惠特曼 自我之歌

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一 Walt Whitman

Walter "Walt" Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist,(人道主义者) he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism （超 验主义：一种文学和哲学运动，与拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生和玛格丽特·富勒有关，宣称存在一 种理想的精神实体，超越于经验和科学之处，通过直觉得以把握） and realism（现实主义）, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon（作家的真作）, often called the father of free verse.自由诗 His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality. Born on Long Island, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk, and–in addition to publishing his poetry–was a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War. Whitman's major work, Leaves of Grass, was first published in 1855 with his own money. The work was an attempt at reaching out to the common person with an American epic. He continued expanding and revising it until his death in 1892. After a stroke towards the end of his life, he moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declined. He died at age 72 and his funeral became a public spectacle. 'spekt?k?l] n. 景象, 场面, 奇观, 壮观, 公开展 Whitman's sexuality is often discussed alongside his poetry. Though biographers continue to debate his sexuality, he is usually described as either homosexual or bisexual in his feelings and attractions. Whitman was concerned with politics throughout his life. He opposed the extension of slavery generally. His poetry presented an egalitarian view of the races, and at one point he called for the abolition of slavery, but later he saw the abolitionist movement as a threat to democracy.[6] "Song of Myself" is a poem by Walt Whitman that is included in his work Leaves of Grass.

二 Publication history

The poem was published first without sections and was the first of twelve untitled poems of the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass. Now it is one of the best-known poems of the publication. The first edition was published by Whitman at his own expense. In the edition of 1856, Whitman used the title "Poem of Walt Whitman, an American", which was shortened to "Song of Myself" for the 1860 edition. The poem was divided into fifty-two numbered sections for the 1867 edition.

三 Literary styles

Critics have noted a strong Transcendentalist 超验主义 influence on the poem, a theory somewhat validated'v?l?,det] 使有效;使生效 2. 承认...为正当;确认;证实 by Ralph Waldo Emerson's 拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生 enthusiastic letter praising the first edition of Leaves of Grass.

In addition to this romanticism, the poem seems to anticipate a kind of realism that would only become important in United St

ates literature after the Civil War. In the following 1855 passage, for example, we can see Whitman's inclusion of the gritty 似沙砾 的 details of everyday life: The lunatic ['lun?,t?k]疯子 is carried at last to the asylum [?'sail?m] 精神病院 a confirmed case, He will never sleep any more as he did it in the cot in his mother's bedroom; The dour 冷峻的 printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case, He turns his quid of tobacco, his eyes get blurred 模糊 with the manuscript 原稿 手抄本; The malformed limbs are tied to the anatomist's table, What is removed drops horribly in a pail; The quadroon girl is sold at the stand . . . . the drunkard nods by the barroom stove ... (section 15)

四"Self"

The "self" of the poem's speaker - the "I" of the poem - should not be limited to or confused with the person of the historical Walt Whitman. The persona described has transcended the conventional boundaries of self. "I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-washed babe .... and am not contained between my hat and boots" (section 7). There are several other quotes from the poem that make it apparent that Whitman does not consider the narrator to represent a single individual. Rather, he seems to be narrating for all:

? ? ? ?

“in all people I see myself, none more and not one a barleycorn less/and the good or bad I say of myself I say of them” (Section 20) “it is you talking just as much as myself…I act as the tongue of you” (Section 47) “I am large, I contain multitudes.大众 平民” (Section 51) “For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” (Section 1)

五 Commentary

Whitman’s grand poem is, in its way, an American epic. Beginning in medias res—in the middle of the poet’s life—it loosely follows a quest pattern. “Missing me one place search another,” he tells his reader, “I stop somewhere waiting for you.” In its catalogues of American life and its constant search for the boundaries of the self “Song of Myself” has much in common with classical epic. Since for Whitman the birthplace of poetry is in the self, the best way to learn about poetry is to relax and watch the workings of one’s own mind. While “Song of Myself” is crammed 填塞 with significant detail, there are three key episodes that must be examined. The first of these is found in the sixth section of the poem. A child asks the narrator “What is the grass?” and the narrator is forced to explore his own use of symbolism and his inability to break things down to essential principles. The bunches of grass in the child’s hands

