Walt Whitman's 'Song of Myself': The Epic of Democracy and Identity

Poetic Primacy and Historical Context. “Song of Myself” is Whitman’s longest and justifiably most renowned poem. Appearing as the first poem of the 1855 Leaves of Grass, it retained its position of primacy through all the editions, being preceded in the final edition only by the “Inscriptions” poems and the program poem, “Starting from Paumanok.” It has been called an American epic, an ode and hymn to democracy, a compendium of 19th-century American culture, a spiritual autobiography, a conversion narrative, a sermon, an ode to the self, a psychological dream or drama, a narcissistic fantasy, and a shamanic performance. Furthermore, as Emerson said of Leaves of Grass, it represents a “combination of the Bhagavad Gita [a Hindu spiritual epic] and the New York Tribune, suggesting Whitman’s juxtaposition of the sublime and the everyday.

Thematic Architecture and Structural Innovation. In its final form, it comprises 52 sections, but the poem lacks any kind of traditional narrative, chronology, or logical progression just as it lacks any formal unity or structure. Its action is psychological, spiritual, imaginative, and associative. Its central theme is the “Self” and the Self’s relationship to the body and to the soul, to other people and things, to geographies, gods, history, America, and, perhaps most important of all, to you, the reader. Other overarching themes include unity and diversity, the one and the many, identity and interdependence, democracy and the individual.

Stylistic Innovation and Poetic Devices. Stylistically it is written in long, rhythmical, unrhymed lines of varying length. Its poetic and musical devices include anaphora, parallelism, repetition, assonance and consonance, and an overall sweeping, undulating rhythm that carries the poem forward like the waves of the sea. Catalogs (an epic convention) are used to list the seemingly endless images of people, flora, and fauna of America. With these catalogs arranged in lines parallel in grammatical structure, each beginning in anaphora, the poem echoes the Bible, Homer, and other ancient and religious texts, often creating an oracular, incantatory effect. The self embraces the many and merges them into the unity of his song.

Transcendentalist Foundations and the Expanded Self. Unlike most poems of epic ambitions, “Song of Myself” opens not with an invocation of the muse but with an exclamatory affirmation, “I celebrate myself.” But this self is not Whitman’s personal ego; it is a larger Self that includes all. At a political level, this Self affirms the equality and oneness of diverse people in democracy. At a religious level the Self is akin to Emerson’s individual soul that is one with the “Oversoul,” a kind of pantheistic divinity permeating all things. When writing about this poem, scholars refer to the Self as the self (or Self), the poet, the speaker, or even Whitman, since the speaker calls himself “Walt Whitman, a kosmos” at the beginning of section 24.

The Reader and the Self. After the opening annunciation of the Self, the poet characteristically turns to the reader, promising that “what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you” (ll. 2–3). Throughout the course of the poem, while circumscribing the nation and the globe, he always returns to “you,” as if to anchor the Self in primary relation to the reader before launching forth again on ecstatic journeys of self-making.

The Edenic Opening. The opening also differs from typical epic openings, for it begins not in war or heroic adventure but in illness—“I loafe and invite my soul, / I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass” (ll. 4–5)—perhaps playfully mocking America’s Puritan heritage and the Protestant work ethic. The poem prizes illness because Whitman wants to return us to Eden, to a time before “creeds and schools,” to a simplicity of being and perception now lost. He says, “Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems” (l. 33), echoing Emerson’s admonition that we must find “our own original relation to the universe.”

The Erotic and Spiritual Rebirth. After this Edenic start, the poem then abruptly changes focus, returning to even earlier beginnings, to the chaos before creation: “Urge and urge and urge, / Always the procreant urge of the world. / Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and increase, always sex” (ll. 44–46). In the 1855 edition a line in this section read, “As God comes a loving bedfellow and sleeps at my side at night and close on the peep of the day” (l. 52). Whitman is ever merging the religious and the erotic, suggesting that the Western division of body and soul, mind and matter, has been an error.

