Transcendentalism

Walt Whitman

ASSIGNMENT: Below is a series of Walt Whitman poems. Read each one and answer the two or three questions under each in BOLD CAPS (21 total). When you get to "Song of Myself", a question or two will be at the end of each numbered stanza. All responses can go in your composition book. Enjoy! Whitman is fun and easy.

Walt Whitman - 1819 to 1892 


O Me! O Life!

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

1. WHAT LITERARY DEVICE IS USED STARTING THE BEGINNING OF MOST LINES? (USE LIT TERM SHEET).

2 WHAT QUESTIONS IS THIS POEM ASKING? WHAT IS THE ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION

Super Bowl Apple Commercial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep2_0WHogRQ&list=PLUIwh52AI5DSLRbfwB0kwYAB70ratRu7p&index=9

Starring Robin Williams and Walt Whitman :-)  and CAPITALISM  :-(

Dead Poets' Society

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7OE6bDfM2M

The inspiration for the commercial

"I Hear America Singing"

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,

Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,

The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,

The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,

The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,

The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,

The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,

The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,

Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,

The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,

Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

1. WITH THREE EXAMPLES EXPLAIN THE TONE OF THIS POEM.

One's-Self I Sing

One’s-Self I sing, a simple separate person,

Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.

Of physiology from top to toe I sing,

Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far,

The Female equally with the Male I sing.

Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,

Cheerful, for freest action form’d under the laws divine,

The Modern Man I sing.

1. LOOK UP "MUSE" AND "EN-MASSE".

2. LOOK UP "PHYSIOLOGY" AND "PHYSIOGNOMY".

3 WHAT DOES THIS POEM PRAISE? HOW WAS A LITERARY DEVICE USED TO MAGNIFY THE PRAISE

O Captain! My Captain!

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.


O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,

For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head!

It is some dream that on the deck,

You’ve fallen cold and dead.


My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;

Exult O shores, and ring O bells!

But I with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead..

1 WHAT SEPARATES THIS POEM FROM THE THOSE ABOVE AND BELOW

2 EXPLAIN THIS METAPHORIC POEM ABOUT THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Dead Poets' Society Reference to this poem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5t3ZzZv8_U

To a Common Prostitute

Be composed-be at ease with me-I am Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty by nature,

Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude,

Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you.

My girl I appoint with you an appointment, and I charge you that you make preparation to be worthy to meet me,

And I charge you that you be patient and perfect till I come.

Till then I salute you with a significant look that you do not forget me.

1860.

1 HOW DOES THIS POEM AND THE NEXT POEM EMBODY A LEVEL OF CHRISTIAN MORALITY?


You Felons on Trial in Courts

YOU felons on trial in courts;

You convicts in prison-cells—you sentenced assassins, chain’d and hand-cuff’d with iron;

Who am I, too, that I am not on trial, or in prison?

Me, ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain’d with iron, or my ankles with iron?

You prostitutes flaunting over the trottoirs, or obscene in your rooms,

Who am I, that I should call you more obscene than myself?


O culpable!

I acknowledge—I exposé!

(O admirers! praise not me! compliment not me! you make me wince,

I see what you do not—I know what you do not.)

 

Inside these breast-bones I lie smutch’d and choked;

Beneath this face that appears so impassive, hell’s tides continually run;

Lusts and wickedness are acceptable to me;

I walk with delinquents with passionate love;

 I feel I am of them—I belong to those convicts and prostitutes myself,

 And henceforth I will not deny them—for how can I deny myself?

1. What is Whitman's point with this poem?  Support with 2 quotations


Song of Myself (1892 version)

SEE QUESTIONS AFTER EACH SECTION

1

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.


I loafe and invite my soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.


My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,

Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,

Hoping to cease not till death.


Creeds and schools in abeyance,

Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,

I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,

Nature without check with original energy.

1. WHAT IS THE MESSAGE OF THE FIRST STANZA?


2

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,

I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,

The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.


The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless,

It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,

I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,

I am mad for it to be in contact with me.


The smoke of my own breath,

Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine,

My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs,

The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,

The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of the wind,

A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,

The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,

The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides,

The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.


Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much?

Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?

Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?


Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,

You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,

You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,

You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self..

1. EXPLAIN WITH EXAMPLES THE TONE OF THE SECTION


3

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end,

But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.


