----- Original Message -----
From: "William Conger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Proust review: Whitman
We should decide if the issue is about soul or mind.
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In section 8 to Song of the Open Road Whitman says,
"The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness,
I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times,
Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged
"Here rises the fluid and attaching character, .....
"....From it falls distill'd the charm that mocks beauty and attainments,
Toward it heaves the shuddering longing ache of contact.
James E. Miller, Jr. says, in the Walt Whitman encyclopedia
http://www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/encyclopedia/entry_52.html
"As the poem opens, the reader encounters the poet "observing a spear of
summer grass" and extending an invitation to his soul. He vows to "permit to
speak at every hazard, / Nature without check with original energy" (section
1). Leaving "[c]reeds and schools" behind, he goes "to the bank by the wood
to become undisguised and naked" (sections 1 and 2), clearly preparing
himself for the soul's visit of section 5, which dramatizes the
transfiguring event that launches the poet on his lifelong quest.
And I am mindful of the following passage,
I have said that the soul is not more than the body.
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's-self is,
Leaves of Grass
http://imajesty.net/i_have_said_that_the_soul_is_not.htm
I just received the Lehrer book and haven't been able to start it, but on
the question of the "soul" in Whitman, I would say that Whitman is speaking
of something different than the mind or conscious experience. Rather, IMHO
he is suggesting an energizing relationship, harmony, or acceptance of one's
naturalness. Whitman was familiar with Emerson and Emerson's cosmology
swirled around his Oversoul, which I take to be a presence allowing a person
to directly experience God as Nature.
To restate my position, Whitman's "soul" is more akin to the idea of a
person's "true nature", than consciousness or mind in general.
I am unwilling to defend the notion of a "true self" and believe as Richard
Rorty did, that such absolutist notions are not justifiable. Nonetheless,
that is the kind of notion I believe Whitman is working in his poetry.
Mike Mallory
PS: Of course after I read the chapter, I may find I have missed the point
entirely. ;<)
