Revised Whitman Assignment

Of the several thematic strands in Whitman's poem, one is a huge, swooping travel narrative as the speaker of the poem journeys to North and South, through battlefields, fire, bridal chambers, birthing rooms, and farmlands to bring us a kind of comprehensive American experience.

For Tuesday: read around in Lands of the Slave and the Free: or Cuba, the United States, and Canada, a more traditional, prose travel narrative of a journey to America in 1857 by the Englishman Henry A. Murray. Note the many shared points of interest in 1850’s America upon which both Whitman’s and Murray’s travel narratives alight: for example, aqueducts, slavery, the shipping industry, "bridal chambers", American energy and industriousness, emigration, and railroads. Feel free to take Murray’s advice and skim (“If the reader finds me tedious in any details uninteresting to him, I trust that a judicious skipping of a few leaves will bring us again into an agreeable companionship.”) but read enough to get a good idea of the narrative.

Pay attention to how Murray constructs his narrative. What kind of metaphors does he use, what kind of language, what kind of tone and how is it communicated? If we take it as a given, that, in writing about America, both Whitman and Murray probably subscribe to some (very 19th century) German Romanticist notion of a national zeitgeist (i.e. Herder & Hegel's philosophy of history), what is your chosen object of interest constructed to say about America and the speaker's relation to it?

Now write a couple of paragraphs looking closely at a portion of Murray’s text that deals with something also included in Whitman’s, such as one of the above examples. How does Murray view the subject of interest, and what broader point does he use it to make about America? How does this portion of Murray’s text fit into his overall travel narrative?

Next: consider whether reading Murray on the same subject now informs your reading of the subject in Whitman, and why, or why not. Does Whitman’s handling of the subject convey the same emotion or idea as Murray’s? What about the sensory details in both Whitman and Murray and why they are included? Is an understanding of Murray’s point of view on the subject perhaps implied within Whitman’s? Consider especially Whitman's claims for a mystical union with things versus Murray's more prosaic series of catalogues. Think about immanence in Whitman versus the more removed view of Murray. What conventions of the travel narrative Murray might be including with which Whitman might be playing, and how Whitman is using them to speak about America. Why does Whitman have these travelogue moments and these lists? Look at the similarities between

Write another informal paragraph thinking about these questions. Finally, use the informal writing you have done so far to inform your construction of a more formal fourth paragraph, in which you will actually construct a thesis from the writing you have done so far. If you were to turn the assignment into a larger essay (which I am not asking you to do), the first three paragraphs should represent the thinking that would go behind constructing your essay, and the fourth paragraph should be the introductory paragraph of this essay which would emerge from that thinking. (The difference is that I will be able to see the entire process when you turn it in.)

Try to make the assignment open up the poem, and if after beginning it, you find the subject you chose isn’t conducive to saying anything interesting, choose another one.

My Whitman Assignment

Whitman’s poem is indeed very large, and does contain multitudes. Of its several thematic strands is a huge, swooping travel narrative as the speaker of the poem journeys to North and South, through battlefields, fire, bridal chambers, birthing rooms, and farmlands to bring us a kind of comprehensive American experience.

For Tuesday: read around in Lands of the Slave and the Free: or Cuba, the United States, and Canada, a more traditional, prose travel narrative of a journey to America in 1857 by the Englishman Henry A. Murray. Note the many shared points of interest in 1850’s America upon which both Whitman’s and Murray’s travel narratives alight: for example, aqueducts, slavery, the shipping industry, "bridal chambers", American energy and industriousness, emigration, and railroads. Feel free to take Murray’s advice and skim (“If the reader finds me tedious in any details uninteresting to him, I trust that a judicious skipping of a few leaves will bring us again into an agreeable companionship.”) but read enough to get a good idea of the narrative.

