I think reading From Pent-Up Aching Rivers before Crossing Brooklyn Ferry did me a disservice in my attempt to assess the latter. Sexuality has such a prominent presence in From Pent-Up Aching Rivers that I keep involuntarily associating rivers in all of Whitman’s poems to erotic ‘resistless yearning’ (pg. 1357). Perhaps that is not so far off to his relationship with river or just nature as a whole, because sexuality is one of the fundamental aspects of nature.
As some have said in class on Tuesday, although there is the egotistical pervasiveness and at times–I’m not sure how to put it–presumptuousness in the way he tries to absorb other people’s experiences as his own (e.g., the ‘hounded slave’), one could still feel some sort of intimacy with his aspiration to connect to everything, trying leave nothing out of his perception.
I too had receiv’d identity by my body,That I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be I knew I should be of my body.from Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, Section 5 (pg. 1366)
I agree with most of what you’ve said; however I don’t know about the desire for power. Perhaps in a more subconscious, covert sense, he desires power in terms of recognition for his perceived powerful writing. I suppose that if he thinks he can channel the experiences of everyone ever into his writing, then he might perceive himself as powerful on a basic level. However, beyond his potentially egotistical aspirations to assert himself as capable of channeling all these experiences, I don’t get the sense that his writing consciously aims to establish dominance oevr the voices he supposedly channels.
Something else I found interesting in this poem — particularly regarding Whitman’s treatment of the river — is the idea of time. As you say, Whitman might perceive the river as containing the experiences (souls, perceptions, whatever you want to call it…) of all who cross it. In the same vein, Whitman evokes time:
“Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high,
A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them,
Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the falling-back to the sea of the ebb-tide.”
Here is an acknowledgement that the experiences and beings of the present day will flow into the future with the river; in fact, Whitman might be playing with the idea of time as a social construct, arguing that the spirit of today, represented here by the river and the sunset, will be experienced the same way in 50 or even 100 years. In that sense, our experiences really are one, as Whitman attempts to explain.
This is a really interesting analysis. I think Whitman wishes for humans to understand their connections with each other, and he derives power from his ability to predict his relatedness to others in the present as well as those who have yet to be born. In section 5 of Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, I read this section as trying to relay universality of human experiences that help us understand each other, not necessarily trying to say that he is all knowing about the people who have similar experiences to him. I was struck with the line “I consider’d long and seriously of you before you were born” (1366). He does gain a level of authority by establishing that he is knowing of the lives of those who come after him.
I think you make a good point about his claiming of so many experiences and identities that cannot possibly be his own as being presumptuous (and downright annoying). In doing so, he posits himself as some omniscient being akin to a god or virtuous power, because he sees and experiences all in a way that normal humans don’t. In that way, I totally see your point about his desire for power, but my gut instinct when reading his writing is exactly the opposite. For some reason, when reading I actually get the sense that he claims all of these identities as a way to be closer and more on level with the common person, in a sort of “everyman” way. I agree with you when looking at it from a purely analytical perspective, but I actually think that his intentions were simply (and foolishly) to claim equality with all beings.