Section 4 works as a purification or cleansing ritual for the personality that must take place before the rebirth of the poet in the famous section 5. The poet now reviews the details of his daily life—“My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues” (l. 69)—but tells us these “are not the Me myself” (l. 74). Who the “Me myself” is becomes clarified in section 5, the most important section of the poem. There we return to where the poet loafs and invites his soul:

I mind how we lay in June, such a transparent summer morning; / You settled your head athwart my hips and gently turned over upon me, / And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my barestript heart / And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet. / Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and joy and knowledge that pass all the art and argument of the earth / And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, / And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own / And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers, / And that a kelson of the creation is love. (ll. 87–95)

In many writings of religious mystical experience the ineffable encounter with the divine finds expression in ecstatic sexual metaphors, but here the sexual seems not merely a metaphor for the spiritual but one with it. This rebirth is a sexual awakening to the body as well as a spiritual awakening. And the tongue as the active agent inscribing its message on the heart emphasizes the linguistic, poetic nature of the transformation.

The Grass and the Multitudes. Immediately after this rebirth, a child asks, “What is the grass?” (l. 99); grass is an apt metaphor for the one-in-the-many. From the posing of this question through section 16, the poet launches forth upon a journey of exploration and identification with the people and things of America and the world, venturing forth imaginatively almost as a disembodied spirit or consciousness. He does not merely see persons and things; he “becomes” them. From section 18 to section 24 the poem works to undo hierarchies, celebrating the equality of all persons, the wicked with the just, the conquered with the victorious, the slave with the master.

The Body and the Soul. Then taking on divinelike qualities, the speaker says, “I know I am deathless” (l. 406). “My foothold is tenon’d and mortised in granite, / I laugh at what you call dissolution” (ll. 419–420). He reassures us that he is “the poet of the Body and . . . the poet of the Soul” (l. 422), “the poet of the woman the same as the man” (l. 425).

In section 24 he returns to himself, “Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son, / Turbulent, fleshy, eating, drinking and breeding” (ll. 497–498), the natural man and new Adam, celebrating his body, cataloging each part, claiming each part divine. From this section until section 32 he celebrates the erotic character of human experience. In section 26 he says he will do nothing but listen. He hears the sounds of country and city and ends in an ecstatic, eroticized experience of hearing a soprano’s aria. Moving then to touch in section 28 he describes in some of the most surrealistic images of the poem an experience of autoeroticism or one of being overpowered by “prurient provokers” (l. 623), being carried to orgasm and an ambiguous denouement.

The Journey and the Wounded. Having returned to and reexperienced his own body and senses, in sections 33 through 38 he launches forth on another journey into the particulars of the phenomenal world. In the longest section of the poem, section 33, the I embarks with a new power and vision, becoming more and more godlike: “My ties and ballasts leave me, my elbows rest in sea-gaps, / I skirt sierras, my palms cover continents, / I am afoot with my vision” (ll. 713–715). What follows is the longest catalog of the poem, 80 lines. As section 15 embraced people on their farms and in cities, section 33 covers the far-flung geography of mountains, rivers, and oceans. In this and the following four sections, freed from the constraints of time and space, he visits sea battles and the Alamo, knows victory and defeat, knows the cries of the fallen, feels the lash upon the captured slave. “I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person” (l. 845).

The Return and the Bequest. Then section 38 opens, “Enough! enough! enough!” He finds himself on the verge of “a usual mistake” (l. 962), and so he must resume the “overstrain fraction” (l. 967). The Self, it seems, has become overly dispersed through identification with the multitudes and lost track of how these must be woven back into the unity of the “song of myself,” where they find fulfillment in oneness. Renewed again, the poet “troop[s] forth replenish’d with supreme power” (l. 970). From now until the end of the poem, he speaks ecstatically and more directly to the reader. We learn that he is a healer (ll. 1021–1022). He takes the “exact dimensions” (l. 1028) of the gods of all religions and “bestow[s] these dimensions” freely on each man and woman “he sees” (l. 1036). In section 43 he says, “My faith is the greatest of faiths, and the least of faiths” (l. 1097).

