Scan barcode
thomp649's review against another edition
It took me half the year to read this. I had to adjust expectations for Whitman's prose, though his wartime diary entries are riveting. The prose felt like he was writing in conversation with contemporaries, but not the poetry. I often had the uncanny feeling that he was speaking directly to me, that his poetry was crafted from the first to speak across time and death, and when I read the final poem it felt so much like the two or three times have had a conversation with someone when we both knew that it was the last time we would speak to one another. My mother’s death was like that.
In the final poem to the last annex to Leaves of Grass, Whitman’s Fancy is his imagined reader, and that turned out to be me.
Good-bye my Fancy!
Farewell dear mate, dear love!
I’m going away, I know not where,
Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever see you again,
So Good-bye my Fancy!
Now for my last—let me look back a moment;
The slower fainter ticking of the clock is in me,
Exit, nightfall, and soon the heart-thud stopping,
Long have we lived, joy’d, caress’d together;
Delightful!—now separation—Good-bye my Fancy.
Yet let me not be too hasty,
Long indeed have we lived, slept, filter’d, become really blended into one;
Then if we die we die together, (yes, we’ll remain one,)
If we go anywhere we’ll go together to meet what happens,
May-be we’ll be better off and blither, and learn something,
May-be it is yourself now really ushering me to the true songs, (who knows?)
May-be it is you the mortal knob really undoing, turning—so now finally,
Good-bye—and hail! my Fancy.
In the final poem to the last annex to Leaves of Grass, Whitman’s Fancy is his imagined reader, and that turned out to be me.
Good-bye my Fancy!
Farewell dear mate, dear love!
I’m going away, I know not where,
Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever see you again,
So Good-bye my Fancy!
Now for my last—let me look back a moment;
The slower fainter ticking of the clock is in me,
Exit, nightfall, and soon the heart-thud stopping,
Long have we lived, joy’d, caress’d together;
Delightful!—now separation—Good-bye my Fancy.
Yet let me not be too hasty,
Long indeed have we lived, slept, filter’d, become really blended into one;
Then if we die we die together, (yes, we’ll remain one,)
If we go anywhere we’ll go together to meet what happens,
May-be we’ll be better off and blither, and learn something,
May-be it is yourself now really ushering me to the true songs, (who knows?)
May-be it is you the mortal knob really undoing, turning—so now finally,
Good-bye—and hail! my Fancy.
lucasmiller's review against another edition
4.0
Whitman remains enigmatic. I think I enjoy literary biography though. The idea of balancing a life against a body of literature provides a lot of opportunity for the author to write about the subject without really making official concrete statements about the subjects life.
This biography is old and feels of its time. The treatment of Whitman's sexuality is cursory and safe, but present. The war years take up a lot of space, but honestly feel periphery to the the rest of the book. The chapters that stick out in my mind is the long foreground the initial publication of Leaves of Grass. The schoolmaster and journalist years of the 1830s and 1840s. These do a great job of describing the culture of New York city and upstate New York, but leave Whitman as more of an idea than a flesh and blood figure.
I did enjoy the chronology of the book. The opening chapters start in 1884 when Whitman moves to Mickle Street. It features Traubel and Whitman's Transatlantic admirers. This means that the books closing chapter is Whitman's summers at Timber Creek in the late 1870s and early 1880s and the composition and publication of Specimen Days, which the author very intriguingly positions as perhaps the final creative statement of Whitman's life. Recommended.
This biography is old and feels of its time. The treatment of Whitman's sexuality is cursory and safe, but present. The war years take up a lot of space, but honestly feel periphery to the the rest of the book. The chapters that stick out in my mind is the long foreground the initial publication of Leaves of Grass. The schoolmaster and journalist years of the 1830s and 1840s. These do a great job of describing the culture of New York city and upstate New York, but leave Whitman as more of an idea than a flesh and blood figure.
I did enjoy the chronology of the book. The opening chapters start in 1884 when Whitman moves to Mickle Street. It features Traubel and Whitman's Transatlantic admirers. This means that the books closing chapter is Whitman's summers at Timber Creek in the late 1870s and early 1880s and the composition and publication of Specimen Days, which the author very intriguingly positions as perhaps the final creative statement of Whitman's life. Recommended.
More...