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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Despite an occasional reluctance to talk about his own poetry, Whitman has said a good deal about what he felt were its sources, methods and purposes, both in his conversations and in his Prefaces. However, if we try to apply any of his ideas we always have to contend with his theoretical vagueness and his antiaestheticism. Thus, though much has been revealed about the nature of Whitman's “art” by examinations of ideas he claimed as sources (e.g. the sea, the city, the Bible, even phrenology), one wants a closer analysis of his claims and of critics' applications of them, especially in relation to a reading of particular poems. An area of Whitman criticism in which one feels a special need for clarification is that which treats the influence of music on his poetry.
1 Whitman usually dodged any direct questions; when pressed by Edward Carpenter or Horace Traubel, for instance, he was prone to speak darkly of “the furtive old hen” or of “the cat with the long tale” (Days With Walt Whitman, New York, 1906, p. 43; With Walt Whitman in Camden, New York, 1915, II, 369).
2 “Reminiscences of Walt Whitman,” Atlantic Monthly, lxxxix (Feb. 1902), 166.
3 Walt Whitman (Philadelphia, 1883), p. 22; Notes on Wall Whitman as Poet and Person, (New York, 2nd ed., 1871), p. 82. Whitman told them he was immediately inspired to write some poems in the gallery of the New York Academy during opera performances.
4 Faner flatly claims that “opera made Whitman a poet,” meaning that it was the principal catalyst in the “long foreground” preceding the 1st edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855 (Wall Whitman and Opera, Philadelphia, 1951, p. 82).
5 Alice L. Cooke, “Notes on Whitman's Musical Background,” New Eng. Quart., xix (June 1946), 224–235.
6 Louise Pound, “Walt Whitman and Italian Music,” Amer. Mercury, VI (Sept. 1925), 58, 62.
7 In his 6th chapter Faner gives evidence for music as a source, and he devotes the entire 2nd part of his book to locating those aspects of the poetry which reflect musical influence. Two brief attempts at similar applications have been made by Basil De Selincourt and F. O. Matthiessen (Walt Whitman: A Critical Study, New York, 1914, pp. 104–111; American Renaissance, London and New York, 1941, pp. 561 f.).
8 Calvin S. Brown makes a very convincing case for an underlying sonata form in this poem as he traces the “statement of related but contrasting themes, [the] development of these themes, and [the] recapitulation of them in much their original form” (Music and Literature, Athens, Ga., 1948, Ch. xv).
9 My interest here is only with broad structural principles rather than with rhythmic relationships.
10 A Child's Reminiscence, col. and ed. Thomas O. Mabbott and Rollo G. Silver (Seattle, 1930), p. 10.
11 There are other difficulties, too, because if we take this poem as an “operatic overture,” then obviously its function is misplaced. An overture has no meaning unless it leads us to the work it introduces. And as overture the poem loses its independence.
12 Emory Holloway (Whitman: An Interpretation in Narrative, New York and London, 1926, p. 90) and Julia Spregelman (“Walt Whitman and Music,” South Atlantic Quart., xli, April 1942, p. 172) suggest Proud Music of the Storm was partly composed in memory of the evening (8 Aug. 1951) when Whitman heard Bettini in Donizetti's La Favorita at Castle Garden. However, this does not account for the main idea of the poem, the dream vision and its message; it merely touches one of numerous musical events mentioned in the poem. This also assumes a gap of some 17 years between inspiration and composition.
13 All my quotations of poetry are from Holloway's inclusive edition of Leaves of Grass (Garden City, N. Y., 1931). Proud Music appears on pp. 337–342.
14 The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman, ed. Emory Holloway (Garden City, N. Y., 1921), I, 104, n. And Whitman preferred to be ignorant of musical technique, apparently feeling that the simple lay appreciation gave him all he especially wanted from music. He told Traubel his enjoyment of open-air concerts in New York “was altogether untechnical: I knew nothing about music: simply took it in, enjoyed it, from the human side: had a good natural ear—did not trouble myself to explain or analyze” (III, 511).
15 Emory Holloway, “Whitman As His Own Press Agent,” Amer. Mercury, xviii (Dec. 1929), 483.
16 The Solitary Singer, pp. 398–399.
17 “Whitman As His Own Press Agent,” pp. 482 f.
18 The Solitary Singer, p. 409.
19 My 3-part structural division is based on the major transitions of the poem.
20 The Gathering of the Forces, ed. Cleveland Rodgers and John Black (New York and London, 1920), II, 352; J. Johnston and J. W. Wallace, Visits to Walt Whitman in 1890–1891 (London, 1917), p. 162; New York Dissected, ed. Emory Holloway and Ralph Adimari (New York, 1936), p. 22.
21 Uncollected Poetry and Prose, I, 255 f.
22 Ibid., pp. 257–259.
23 New York Dissected, p. 22.
24 Actually, relatively few of Whitman's poems can be directly associated with musical inspiration. Proud Music of the Storm is the only major poem for which it has been claimed. Some of the other poems connected with music are: Sec. 26 of Song of Myself (1855), That Music Always Around Me (1860), I Heard You Solemn Sweet Pipes of the Organ (1861), The Singer in the Prison (1869), Italian Music in Dakota (1881), and The Dead Tenor (1884).
Frederick Schyberg rightly reminds us that “that command, that inspiration [at the conclusion of Proud Music to write poems using the ”new rhythmus“] does not apply to the poems of Leaves of Grass so far written, but only to some new poems which Whitman, now fifty years old, had planned to write” (Walt Whitman, trans. Evie Allison Allen, New York, 1951, p. 228). The italics are Schyberg's.
25 Complete Prose Works (Philadelphia, 1887), p. 158.
26 New York, 1951, Chs. II and III.
27 Gay Wilson Allen and Charles T. Davis, eds. Walt Whitman's Poems: Selections with Critical Aids (New York, 1955), p. 4.