As I was reading Song of Myself, I could not decide whether the speaker’s voice is more intimately dreamy-like, or if the voice is one full of hubris and even vanity to a certain degree. The voice in my head was in constant shifts between different tones. Sometimes it would be a romantic voice like that of Romeo in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film Romeo and Juliet. For example:
“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 bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heartAnd reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my feet.”(Song of Myself, Section 5)
Other times, and perhaps more frequently so, I would hear the prideful, epic voice of Odysseus in Homer’s The Odyssey…
Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding,No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them,No more modest than immodest.(Song of Myself, Section 24)
Although the lines above suggest that he’s just a human being, no better than others, I think deep down he (and the reader) may share a feeling that this is not how he truly thinks of himself. Throughout Song of Myself, I had a feeling that he was writing to impress and to show how great he is, being a poet and being the deep observer that Emerson advocated everyone should be. He wanted to be the example, which makes this poem not only artful as poems are but also prideful in nature, to believe that he could see associations between what there is and more abstract things, more than many others could.
Maybe we’re not supposed to pick a singular voice. Maybe we can read it in our mind in both Romeo’s and Odysseus’ voices, because the poem goes through many emotions. A deep and almost Epicurean-like simplicity of love for the outer world and its relation to the soul, along with a sense of gratitude and pride in being able to play the language like an instrument to express that love — these things are for us to take delight in.
Hi Anh!
I really love your analysis of Whitman’s voice in Song of Myself. I too felt as though his tone and cadence flip flopped quite a bit throughout the poem. However, I thought this may have been intentional on Whitman’s part. As you say, the poem goes through many emotions, and as he does so, he seems to travel through different lives, settings, people, etc. I think this is his way of arguing that he himself has many different facets, and that he can’t be defined by one section of the poem, or one voice that he uses.
A quote that stood out to me on this topic was on page 1356 where he says “you will hardly know who I am or what I mean, but I shall be good health to you nevertheless.” Here, you can see some of that pride you talked about coming into his voice when he insists that he will be a good influence even after he has passed. However, he still acknowledges his individual vagueness to himself and to the reader.