Witty Whitman
It's hard to believe that so many honored beautiful pieces of poetry were made from the same man as the author of this notebook. It is hard to read, unorganized, mysterious, confusing...but... it is real. I think the purpose of publicizing his notebook was to show how human he is. He often perceived himself as above others and wrote that way (saying that he is the cosmos), but this evidence levels his playing field with the rest of society.
From his notebook, I think he was very open and observational to different random concepts in the world including religion, brochures, symbolism, and tragedy (like war). I think another observation that's crucial is the formate of his writing. It does not start in a certain spot and does not have a definitive ending. His pages look as though they are still in the process of thinking, and it is not stated if they are a final copy, or if he would've wanted to work on it more. The messiness of his writing shows the messiness of his thoughts and his urgency to his words. An example of this is that there is a lot of random punctuation of question marks and words crossed out which exemplifies his indecisiveness and perfectionistic character. Whitman also includes drawings like a strange drawing of floating skull stabbed in the heart which all may be a representation of himself or how he sees the world. Another observation I had is that all of the portraits of his face are from the side. Lastly, I have some other concepts I noted below:
- He addresses the audience using "you"
- There is a lot of imagery for descriptions of object
- Stamps on almost every page
- Page numbers on each page
Upon reading the notes of the meaning of his notebook, I realized that there is a lot more tragedy in his writing than expected. Even in the inside of the front cover is the name of his friend who had been killed in battle. I also learned that he is actually making up brochures that could have been created, which represents the imagination he had and his love for different concepts. After learning that the stamp means a library of congress collection, it is proof of the importance of his writing. Overall, I realized that the majority of his writing is political and focus on the relevant conflicts of the time which must be resonating in his mind enough for him to write poems about it. Every single page in his notebook also has meaning and every aspect is important or it will be missed. I could analyze each page and give you an opinion of what I think the true meaning is, but that would take forever so I hope that this summarizes the key points of the significance of his notebook.
I feel that notebooks are usually secretive and very personal, so it is an honor that Whitman would share this with the world so that we can discover unnoticed details in his writing that wouldn't have been discovered otherwise.
Sincerely,
K-dog
k-dog... if that's your real name, I enjoyed reading this post because you have a knack for writing in a simple but insightful way. Whitman often writes in a way that's almost too real as you pointed out in the beginning which I finding interesting because he definitely saw life in a unique way. Everyone can find personal meaning from most his poems which is something I truly find intriguing. I like how you separated some concepts that you noted from the documents to emphasize their importance. These are interesting patterns maybe because consistency is key? Whitman was a mysterious man that I wish we could've met and had some good talks with. Great post, attacckk! (that's Kate spelled backwards)
ReplyDeleteI really like your blog post! I especially like how you mentioned that it seemed as if Whitman was still in the process of thinking when he wrote in his journal. I think that that is a very interesting idea, and I agree with it. I think that this idea can be supported through the extremely large number of poems that he wrote and how much he used his notebook. It seems as if he was never finished expressing himself or his ideas. I also like how you pointed out the way he used a lot of punctuation and crossed many things out, showing his perfectionist character. This is something I had not thought about before, so I am glad you pointed it out. Awesome job!!!!!
ReplyDeleteThis was good!! I liked how you mentioned that there is tragedy in Whitman's writing I also discovered this because I did not expect it as well. Id also say that this notebook opened my eyes up and humanized Whitman more, you are totally right in saying that he is more open in different concepts. I also liked how you noticed the small things such as him speaking to the audience as 'you'. I agree with you on the last part on how it is an honor that Whitman shared his work because sometimes it takes others to reveal the work that authors never published.
ReplyDeleteK-dog sounds like a candy bar name or a hot dog restaurant. I like how you brought up the idea of Whitman not being finished, as though the pages do not come to an end. When I saw his mistakes and sloppy writing this is not what I thought about but it makes perfect sense. I also agreed with you on how you picked up on the importance of the stamp on the pages, it really does show how valued his work was. Nice man
ReplyDelete