pin the failures of Walt Whitman on me, John!".
   The book was featured as a gift from "Walt" (last name never given, but assumed to be Whitman) to John Amsterdam in the TV series, New Amsterdam (Episode: "Soldier's Heart"; air date: March 10, 2008).

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