There was never any more inception than there is now,

Nor any more youth or age than there is now,

And will never be any more perfection than there is now,

Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.


Urge and urge and urge,

Always the procreant urge of the world.


Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and increase, always sex,

Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life.


To elaborate is no avail, learn’d and unlearn’d feel that it is so.


Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in the beams,

Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,

I and this mystery here we stand.


Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.


Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,

Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.


Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age,

Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.

.1. BASED UPON THIS STANZA (PROVIDE A LINE OR TWO) EXPLAIN WHITMAN'S LEVEL OF SELF-ESTEEM.


20

Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude;

How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?

What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?

All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own,

Else it were time lost listening to me.

I do not snivel that snivel the world over,

That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth.

Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids, conformity goes to the fourth-remov’d,

I wear my hat as I please indoors or out. (Modern Translation: I wear my checkered vans as I please)

Why should I pray? why should I venerate and be ceremonious?

Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counsel’d with doctors and calculated close,

I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less,

And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.

I know I am solid and sound,

To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow,

All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.

I know I am deathless,

I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter’s compass,

I know I shall not pass like a child’s carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night.

I know I am august,

I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,

I see that the elementary laws never apologize,(I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by, after all.)

I exist as I am, that is enough,

If no other in the world be aware I sit content,

And if each and all be aware I sit content.

One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,

And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten million years,

I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.

My foothold is tenon’d and mortis’d in granite,

I laugh at what you call dissolution,

And I know the amplitude of time..

1 WHAT ARE THE TWO BEST LINES OF THIS STANZA AND PROVIDE AN EXPLANATION AS TO WHY YOU FEEL THIS WAY.

24

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.

Unscrew the locks from the doors!

Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

Whoever degrades another degrades me,

And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.

Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the current and index.

I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy,

By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.

Through me many long dumb voices,

Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves,

Voices of the diseas’d and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs,

Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,

And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father-stuff,

And of the rights of them the others are down upon,

Of the deform’d, trivial, flat, foolish, despised,

Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.

Through me forbidden voices,

Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil’d and I remove the veil,

Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur’d.

I do not press my fingers across my mouth,

I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,

Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.

I believe in the flesh and the appetites,

Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch’d from,

The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,

This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.

1 EARLY CRITICS CALLED WHITMAN SACRILEGIOUS. 

2. PICK TWO LINES AND VALIDATE THIS CLAIM.


32

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d,

I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,

Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,

Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth..

So they show their relations to me and I accept them,

They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession..

1 EXPLAIN WHY WHITMAN CHANGES THE ANAPHORA TO DESCRIBE THE ANIMALS.

49

And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me.

To his work without flinching the accoucheur comes,

I see the elder-hand pressing receiving supporting,

I recline by the sills of the exquisite flexible doors,

And mark the outlet, and mark the relief and escape..

And as to you Corpse I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me,

I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing,

I reach to the leafy lips,I reach to the polish’d breasts of melons..

And as to you Life I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths,

(No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)

I hear you whispering there O stars of heaven,O suns—O grass of graves—O perpetual transfers and promotions,

If you do not say any thing how can I say any thing?

Of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest,

Of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing twilight,

Toss, sparkles of day and dusk—toss on the black stems that decay in the muck,

Toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs.

I ascend from the moon, 

I ascend from the night,

I perceive that the ghastly glimmer is noonday sunbeams reflected,

And debouch to the steady and central from the offspring great or small

.1 LOOK UP "ACCOUCHEUR" AND "DEBOUCH".

2 WHAT IS WHITMAN'S FEELING TOWARDS DEATH? WHY?.

50

There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is in me.

Wrench’d and sweaty—calm and cool then my body becomes,I sleep—I sleep long.

I do not know it—it is without name—it is a word unsaid,It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol..

Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,

To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me..

Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines!

I plead for my brothers and sisters.

Do you see O my brothers and sisters?

It is not chaos or death—it is form, union, plan—it is eternal life—it is Happiness.

1 WHAT IS WHITMAN'S VIEW ON MORTALITY?.

51

The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them,

And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?

Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,

(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.).

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jUJW8kfT-8  (WATCH)

(I am large, I contain multitudes.).

I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.

Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with his supper?

Who wishes to walk with me?

Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?.

1 EXPLAIN WHITMAN'S VIEW ON LIFE WITH A SUPPORTING LINE.

52

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world..

The last scud of day holds back for me,

It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,

It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,

I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags..

