Thursday, 6 April: Whitman, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.”

Reader: Susan Hooks

Objective 3:

To use literature as a basis for discussing representative problems and subjects of American culture (New Historicism) such as equality; race, gender, class; modernization and tradition; the family; the individual and the community; the writer’s conflicted presence in an anti-intellectual society.

Whitman lived in Washington during Lincoln’s presidency and acted as a nurse for wounded soldiers. There is no proof that the two actually met, but Whitman watched Lincoln and believed that he exchanged “meaningful glances” with the president.

“He has a face like a Hoosier Michel Angelo, so awful ugly it becomes beautiful…”

“I hope to be identified with Lincoln, with his crowded, eventful life.”

Whitman on Lincoln

They shared many of the same ideas and values:  

Both were self-educated

Both spoke out against slavery in the new states, but were not considered radical abolitionists

Both believed that the war was worth fighting to preserve the union.

Neither spoke out harshly against the South

Both were concerned with healing the nation as a whole after the war

Considering all that Lincoln meant to Whitman, why do you think he did not name him in the poem?

Not mentioning Lincoln specifically makes the poem about all those who died during the war.  Whitman witnessed first hand the violence and loss experienced by the soldiers and their families.

P.3019-3020 stanza 15

I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,

And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,

I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war,

But I saw they were not as was thought,

They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer’d not,

The living remain’d and suffer’d, the mothers suffer’d,

And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer’d,

And the armies that remain’d suffer’d.

Symbols of poem

Idea of trinity in star, bird, lilac 

P.3014 stanza 1

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,

And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,

I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with the ever-returning spring.

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,

Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,

And thought of him I love.

P.3020 stanza 16

Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,

Star- Lincoln

P. 3014 stanza 2

O powerful western fallen star!

O shades of night—O moody, tearful night!

O great star disappear’d—O the black murk that hides the star!

O cruel hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul of me!

O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.

Lilac bush- rebirth, moving forward, healing

P.3014 stanza 3

With every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard,

With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich

      Green

A sprig with its flower I break.

Bird- Whitman’s feelings about loss

P.3014 stanza 4

Solitary the thrush,

The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,

Sings by himself a song.

Song of the bleeding throat,

Death’s outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know,

If thou wast not granted to sing thou would’st surely die.)

Is there anything else that these symbols could stand for?