Advertising Whitman: “Who is it, praising himself as if others were not fit to do it”?
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Anti-European sentiment filled the hearts of eighteenth century Americans overwhelmed by a ceaseless influx of new immigrants. America’s long established acceptance of European settlers escalated and, “Between 1840 and 1859 the total number of immigrants soared to 4,242,000, with forty percent Irish, thirty-two percent German and sixteen percent English” (Burroughs 736). Three quarters of these immigrants entered the states through New York harbors and Whitman was well acquainted with the resentment the common man felt over the loss of employment and adequate wages to newly arrived hungry immigrants. Newly arrived and long-standing American citizens wanted freedom from European tyranny. For this reason, Whitman also brandishes the topic in his demand for a purely American Bard in the first stanza of his poem “Song of Myself.”
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
Whitman’s reasoning behind this theme in his self-reviews and his poem is to present America separate from the constraints of European society. In the self-review, he proposes that contemporary American literature relies on an entirely European construction formed by American “intellectuals” who dress in “Paris and London” fashions. The following passage demands an American poet by bashing European style as an ineffectual and effeminate form that is unfit for conveying the true spirit and soul of the American people.
One sees unmistakably genteel persons, travelled, college-learned, used to be served by servants, conversing without heat or vulgarity, supported on chairs, or walking through handsomely-carpeted parlors, or along shelves bearing well-bound volumes, and walls adorned with curtained and collared portraits, and china things, and nick-nacks. But where in American literature is the first show of America?
The above passage develops a clear picture of the American literati as a wealthy, and almost royal, class that cannot project the passionate natures of the common people in their language. Whitman regularly defined American democracy against European feudalism as a rhetorical strategy in his prose and poetry to emphasis the need for a truly American literature that could “express the vigor and roughness” (Encyclopedia 223) of Whitman’s American landscape including its entire diverse people and emerging institutions. For Whitman, an ideal American democracy embraces non-discriminatory practice and includes the lower classes in its national pride.
Capturing a sentimental portrait of national pride Whitman declares an absence of American poetry that honors the “majesty of the federal mother, seated with more than antique grace” (US Review). By referring to a “federal mother,” he reasserts his petition for an American born poet. This segment of his review employs a dialectic approach in which Whitman questions, “Where is the spirit of the strong rich life of the American mechanic, farmer, sailor, hunter, and miner? Where is the huge composite of all other nations, cast in a fresher and brawnier matrix, passing adolescence, and needed this day, live and arrogant, to lead the marches of the world?” (US Review). The questions effectively reinforcing the consuming need for an American born poet who understands the spirit and passion of the common people of the United States.
By establishing the need for an American bard by creating, a desire for an authentic American poet Whitman’s self-review reflects Twitchell claims that, “in advertising terms, you don’t sell the product, you sell the need” (Twitchell 60). As the creator of the criteria by which an American bard’s worth is measured, Whitman is assured that his poet will fill the insufficiency he has created. Now he can present his American original, pure from the stain of Europe.
No breath of Europe, or her monarchies, or priestly conventions, or her notions of gentlemen and ladies founded on the idea of caste, seems ever to have fanned his face or been inhaled into his lungs. But in their stead pour vast and fluid the fresh mentality of this mighty age, and the realities of this mighty continent” (US Review).
The first sentence of the above passage establishes the poet as the natural product of American soil. The second sentence develops the poet’s pure American identity further by filling the poet's body with the very essences of America. Because Whitman claims that, only an American-born poet can fill the literary void he needed to embody the perfect nationalist persona. To establish this Whitman claims more than birthright to set him apart. He asserts that the awaited American poet possesses a divine right. Whitman recognized that “advertising was becoming the gospel of redemption in the fallen world of capitalism” (Twitchell 56). With this in mind, he endows his American Bard with a complex spirituality that embraced the spiritual diversity of the United States. Whitman’s use of religious themes is harmonious with an advertising technique made popular in nineteenth century advertising by P.T. Barnum.
Evangelical revivalism resonates in P.T. Barnum’s printed advertising campaign and effectively creates both a sensation and an event. In the posters for his “Greatest Show on Earth” the text proclaims, “I am coming,” simple words that grabbed onto the American “apocalyptic tradition of evangelical Christianity” (Twitchell 22). Whitman injects this style of tent-show revivalism by proclaiming, in the opening passage, that the messiah of American literature has come, “An American bard at last!” (US Review). Whitman will manipulate religious themes throughout the self-review to entice the buying public. Although Whitman was born into a Quaker family, “a version of evangelical Protestantism permeated the social life in which Whitman matured (Encyclopedia 580). However, Whitman’s experiences encompassed a wide range of knowledge. In his self-review, the characteristics of the American Bard represent a response to Thomas Carlyle’s “impassioned call for an inspired poet-prophet” (Encyclopedia 582). By employing a Christ-like poet who “gives to each just what belongs to it, neither more or less” (US Review) he soaks his purely American Bard with divine authority. However, Whitman interest included developing a new American religion, based in part on a popular mysticism called Swedenborgianism.
While living and working in Long Island and Brooklyn, Whitman encountered a vast array of spiritual and mystical pseudo-religions including Swedenborgianism in which he (and transcendentalist such as Ralph Waldo Emerson) developed a strong interest. Emanuel Swedenborgian was a nineteenth century philosopher and mystic, who “demonstrated a genius for connecting science and religion, (Encyclopedia 697). Swedenborgian also determined that human sexuality could survive in healthy union with science and religion. Whitman introduces these mystical and religious philosophies by asserting that the poet “proceeds to put his own body and soul into the new versification” (US Review). By the addition of this esoteric spiritual group’s philosophy, Whitman could refute criticism that his poetry lacked religious sentiment and asserts that his poetry was loaded with faith.
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