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,

But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,

And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another,

I stop somewhere waiting for you..

1 WHAT WOULD BE THE BEST LINE TO TWEET IN THIS SECTION?  Why do you like it?

2 IF YOU WANT WHITMAN'S INFLUENTIAL SPIRITUALITY, WHERE WOULD YOU GO TO GET IT? 

A Supermarket in California  

BY ALLEN GINSBERG

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the side streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.

In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!

What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.

I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?

I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.

We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?

(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)

Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.

 Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?

Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

 Berkeley, 1955



A Transcendental Future circa 2024

My cabin will need a name!

Why stick to a small pond in Concord.

Mobile Library located in left photo, bottom right

An Homage to the Cantankerous Inspiration

For the love of Rhetoric and America 2019

Utilizing at least three - four (3-4) quotations, explain how the Transcendentalists established the ethos of American ideology. 

Essay should be in a 2.4 formula utilizing an introduction with a broad, narrow, and thesis. Make usage of the close reading exercises from the classroom. Do not forget to use the WIKI for tips on writing and grammar. Also, plug essay into __www.wordcounttools.com__ to achieve various writing benchmarks. 

Introduction: (Must have broad, narrow, and thesis) plus quotation from Walt Whitman about Emerson on 212...."Simmering, simmering..."

Conclusion: (Must have recapitulation, broader spectrum) plus quotation from Emerson about breaking away from European mindset.  "We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe" (Emerson 206).

Sentence Structure:

Words per sentence (18-20=10; 16-17=8; 15>x=6) 

Length of Essay (500-700 words)

Reading Level (11-12=16; 13-15=18; Graduate 20)

Style and Tone: Scholarly and professorial

Grammar: (one semi-colon; one colon; one dash along with proper commas)

Vocabulary: (10 highlighted polysyllabic words) (No IS, WAS, VERY, SHOWS) USE: utilize, manifest, antithesis or antithetical, juxtapose

MLA: (5 parenthetical citations with proper MLA bibliography)

Evidence and Support: (Connecting back to thesis: remember Trans, Lead, Quote, Analysis) 

Transitional: (Utilize phrases and see rubric)

All essays should be in college format: 12 point font, Times New Roman, double-spaced 

All essays should have the following highlighted: Complex Grammar, polysyllabic diction, and quotations with MLA. 

All essays will be checked in Wordcounttools.com in class

Part One: Read The American Renaissance Pages 206-214 (outline in comp book)

Part Two: Read biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson (216-17) and Henry David Thoreau (230-31) Compare/contrast men in Comp book

Part Three: Read "Self-Reliance" (224-225) In composition book, list 4 aphorisms, pick 1 and explain why you or how you relate to it

Part Four: Read Walden (234-244). In composition book, complete the following:

1. Economy: Define 5 words from the text, reflect on Thoreau's purpose, what are your thoughts

2. Where I Lived, and What I Lived For: find two aphorisms and explain how or why you relate to them

3. Solitude and The Bean Field:  React to both passages

4. Brute Neighbors (240-41) stop in right column at break: Analyze the analogy of the excerpt

5. Conclusion: Reflect on Thoreau's experience. Can you relate? Do you have a place of escape or solitude?

.

Expository Essay 2017

Compose a 3.5 paragraph expository essay detailing how the Transcendentalist shaped the cultural ethos of America.

Rubric

Intro follows broad, narrow, thesis guidelines

College graduate is an A and college level a B

No IS, WAS, SHOWS, VERY

Must use: UTILIZE, MANIFEST, ANTITHETICAL OR ANTITHESIS,


Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

1. Read pages 265-282 (17 pages)

2. In Composition book create a T-chart with Topic on the left and Aphorism on the right.

3. While reading, determine the general topic (or usually complaint) in left column, marked with page.

4. On the right side, jot down an aphorism that Thoreau shared on that particular page.

5. In the end, your composition book should have 17 entries. No analysis needed. Simply list topic and aphorism. 

2018-19 Transcendental Writing

Compose a 3 paragraph essay (Introduction, body, conclusion)

Compare and Contrast the philosophies of Thoreau and Emerson.

Quotations that can be used by Emerson:

Quotations that can be used by Thoreau:

A View from the woods of my first school heading into and looking back the entrance

My abandoned classroom. Used 1998 to 2002.  View of woods behind the school