Song of Myself - 143 / 365 of reading one short story every day- Walt Whitman

Song of Myself - a part of Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman

The poem has a lovely trivia that it had no title at the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass. It was simply called "A Poem of Walt Whitman, an American '' in 1856. In 1860 it was plainly called "Walt Whitman." The great poet changed the title to "Song of Myself" in 1881. What was the reason? The significance is how the poem grew in the minds of the American people and became globally known as a poem of self awareness, identity and spirituality.



These are some of the main themes of the poem -


Identity and friendship - The poem explores the idea of self. How it is nurtured, how one can see oneself in solitude and in the presence of others.

“what I assume you shall assume”

Whitman says that his observations are the same as others. Thus what he feels about certain aspects of the universe is the same as what others feel. But he is aware that it is an assumption on his behalf and that is why others also assume. His ideas are just a blueprint and he knows the human psyche well enough at the time of writing this poem, that ultimately we all feel and react the same way, though our decisions will be different and hence conclusion is also different. But we are on the same path.


This shared space in Whitman's mind extends to realms of spiritual and emotional stages too.

“I too had receiv’d identity by my body"

'Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,

And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,

Growing among black folks as among white'



Nature and America-  Whitman does a tribute to America and the idea of country and what it means to him.
Whitman wrote this poem at an era when the Romantic and Transcendentalist traditions of writers such as Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson and Dickinson were very popular. The nineteenth century saw the rise of American Romanticism. From his travels across the country, his writings mirrored the American landscape of the nineteenth century from an agrarian state to an industrialized one and then a commercial one. But Whitman's poem harks back to the wilderness of the country that he once knew. He aligns his nature loving mind to the cities by not differentiating between the natural and the man-made. Steamships and tall buildings are described as seagulls and waves, the high and the furious ones, growing and enlarging. Just as America grew by leaps and bounds in the last two centuries.


Spirituality - 

'Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,

And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,

And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,

And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,

And that a kelson of the creation is love '


Whitman unites himself with the idea of God through peace that he sees around him. Again he sees nature in the spiritual sense with a possibility that he sees God in nature.

Whitman engages the idea of individuality and collectivity. He wishes to see unity among all irrespective of race, skin colour and status. That is why he simplifies people to nature where everything looks same - all green trees feel the same unless you go to analyse which is a pine or an oak and then compare the benefits of each

As a vision for his country, he balances the ideas of individuality and collectivity as two necessary aspects for the unity and democracy of America.