Pay attention to how Murray constructs his narrative. What kind of metaphors does he use, what kind of language, what kind of tone and how is it communicated? If we take it as a given, that, in writing about America, both Whitman and Murray probably subscribe to some (very 19th century) German Romanticist notion of a national zeitgeist (i.e. Herder & Hegel's philosophy of history), what is your chosen object of interest constructed to say about America and the speaker's relation to it?

Now write a couple of paragraphs looking closely at a portion of Murray’s text that deals with something also included in Whitman’s, such as one of the above examples. How does Murray view the subject of interest, and what broader point does he use it to make about America? How does this portion of Murray’s text fit into his overall travel narrative?

Consider whether reading Murray on the same subject now informs your reading of the subject in Whitman, and why, or why not. Does Whitman’s handling of the subject convey the same emotion or idea as Murray’s? Is an understanding of Murray’s point of view on the subject perhaps implied within Whitman’s? Consider what conventions of the travel narrative Murray might be including with which Whitman might be playing, and how Whitman is using them to speak about America.

Try to make the assignment open up the poem, and if after beginning it, you find the subject you chose isn’t conducive to saying anything interesting, choose another one.

Of Aqueducts and Trains

I found an alluring cultural object in the Library of Congress’s American Memory collection, within American Travel Notes: Travels in America, 1750—1920. Lands of the Slave and the Free or: Cuba, the United States, and Canada is a travel narrative by the Englishman Henry A. Murray published in 1857. I’ll admit I went about this assignment somewhat backwards by simply reading the narrative and then using TokenX to zero in on related parts of Leaves of Grass.

“City and country, fire-place, candle, gas-light, heater, aqueduct”

Upon the many topics which the pleasantly rambling Lands of the Slave and the Free takes on, is the New York Croton aqueduct, which Murray describes as a considerable achievement for the region and nation.

“This stupendous work consists of a covered way seven feet broad and eight feet and a half high; in its course it has to pass through sixteen tunnellings, forming an aggregate of nearly 7,000 feet; to cross the river Harlem by a bridge 1,450 feet long and 114 feet above tide water, and to span various valleys.” (69) I supplemented my reading in Lands with a bit of ye olde wikipedia, to find that the aqueduct was constructed to serve New York City between 1837 and 1842 and was a great boon to the city, as polluted water had led to cholera and yellow fever epidemics, and the lack of a sufficient water supply led to a number of fires, culminating in the 1835 Great Fire of New York.

(“The ring of alarm bells . . . . the cry of fire . . . . the whirr of swift-streaking engines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and colored lights . . . .”)

(If you’re curious: the Croton Reservoir continued to provide water to the city until 1940, when it was drained to create the Great Lawn in Central Park, but some of the original aqueduct still exists and is the basis for today’s Old Croton Aqueduct Historic State Park.)

From New York, Murray describes train travel to the South and West. To give an idea of the flavor of this passage:

“There they were, with the red-hot stove and poisonous atmosphere, as usual; so my friend and I, selecting a cushionless “smoking-car,” where the windows would at all events be open, seated ourselves on the hard boards of resignation, lit the tapery weed of consolation and shrouded ourselves in its fragrant clouds. On we went, hissing through the snow-storm, till the waters of the Delaware brought us to a stand-still; then, changing to a steamer, we crossed the broad stream, on which to save time, they served dinner, and almost before it was ended we had reached Philadelphia.”(75)

Whitman has four references to trains in the 1855 version of the poem. Murray’s descriptions add sensual details to what it was like to embark on train travel in 1855 and what associations the idea of train travel would have for the contemporary reader.

Something else about going about exploring both Leaves of Grass and Murray’s narrative in this way: Whitman does not use many more detailed 1855 expressions and terms that I was interested in, for example, “pacers”, “trotters”, “forewheels”, and “splashboards.” Some of these may be English words not used by American contemporaries, but it also struck me how readable Whitman’s poem is to us today and how few unknown terms he uses. As I was thinking about Whitman’s poem as a relic of 1855, it was almost, I felt, as if he was resisting me, saying, “no, my poem is more universal than that,” and I began to reflect on how long-lasting the words he chose to use have been.