At the beginning of section 44 he announces, “It is time to explain myself—let us stand up. / What is known I strip away, / I launch all men and women forward with me into the Unknown.” He proclaims, “I am an acme of things accomplish’d and I an encloser of things to be” (l. 1148). “Afar down I see the huge first Nothing, I know I was even there” (l. 1153) (as we saw in section 3), “Immense have been the preparations for me” (l. 1157). At the same time he ends section 45 with a more conventional religious sentiment: “My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain, / The Lord will be there and wait till I come of perfect terms, / The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there” (ll. 1198–1200), the loving bedfellow of section 3.

He continues to encourage the reader onward. “If you would understand me go to the heights or water-shore / The nearest gnat is an explanation” (ll. 1252–1253). In section 50 he seems ready to give the final word. “There is that in me—. . . / It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol. . . . / Do you see O my brothers and sisters? / It is not chaos or death—it is form, union, plan—it is eternal life—it is Happiness” (ll. 1309–1318).

The final sections of the poem speak intimately to the reader, and there Whitman makes his famous admission: “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes)” (ll. 1324–1326). In the final section he, like the spotted hawk swooping by, “[is] not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, / I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world” (ll. 1332–1333). And as he takes our leave, he says, “I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, / If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.” (ll. 1339–1340).

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, / But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, / And filter and fibre your blood. / Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, / Missing me one place search another, / I stop somewhere waiting for you. (ll. 1341–1346)

Our Pan-like poet departs with images of the sublime forces of nature, forces he has embodied and returned to, and he reassures us that he will remain with us even after he has gone, echoing the words of some of the world’s spiritual saviors.

For Discussion or Writing.
1. What makes “Song of Myself” a poem? Many in the 19th century dismissed it as not being poetry. Justify your answer.
2. Discuss section 5 of “Song of Myself.” Is it shocking, even today? What gives it its power? Explain your answer.

3. From your knowledge of 19th-century American history, does it seem that the vision Whitman presents of America is an accurate one? Is his depiction more ideal than actual? Why?
4. Some critics complain that Whitman’s efforts to merge all persons and things into a single oneness discount the real and important differences between people, such as differences as race, class, and gender. Do you think Whitman’s project runs this risk? Why?
5. Read one of Emerson’s essays, “Self-Reliance,” “The Oversoul,” or “The Poet.” How is Whitman’s vision in “Song of Myself” in accordance with Emerson’s?

Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry": Analysis and Meaning

Overview and Critical Reception. "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" (1856) stands as one of Walt Whitman's most powerful and successful poems, serving as an ideal introduction to his core themes and literary strategies. Many critics and readers maintain that Whitman achieved his greatest artistic success in his midlength poems. These works possess a structural coherence in theme, imagery, and rhythmic development that the endlessly unfolding, spontaneous, and fluid "Song of Myself" occasionally lacks. First published in the second edition of Leaves of Grass, the poem was widely admired and ranked among the personal favorites of Henry David Thoreau.

Setting and Phenomenological Experience. The Spatial and Temporal Context. The physical setting of the poem captures the speaker crossing the East River on a ferry at sundown, traveling between New York City and Brooklyn. Leaning on the ship's rail above the water, the poet observes the passengers on deck, the movement of the water, the gulls, the ships both underway and at anchor, and the vibrant colors of the sunset. Moved by these physical surroundings and feeling deep affection toward his fellow passengers, Whitman reflects on the fundamental relationship between these tangible entities, the individual Self, and the universal soul.

Direct Address Across Time. Transcendence of Temporal Boundaries. Turning directly toward the reader, Whitman asserts that future generations reading his words 100 years or more later will view these identical physical sights just as he experienced them. From these immediate empirical observations emerges a profound meditation on time and eternity, individual identity and cosmic unity, temporal movement versus stillness, and the intimate bond connecting poet and reader. Throughout the work, the tone remains uniformly serene and meditative, establishing a clear contrast to the raw ecstasies and "barbaric yawps" characteristic of "Song of Myself" while remaining one of Whitman's most visual, painterly, and aesthetically nuanced compositions.