become a symbol of the regeneration in nature. But they also signify a common material that links disparate people all over the United States together: grass, the ultimate symbol of democracy, grows everywhere. In the wake of the Civil War the grass reminds Whitman of graves: grass feeds on the bodies of the dead. Everyone must die eventually, and so the natural ro

ots of democracy are therefore in mortality, whether due to natural causes or to the bloodshed 流血 of internecine [,?nt?'nisa?n] warfare 自相残杀的战争. While Whitman normally revels in this kind of symbolic indeterminacy 犹豫不决, here it troubles him a bit. “I wish I could translate the hints 暗 示提示,” he says, suggesting that the boundary between encompassing【?n'k?mp?s】包含 everything and saying nothing is easily crossed. The second episode is more optimistic. The famous “twenty-ninth bather” can be found in the eleventh section of the poem. In this section a woman watches twenty-eight young m en bathing in the ocean. She fantasizes about joining them unseen, and describes their se mi-nude 半裸露的 bodies in some detail. The invisible twenty-ninth bather offers a model of being much like that of Emerson’s “transparent eyeball” （出自爱默生《论自然》 be ：I come a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents ... （"透明的眼球"是爱默生 的一个重要隐喻,是一种自我观、世界观和生存境界的艺术表述,是爱默生的哲思和诗情的集 中体现. "透明的眼球"有多种功能--灵视功能、 环视功能和透视功能,能够"把天赋转换为实际 能力",而这类"实际能力"则主要包括坚守信仰的能力、整合文化资源的能力和进行社会批判 的能力. "透明的眼球"有跨文化的启迪作用,有超越时空的精神价值,有洞察现世的实践功 效.） : to truly experience the world one must be fully in it and of it, yet distinct enough from it to have some perspective, and invisible so as not to interfere with it unduly 过度地不适当地. This paradoxical set of conditions describes perfectly the poetic stance Whitman tries to assume. The lavish 大量的 eroticism [?'r?t?,s?z?m]1. 色情性 2. 性本能;性冲动 of this section reinforces this idea: sexual contact allows two people to become one yet not one—it offers a moment of transcendence [tr?n's?nd?ns] 1. 超越;卓绝 2. 【宗】(神的)超然存在. As the female spectator introduced in the beginning of the section fades away, and Whitman’s voice takes over, the eroticism becomes homoeroticism. Again this is not so much the expression of a sexual preference as it is the longing for communion with every living being and a connection that makes use of both the body and the soul (although Whitman is certainly using the homoerotic sincerely, and in other ways too, particularly for shock value). Having worked through some of the conditions of perception and creation, Whitman arrives, in the third key episode, at a moment where speech becomes necessary. In the twenty-fifth section he notes that “Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself, / It provokes me forever, it says sarcastically, / Walt you contain enough, why don’t you let it out then?” Having already established that he can have a sympathetic experience when h

e encounters others (“I do

not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person”), he must find a way to re-transmit that experience without falsifying or diminishing it. Resisting easy answers, he later vows he “will never translate [him]self at all.” Instead he takes a philosophically more rigorous ['r?g?r?s] 严厉的 精确的 stance 站姿 态度: “What is known I strip 剥去 away.” Again Whitman’s position is similar to that of Emerson, who says of himself, “I am the unsettler.” Whitman, however, is a poet, and he must reassemble after unsettling: he must “let it out then.” Having catalogued a continent and encompassed its multitudes, he finally decides: “I too am not a bit tamed 驯服的, I too am untranslatable, / I sound my barbaric [b?r'b?r?k] 1. 半开化的野蛮的 2. 粗野的;不知节制的 yawp[j?p] 喊叫 over the roofs of the world.” “Song of Myself” thus ends with a sound—a yawp—that could be described as either pre- or post-linguistic. Lacking any of the normal communicative properties of language, Whitman’s yawp is the release of the “kosmos” 德语单词 宇宙 within him, a sound at the borderline 边界界线 between saying everything and saying nothing. More than anything, the yawp is an invitation to the next Walt Whitman, to read into the yawp, to have a sympathetic experience, to absorb it as part of a new multitude.