Transatlantic Wires: Walt Whitman and the Immensely Private European Reader

Despite singing the continent of America, Europeans, especially on the time of his death, have praised and welcomed Walt Whitman into the canon, before and more fervently than their counterparts in the States. Certainly, Europeans have had their share of iconoclasts who become glorious or notorious, whereas in America, the habit has been rather to create the new idols of a new nation, separate and free from European history. Whitman’s style—the anaphoric chants, the epically common catalogues, the raw sensuality—so obviously broke away from previous American poetry that we consider him the father of American literary modernism. Yet this is not at stake. More importantly, why does Whitman affect me so severely, in terms of sentimentalism, but also in terms of glory, as I read him in the Paris Metro, whereas in America, I see him as common, another name etched into the edifice of American letters?

To say I ignored Whitman is incorrect. When I first read him as an adolescent, I shuddered with inspiration when I my English teacher essentially mimicked Robin Williams in Dead Poets’ Society and proclaimed the importance of the “barbaric yawp.” I’ve taken several courses on the college level where I’ve chosen to write about Whitman. Of course that was an easy route: there is a built-in language when dealing with Whitman, abundant with such vocabulary as democratic, transcendental, and oratory. Not that I will throw these trusty words away! Nevertheless, when I reached this passage:

Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? Have you reckoned the Earth much?

Have you practiced so long to learn to read?

Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Somewhere on the elevated train on the way to Montparnasse, I became absolutely myself among the crowd. Here was pleasant Uncle Walt, lover of everyman, crusader of the lowly and the lordly, accusing me, no: calling me out. There are times his repetitions blur into each other, and the reader loses the sense of his words. But these three lines, in the milieu of Whitman’s own reckoning, are a snare. He asks the reader to think of the world, and the reader is ready for some of the naturalism of Thoreau or Emerson. Instead, Whitman enters the academy. There, he challenges the literate viewer, asking the reader to call to mind the affection he places on the moment of comprehension in a poem, an utterly private act. This is Whitman as a sharp and ready blade, who raises the stakes of literature by crossing the line into the sacred space of the reader.

This move, of course, causes the reader to closely pay attention to what comes next:

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,

You shall possess the good of the earth and the sun....there are millions of suns left,

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand....nor look through the eyes of the

dead...nor feed on the spectres in books,

You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,

You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

He declares reading dead, interpretation dead, but at the same time embodies another word that is everywhere in criticism of Whitman—contradiction. This section essentially begins Whitman’s tapestry of America in Leaves of Grass, wherein he invites the reader to read one last time his view of America. But before offering his rigorous definition of America, he first explains possibility: he offers a first hand account of images, that not only will he speak poetry to the reader, but that the reader will speak poetry him or herself. Whitman destroys the boundary between the reader and the poet, and it is no surprise that the reader lets him.

In the end, is it homesickness that draws me to Whitman’s poetry while I live in Paris? In truth, I feel at home here as anywhere. Perhaps, he offers me heroic inspiration: just by living I am enacting poetry, at least according to Whitman. He imbues a sense of collectivity, of mystical union, that despite massive globalization, can still be found some places. Europeans, with their megalithic historical baggage can understand this, pointing to why Whitman was so well received here 150 years ago. The most captivating aspect, however, is that he exposes us all for what we are: human, capable of beauty and horror—those two things that render poetry excruciating and magnificent.

Time is something very different here. The days stretch out into weeks, I've already spent my whole life here. Meetings, class, dates, soirées--I cannot get there on time. I read longer, look longer, write deeply. I hang out in cemeteries, with the eternal, for lunch. I discover what happens to writers of great importance: they get buried, burned, or forgotten.

If Paris came to you in a dream, would you recognize it? The boulevards, the milling people (a true termitary), the anomie? How about the grandeur, the temples of glory, the ever-present dog shit? The odors will certainly wake you up: fromageries, boucheries mixing with motor-cycle exhaust.

Linda and I went to Saint Sulpice for seven a.m. mass on Sunday. The choeur was being renovated, so we attended in a small but heroic chapel with enormous paintings from the 18th century. Maybe next week, we will attend the mass with gregorian chanting at Notre Dame.

