Literature

Walt Whitman's 1855 "Song of Myself"

(1) Choose any single poem from “Song of Myself” or “Calamus” (other than those read in class) and determine how this composition reflects the Romantic sensibility in New England. To answer this question analyze the section focusing on both formal and content-oriented elements . Quote lines from the poem to support your ideas.

We have chosen the 5 poem of “Song of myself”:

We can see reflected the romantic sensibility in this part of the poem because the author uses topics that are totally related with this movement. There are specials characteristics of this stanza that we noticed and connected immediately with romanticism.

In this poem is alluded a very important concept that is know as a “oneness”.

This meaning of this word consist in the union of three concepts humankind, over-soul and nature that conform an everything.

Analysis of the poem:

In this stanza of the poem is emphasized the individualism a very typical characteristic of the romanticism.

“Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,

Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best,

Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.”

In this stanza we could notice that there is a emphasis in the individualism, he enjoys the union between his soul and his body demonstrated by a sexual imagery and how this experience leads him to the sensation of liberation.

“I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,

How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn’d over upon me,

And parted the shirt from my bossom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-strip heart,

And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my feet”

This is follow by:

This part is very special because the poetry is inside a state in which he loses chains of the earth, and it could be called “nirvana”.

“Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth”

Here we notice the connection with God and its presence in everywhere (also known as Pantheism) and the equality between human beings:

“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”

The last stanza alludes a very important theme of the romanticism and a very important characteristic of Whitman: “Nature”.

“ And that keelson of the creation is love,

And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping the fields,

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