Democratic Vistas demonstrates Whitman’s views towards America during the war. Clearly, the effects of the war, the changes that resulted from the war, and the death of Lincoln, dramatically affected Whitman’s views. For example, Whitman states, “I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences.” (pg. 759) This statement, in my interpretation, essentially means that democracy can, and is able to grow through by learning from different sources and outlets like education and the arts.
The structure of Whitman’s work is very interesting because it is organize in a manner that is rather repetitive. By making his work repetitive, it allows the reader to fully gain how Whitman feels towards his ideas that he emphasizes. This thought relates to that of the speaker that joined us in class the other day. He said that Whitman is a process, a shifting view of continual change. He was able to provide the example that Whitman is like compost, that is, he takes the same idea and is able to take it apart, as well as place it back together. This was very interesting comparing his work to that of compost, because the reader can comprehend the thought cycle Whitman undergoes as an Author.
Some of my favorite quotes/passages from this reading would be the following:
- “The United States are destined either to surmount the gorgeous history of feudalism, or else prove the most tremendous failure of time.” (pg. 758)
- “Few are aware how the great literature penetrates all, gives hue to all shapes aggregates and individuals, and after subtle ways, with irresistible power, constructs, sustains, demolishes at will.” (pg. 760)
- “Yet in the civilization of to-day it is undeniable that, over all the arts, literature dominates, serves beyond all-shapes the character of church and school- or, at any rate, is capable of doing so.” (pg. 761)
- “For, I say, the true nationality of the States, the genuine union, when we come to a mortal crisis, is, and is to be, after all, neither the written law, nor, (as is generally supposed,) either self-interest, or common pecuniary or material objects- but the fervid and tremendous IDEA, melting everything else with resistless heat, and solving all lesser and definite distinctions in vast, indefinite, spiritual, emotional power.” (pg. 762)
Notes from Speaker:
-Dictionaries are the ultimate compost heap
→ alternating and shifting, never thinking of a work being completely finished
- The realization that nothing is permanent
→ how one phrase can alter the meaning the meaning of one of his works (ex: When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d)
-Revising the actual structure of “Leaves of Grass”
→ “moveable unit” that he would revise (this includes punctuation changes)
-Creates new, revised poetry (cut and paste)
→an experience of reading a new edition which reflects the present moment
_Poems should communicate with another (Never moved on to another project, expanded his original ideas with each edition)