Poetic Voice and Interpersonal Connection. Direct Engagement with the Reader. At the opening of the poem, the speaker silently and affectionately addresses the strangers on the vessel, stating, "How curious you are to me!" (l. 3). Shifting his gaze from the immediate passengers to his future readers, he declares:

· "It avails not, time nor place—distance avails not, / I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence" (ll. 20–21)

The Transcendent and Living Voice. By addressing the reader directly, Whitman constructs a living voice intended to endure as long as his book is opened. His poetic address transcends spatial and temporal constraints, speaking from beyond the grave through the deliberate use of the past tense: "Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt. / Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd" (ll. 22–23).

Symbolism, Illumination, and Poetic Indirection. The Haloed Self and Shared Experience. Whitman describes observing "the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my head in the sunlit water" (l. 33), creating a visual image that renders himself and all human observers haloed, holy, and divine. Having forged a transcendent connection across time, he questions the apparent barriers between individuals: "What is it then between us? / What is the count of the scores of hundreds of years between us? / Whatever it is, it avails not" (ll. 54–56).

In Section 6 and Section 7. The poet draws closer to the reader by acknowledging his own human failures, losses, and feelings of shame. He addresses the reader with increasing intimacy: "Closer yet I approach you, / What thought you have of me now, I had as much of you . . . / I consider'd long and seriously of you before you were born. / . . . / Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you now for all you cannot see me?" (ll. 86–91). He then examines the subtle forces binding humans together:

What is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man that looks in my face? Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you? We understand then do we not? What I promis'd without mentioning it, have you not accepted? What the study could not teach—what the preaching could not accomplish is accomplish'd, is it not? (ll. 96–100)

The Rhetoric of Poetic Indirection. In his preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, Whitman asserted that the message of the new American poet must be "indirect and not direct". This passage exemplifies his technique of artistic indirection. He never explicitly names the force connecting him to the reader, the promise made without speech, or the understanding accepted. While systematic study conveys intellectual knowledge and preaching seeks spiritual salvation, Whitman references "Song of Myself" where "a kelson of the creation is love," granting the speaker a profound peace and knowledge surpassing earth's arguments to build a relationship rooted in love, understanding, and redemption.

Cosmic Unity and Philosophical Conclusion. The Apotheosis of the Material World. Upon reaching the core thematic resolution in Section 9, Whitman returns to the physical ferry setting in celebratory, ecstatic tones: "Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!" (l. 101). The poem closes with a profound philosophical meditation concluding that physical sights are essential "appearances," a "necessary film" that envelops the soul, describing them as "dumb, beautiful ministers" (ll. 121, 126):

We fathom you not—we love you—there is perfection in you also, You furnish your parts toward eternity, Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul. (ll. 130–133)

While Whitman continuously celebrates the body and the material universe, his analysis ultimately frames physical objects as necessary manifestations that envelope and furnish essential components to the human soul.

Analytical Prompts for Discussion or Writing. Questions for Literary Analysis. The following thematic questions provide pathways for critical engagement and scholarly writing regarding the text:

1st point: Discuss how the ferry works as a symbol in the poem. Consider especially the way the poem takes place at sundown and the ferry passes from one side of the river to the other. Can you think of other symbols in poems or fiction that work in such a varied way?

2nd point: Discuss the relationship between appearances, "the beautiful dumb ministers," and the soul in the poem.

3rd point: Does Whitman's depiction of the river and the city fail to take into account the ugly and distasteful aspects of the sights before him? Why does he not include these details?

4th point: Why is the speaker in this poem so interested in getting closer to the reader? In what ways, if any, does this speaker's relationship to the reader differ from the relationship the speaker in "Song of Myself" establishes in the opening sections of that poem?