Walt Whitman's America

"There is a strong nostalgic undercurrent in Whitman's writings, an impulse to revisit the period before his birth, when slavery and the economy were not yet problematic issues."
"Whitman's ancestry can be pointed to as a source not only of his poetic paeans to agrarian values and artisan labor but also of his interest in the American Revolution."
"It was mainly because of the Battle of Brooklyn that George Washington became one of Whitman' important models."
"On this level, Washington hugging his troops becomes for Whitman a kind of ideal private father (a poetic substitute, perhaps, for his own less-than-ideal father), who at the same time was a father of the nation."
"Locke's notion of tabula rasa became for the educators the rationale for an outlook that stressed the role of environment."
"Horace Mann, an educational leader Whitman greatly respected, had written of the effect of surroundings on the child: 'Their influences are integrated and made one with the soul. They enter into spiritual combination with it, never afterwards to be wholly decompounded.  They are like the daily food eaten by wild game, - so pungent and saporific in its nature, that it flavors every fibre of their flesh, and colors every bone in their body.'"
"The hill, the road, and the vista of his childhood give an autobiographical ring to his famous passage in 'Song of Myself'..."
"For now it is sufficient to note that, despite periods of antislavery activism, he always maintained a lurking sympathy for the South."
"The poet's older brother, Jesse, would lose his mind and die in an insane asylum.  His beloved sister, Hannah, became neurotic, possibly psychotic.  His brother Andrew became an alcoholic who died young and whose indigent wife became a streetwalker."
"Whitman spent twenty-eight years of his life residing in Brooklyn - more than in any other place - and absorbed all aspects of its daily life."
"He did not have to struggle, as did Hawthorne or Dickinson, with a personal heritage of repressive Calvinism, although his boyhood visits to different churches did give him some exposure to gloomy religions..."
"The character continues, 'I do, in my heart, believe that we shall live to see poetry done away with - the poetry of form, I mean - of rhyme, measure and cadence.'"
"At eleven, Whitman was forced, apparently by his family's financial necessity, to seek employment."
"'My theory is that the author might be the maker even of the body of his book - set the type, print the book on a press, put a cover on it, all with his own hands: learning his trade from A to Z - all there is of it.'"

My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: Chapters 5-9

"As for the impact of all this on the Dickinson children, it looks as if they were much better shielded from illness, cold weather, and physical labor than from their parents' protective anxieties."  I was shocked by how much the Dickinson children were sheltered for most of their life.  However, there seemed to be a double standard when it was concerned with Austin, Emily's brother, who was often allowed more advantages than his sisters.  A copy of The Frugal Housewife was marked with this line - "I would not that servile and laborious employment should be forced upon young."

Often the role of chores would fall on Emily's mother, which it is said that she gladly accepted.  I was confused by this as Emily's mother was frequently mentioned to have health concerns.  It seemed strange that they would sacrifice the health of the mother for the unencumbered life of the children.  Perhaps it is this idea, this attitude which spurred on Emily's anger towards her mother. 

"The inevitable inference is that she never much attached to her mother, that her mother failed her emotionally, and that the result was a profound deformation."

"The passage captures many aspects of the writer's girlhood: the interest in flowers (learned in part from Mother); the questing, pleasure-seeking spirit; the accidental nature of her transgression; her sense that her mother was always weary; and her perception that the reproof did not come from the heart."

Concerning her poem, They Shut Me up in Prose, "Dickinson's poems often lay claim to a kind of sovereignity traditionally identigied with deity itself.  What is striking about this one is that the consciousneess of power seems to originate within a cage." 

"Although it is impossible to quantify her school attendance, it appears she acquired much of her early learning at home, in the presence of a mother who spelled "feeling" with an "a." Does that help explain why Dickinson began "upon" with an "o" for most of her life, or why she and her sister and brother never learned, or bothered with, standard punctuation?"  I know Dickinson uses quite a strange set of punctuation in her novels; however, I don't think I would ever have attributed it to her lack of education.  Perhaps I read it wrong, but it seems that her grammar and punctuation were quite normal in her personal letters to friends and acquaintances.  The way this author seems to talk about her punctuation seems to put her down, blaming it on a lack of education.

In all honesty, this statement seemed to loose my respect for this author of this biography - but perhaps this is a different fault entirely.  Clearly, I place Dickinson on some sort of literary genius pedestal, even without studying all of her work.  Perhaps this is where the fault lies - in me, in our creation of the literary canon.  It has been taught to me through all my years of schooling that her precise use of language and punctuation where for specific purposes, but how much of her work was based on error in punctuation and capitalization.  It is tough for me to assume that she never made a mistake and that this is what has caused us to study her.  Perhaps some of what we contribute to her literary genius is in fact an error that, if she were alive today, would quickly be remedied... but I digress.

One of the most fascinating elements of the Dickinson biography was the mention of the children's magazine, Sabbath School Visitor.  I was shocked at the level of violence and grotesque images illustrated in it; it reminded me of the old Grimm's Fairy Tales.  I wonder why shocking children with these images was the chosen way to pass on information.  I am particularly fond of the story "The Lost Finger" where Elizabeth chops off her finger while doing something she shouldn't in a factory.  At first I found this a strange setting for a children's story, but then I thought it a good glimpse into the society of the time.  I am sure child labor was more prevalent back then and it would have been a good thing to teach. 

Back to Mrs. Dickinson, Emily's mother again.  What was wrong with her?  Is this one reason Emily's father was so over protective of his children?  The biographer notes that Catherine wrote a letter assuring that "...mother and children are 'quite well,' repeating and underlining at letter's end that Mrs. Dickinson was 'perfectly well.' The insinuatiing emphasis points to something the record fails to clarify. 

And now for something completely different!

Okay, not "completely" different, but different nonetheless.  Stay tuned for new commonplace blog entries focusing on Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson!

Also, check out these artistic renderings of the two authors...