Then we went to Giverny and became impressionists. The flowers there are as multifarious as the people here, clustering, intersecting, crossbreading, something that can only be expressed in person or in painting, in very different ways.

The other truth is that I go to McDo for its internet. I don't even always buy something. Here they play Michael Jackson, Bach, Tupac, and contemporary Christian music.

Post-dated part (from Sunday):

Last night in Paris occured an event called Nuit Blanche. There were manifestations open all night. Linda and I walked around what at one time was a swamp paved over by monks. They call this district Le Marais. It is what would pass as the historical district, with buildings outdating Haussemann by several hundred years.

In a Gothic cathedral, loud atmospheric electronic music (comme Aphex) waxed and waned while Parisians swung ropes to which large stage lights (red, blue, and green). These lights briefly illuminated icons, cruciforms, and dark recesses. The acoustics set over 600 years ago wailed with reverberations entirely otherworldly. This was after midnight. People milled. Chairs in a permenant state of toppling were stacked in one corner from the floor to the height of the doming ceiling. Confessionals loomed. Candles flickered. The music stopped.


Dated today as posted:
If you picture in your mind what living in a European city of great import is, that is the neighborhood of Paris Linda and I live in. Attention: these people know more about simulacra than you. This is not advertised: this is tradition. We go to various stores with the suffix of -erie which sell general one product along a theme: fish, meat, cheese, paper, books, wine. The cheese and wine are almost free. So are the vegetables. Cold cuts, however, are very pricey. So is fast-food.

Classes have started, and Linda and I are students of La Sorbonne. I attended a colloque on Acadian literature in an amphitheatre that was flanked by 18th century paintings of Descartes, Pascal, etc. There is an importance here that creates an intensity that is hard to explain or fathom. Ideas propell themselves, solely because one feels they should be propelled.

Today, I will visit the Louvre with my Impressionism class (to visit the pre-Impressionists). Yesterday I began my philosophy course. Tomorrow, I will be instructed in French and La Civilisation Française. And the next and the next.

Linda and I are indebted much to a beautiful family on the borders of Paris. They have helped us with language, customs, cuisine, and a general feeling of home. They have opened their doors.

I wish you all to see something this glorious. My eyes are open.

The Internet has been scarce for some time, so I must catch up. For Cannes, where Linda and I are now, there will be later.

So for the our stay in London. It can be marked by several facts: it is too expensive to be there for long, but you cannot take in all of it at once. I was able to see what I needed to see: Unreal City, the epi-center and origin of the anguish of the Modern world. Because we toured on Saturday morning, there were not the throng of souls spilling over London bridge, but I got the picture nevertheless.

Linda and I and two others who were among our group attended a concert at St. Martin-of-the-fields Church. It was Vivaldi's Four Seasons. As you could expect, the music rang through the three hundred year old church with a ferocity more clear than I am used to.

Then we found France.

It's funny how my life has been meted out in three week increments. The last three have been filled with Linda and I crusading for the DNC and struggling to do what we came to Chicago for. Now that the canvassing is over, we can concentrate on the act of leaving, that which involves final images, final greetings, and of course, the ever-present bureaucracy of being an American citizen.

We are, however, beginning to understand something of European leisure--the dining and obsessive conversations that pay little regard to deadlines, bottomlines, any Euclidean lines really.

In three weeks, we have also seen much of Chicago--marching through suburbs and urban neighborhoods indiscriminately, experiencing the friendly suspicion of America. This initial job has instilled in us misanthropy and a new awe at the endearingness of humans. Of course, I will never do it again.

Last night we closed out that stint with a party, as all things must go out. There was food, liquor, and laughter, but there was also a quality of the present which can never be achieved again. Nor should it.

This is the way of our bonding: transient. A litany of friends made in short, desperate jolts, separated by increasing miles. Of course, when we return to New Orleans, there will be our friends, those who stood by us as we watched our city go not up in flames but go somewhere, a city in hiding. And when we return, we'll hide there too.

But for now, our eyes are open, elsewhere.