Advertising Whitman: “Who is it, praising himself as if others were not fit to do it”?
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The intentional use of spiritual topics in the self-reviews reflects Whitman’s personal views but more importantly they adhere to the advertising law that; “you sell the need” (Twitchell 60). Whitman attraction to Swedenborgianism included the mixture of science, religion and open sexual relations, and his application of religion and sex in the self-review was to attract the consumer to Leaves of Grass. After employing a Christ-like image that the “sea supports” (US Review), he switches to an earthly and robust poet who responds, “Dash me with amorous wet!... Your stale modesties, he says, are filthy to such a man as I” (US Review). Promoting an erotic mysticism seems an ill-fated advertising scheme but in mid-nineteenth century, Americans experienced an interest in assorted spiritual and pseudo-scientific theories from spiritualism to phrenology similar to this century’s interest in New Age spirituality. Whitman uses the public interest in his contemporary subjects to tap into the largest market of American consumers. The character of America and the American people contains multitudes of desires and beliefs, as such; references to sex must also project a distinct moral purity. Aware of this, Whitman writes, “Nature he proclaims inherently pure” so he can reveal that, “Sex will not be put aside; it is a great ordination of the universe” (US Review), an allusion that casts a heavenly vindication of human sexual relationships. Whitman makes the courageous assumption that in his poetry “are the facts of eternity and immortality, largely treated” (US Review). Whitman’s thorough training as a journalist placed him on familiar terms with the diversity of American popular culture. To capture the attention of a mass reading audience Whitman affiliates his poet with the Bowery b’hoys.
In nineteenth-century New York, the Bowery b’hoys were “a multiethnic construction, part native American rowdy, part Irish ‘Jacken’, part German ‘Younker’.... this new youth culture fashioned its self-image not at work but at play (Burroughs 753). Whitman’s attraction to the passion and energy of this group resulted in his assimilation of their identity into his visionary American identity. He also actively sought to attract the Bowery b’hoys to his poetry. The passage that reads “One of the roughs, large, proud, affectionate, eating, drinking, and breeding, his costume manly and free” (US Review) reflects the defiance and hearty good nature of this popular figure. To attract this vital and manly audience Whitman presented an American identity that incorporates the “free American workman and workwoman - the fierceness of the people when well-roused” (US Review). The B’hoys are representative of the common working people and Whitman asserts an affiliation between them and the new American poet who is, “No sniveller, or tea-drinking poet, no puny clawback or prude, is Walt Whitman. He will bring poems fit to fill the days and nights” (US Review). Whitman as a member of the working class employed these suggestive lines to titillate and attract his preferred audience. Whitman’s contemporary, P.T. Barnum declared, “I don’t believe in duping the public, but I do believe in first attracting and then pleasing them” (Twitchell 28) and Whitman confidently believed that his poetry would please the ‘roughs’ if he could capture and hold their attention.
Whitman knew, just as P.T. Barnum, that to hold the attention of the crowd he needed, “an outrageous promise” (Twitchell 20). For this purpose, he chose to present not just the poetry, but also the poet, as an embodiment of America. The self review, in making the statement that the American Bard is, “Self-reliant, with haughty eyes, assuming to himself all the attributes of his country” (US Review) executes a style similar to “Song of Myself” wherein Whitman professes to be “Absorbing all to myself” (13.233). However, Whitman’s most outrageous promise was not selling himself as the prototype for American individualism, but as the progenitor of American poetry. “Walt Whitman himself disclaims singularity in his work, and announces the coming after him of great successions of poets, and that he but lifts his finger to give the signal” (US Review). Whitman saw literature as representative of democracy and believed that America, as the great democratic nation, needed a great literature. By incorporating this into his self-review, he thumbs his nose at the critics who are looking for a new American literature in the parlors of the wealthy. Presenting himself, as the father of American literature was entirely outrageous claim intended to spark curiosity in his poetry. An interest that for his book's marketing success it needed to be cultivated immediately.
A successful nineteenth century advertising campaign projected that “now is the time to buy!” (Twitchell 21). Whitman establishes this sense of immediacy in the closing paragraph by beginning with “You have come in good time, Walt Whitman!” (US Review) “You have come” also successfully reenacts the evangelical religious motif present in the review. The final sentence begins with “In opinions, in manners, in costumes, in books, in the aims and occupancy of life, in associates, in poems,” (US Review) asserts his ability and his purely American identity. To which Whitman adds, “conformity to all unnatural and tainted customs passes without remark,” (US Review) asserting that the Walt Whitman remains unspoiled by European influences. The last part of the sentence fixes an affinity with popular culture “while perfect naturalness, health, faith, self-reliance, and all primal expressions of the manliest love and friendship, subject one to the stare and controversy of the world” (US Review) and for the Bowery b’hoys that he wished to emulate in his ideal American. In the above sentence, Whitman demonstrates that “Walt Whitman” adheres to all the requirements of an American bard; as such, he is the perfect poet as previously presented.
Walt Whitman was born on Long-Island, on the hills about thirty miles from the greatest American city, on the last day of May, 1819, and has grown up in Brooklyn and New York to be thirty-six years old, to enjoy perfect health, and to understand his country and its spirit” (US Review).
Whitman set the criteria of the American Bard based on his interpretation of American popular culture. From this interpretation, he created a fully fleshed, rough and pure American poet. Through his self-reviews, he presents his American original to the buying public. However, America in 1855 was not ready to accept a rough from the streets as its poetic voice.
Although New Englanders and transcendentalist, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Eliot Norton, Bronson Alcott and Henry David Thoreau could support Whitman’s poetry as the union of “Yankee transcendentalism and New York rowdyism” (Burroughs 710) the inhabitants of Whitman’s beloved metropolis thought the poetic content disgusting and the rough rowdy language used in Leaves of Grass gross and tasteless. Unfortunately, for Whitman, the urbanities did not attempt to prohibit the publication of his poetry. In 1882, the reading public demonstrated the soundness of Henry Clapp’s advice to Whitman. Advice that was confirmed when the New England Society for the Suppression of Vice successfully prohibited the publication in Boston of the sixth edition of Leaves of Grass because it “violated the Public Statues concerning obscene literature” (Burroughs 649). Where Whitman’s self-reviews failed, the Society succeeded in selling six thousand copies by effectively stirring up nineteenth century American readers. However, the self-reviews present an interesting picture of Whitman’s refusal to comply with the conventional forms for poetry established by the American literary elite and a commentary of nineteenth century popular advertising styles.
Works Cited
Allen, Gay Wilson. Walt Whitman Handbook. Packard and Company: Chicago, 1946.
Burrows, Edwin G and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. Oxford University Press: New York, 1999.
LeMaster, J.R and Donald D. Kummings editors. Walt Whitman: An encyclopedia. Garland: New York, 1998.
Twitchell, James B. Twenty Ads That Shook the World. Crown Publishers: New York, 2000.
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass: the Complete Works of Walt Whitman Ed. Thomas Johnson. Norton: New York, 1973.
Whitman, Walt. “Walt Whitman and His Poems” United States Review, 5 September 1855, 205 12.