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"That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment. "
Dorothy Parker, 'But the One on the Right,' in New Yorker, 1929
“Who is it, praising himself as if others were not fit to do it”?
[page three]
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.