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Walt Whitman's Earliest Known Notebook

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Edward F. Grier
Edward F. Grier*
Affiliation:
University of Kansas
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Abstract

The notebook, which disappeared from the Library of Congress sometime after its first, incomplete publication in 1921, has been described and analyzed from an imperfect microfilm copy. The new information discloses that, although the notebook was used until 1854–55, the traditional date of 1847 for most of the contents is correct. Although the notebook is close to the 1855 Leaves of Grass in its poetical material, it shows relatively little influence from specific events, politics, or literary ideas in Whitman's formative period.

Type
Notes, Documents, and Critical Comment
Information
PMLA , Volume 83 , Issue 5 , October 1968 , pp. 1453 - 1456
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1968

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References

1. The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman (New York, 1921), n, 63–76. This edition will hereafter be referred to in text and notes as UPP. The entire available text of the notebook, including all variant readings, will be edited by the present writer in a volume of Collected Writings of Walt Whitman (New York, 1961—).

2. UPP, n, 63, and The Library of Congress, Ten Notebooks and a Cardboard Butterfly Missing from the Walt Whitman Papers (Washington, 1954), p. 6. I am grateful to Professor Fredson Bowers, who told me of the naicrofilm.

3. E.g., UPP, n, 65, 11. 5–6, 7–9, 20–22; 66, 11. 25–27, 28. UPP, it should be remembered, was edited as a “reader's” text rather than as a scholar's and is thus defective in a number of ways. Since pagination is not given, it is impossible to follow Whitman's order of composition, always a point of great interest in his notebooks. Further, it does not record all of the scores of deletions and additions, some extensive, shown in the microfilm. Passages more or less duplicate in wording and contents are conflated. Finally two nonliterary entries, which are, as the present paper attempts to show, of some biographical importance, are omitted. On the other hand, in word by word transcription of the “final” readings of the notebook, UPP is remarkably accurate. As for his edi-torial policy, since Holloway was publishing an enormous quantity of unknown Whitman material, an achievement which marks the beginning of serious scholarly interest in Whitman, his decision was a sound one.

4. Holloway gives several dates: 1847 (UPP, i, xlix), 1847 or 1848 (UPP, i, xxxix, ii, plate opposite p. 70), 1848 or 1849 (UPP, i, xc, n. 2).

5. See also Gay Wilson Allen, Solitary Singer (New York, 1955), pp. 599–600. Whitman, however, in “[Whitman Family Record]” says he moved into the “house in Prince st. in Dec. 1846.” Charles E. Feinberg, “A Whitman Collector Destroys a Whitman Myth,” PBSA, lii (1958), 75, 76, 78, gives slightly different dates based on a study of receipts in his collection.

6. Brooklyn city directories from 1847–48 to 1853–54 do not list Whitman at any address numbered 466f, nor have I been able to locate any large building (i.e., one large enough to have two entrances) at that or any other 466J address. Granada Hall, in which Whitman rented a store 4 January 1849 (Feinberg, “A Whitman Collector,” p. 79), was a meeting hall used by Masons and Odd Fellows, but was located at 94 Myrtle Street. Since Prince Street, according to the directories, ran for only five blocks and was not numbered in the hundreds, block by block, it is improbable that there was a 466 1/2 Prince Street.

7. Whitman used the asterisk in this notebook and elsewhere to indicate that two separated passages belonged together.

8. Esther Shephard, “Possible Sources of Some of Whitman's Ideas and Symbols in Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus and Other Works,” MLQ, xiv(March 1953), 66–67, n. 13.

9. Edward Hungerford, “Walt Whitman and His Chart of Bumps,” AL, ii (Jan. 1931), 350–384, and Harold Aspiz, “Educating the Cosmos,” AQ, xviii (Winter 1966), 655–666, and “Unfolding the Folds,” WWR, xii (Dec. 1966), 81–87. For physiology and health see William L. Finkel, “Sources of Walt Whitman's Manuscript Notes on Physique,” AL, xx (Nov. 1950),-308 331, and the following editorials by Whitman in the Brooklyn Eagle: “Art of Health” (4 June 1846), “Bathmg—Cleanliness—Personal Beauty” (10 June 1846), and “Brooklyn Young Men—Athletic Exercises” (23 July 1846), all in Cleveland Rodgers and John Black, ed., The Gathering of the Forces (New York, 1920), ii, 199–200,201-206, 207–209.

10. The first notebook passage (p. 25) is as follows: “Every soul has its own individual language, often unspoken or lowly [Whitman has left ”feebly“ above this word and ”haltingly“ below it]; but a truth fit for that man and perfectly adapted for his use. —The truths I tell to you or to any other may not be plain to you, because I do not translate them fully from my idiom into yours. If I could do so, and do it well, they would be as apparent to you as they are to me; for they are truths. —No two have exactly the same language, and the great translator and power of the whole is the poet. He has the divine grammar of all tongues, and says indifferently and alike, How are you friend? to the President in the midst of his cabinet, and Good day my brother, to Sambo, among the hoes of the sugar field, and both understand him and know that his speech is right.” The passage from George Sand as copied by Whitman is as follows: “The unknown refused to explain himself. ‘What could I say to you that I have not said in another (my own) language? Is it my fault that you have not understood me? You think I wished to speak to your senses, and it was my soul spoke to you. What do I say? It was the soul of the whole of humanity that spoke to you through mine.‘ George Sand. Consuelo. Vol. 5, page 264.” Despite Whitman's reference to Consuelo, the passage is from The Countess of Rudolstadl and is on page 264 of the second volume. Esther Shephard, Walt Whitman's Pose (New York, 1938), pp. 177–178; and “Whitman's Copy of George Sand,” WWR, ix (June 1963), 34–36, 47. Whitman's copy of the Sand quotation is printed in The Complete Writings of Walt Whitman (New York, 1902), ix, 19. The manuscript, which is in the Univ. of Virginia Library, is in a hand similar to that of the notebook and other early manuscripts.

11. Whitman used eight “numeral” terms ranging from trillions to decillions in the 1855 Leaves of Grass. I have found none in poems written later.