When the aspiring poet Horace Traubel met an aging Walt Whitman in 1873, the two developed a special relationship. The younger man visited the older one at his home in Camden, N.J., every day to listen to his mentor’s musings, much to Whitman’s delight.
“You will be called upon many a time in the future to bear witness — to quote these days, our work together, the talks, anxieties — the victories the defeats,” Whitman told Traubel in 1888. “Whatever we do, we must let our history tell the truth.”
Never a lover of brevity, Whitman set Traubel up as his personal James Boswell. But Traubel lacked the concision that had made Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson a masterpiece of biography. From 1888 to Whitman’s death in 1892, Traubel recorded everything Whitman said: his thoughts on literature, American exceptionalism, and Abraham Lincoln, but also his ramblings on the local weather, his personal ailments, and suggestions for his own funeral arrangements. Whenever Traubel shared the progress of his work, Whitman declared, “You do the thing just as I should wish it to be done.”
Traubel collected enough material to fill nine volumes, each more than 500 pages in length, of a series he titled With Walt Whitman in Camden. “This book is more his book than my book. It talks his words. It reflects his manner. It is the utterance of his faith,” Traubel wrote upon the publication of the first volume in 1906. “That is why I have not fooled with its text.”
The work is a fitting tribute to the man who famously declared in “Song of Myself” that “I contain multitudes.” But its heft also makes it too burdensome for the general reader or, frankly, any reader. Long-winded Whitman is best consumed in short bursts and with the help of a judicious editor.
Thankfully, one has found him: Brenda Wineapple, whose compression of Traubel’s nine volumes into Walt Whitman Speaks arrived just in time for the poet’s 200th birthday on May 31. Wineapple cuts Traubel’s freewheeling quotations to a manageable 193 pages, formatted to fit easily in one’s pocket. And although Wineapple abandons Whitman’s request that his thoughts be allowed to run as freely as his verse, in so doing, she presents a clearer image of one of America’s most popular poets.
From an early age, Whitman (1819–1892) was nothing if not a renegade. Raised in an indebted, constantly moving New York family at the beginning of the 19th century, he entered the journalistic world at 11, working first as a printer’s devil and later as a reporter. As he moved all along the East Coast, the young man found trouble and picked up many of the experiences that would fill his first book of collected poems, Leaves of Grass, which he self-published in 1855.
The first reviews of Leaves of Grass were mostly negative, with criticism commonly directed at Whitman’s disregard for form and his embrace of free love. But the transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson liked it and welcomed Whitman into his circle of New England poets, philosophers, and artists. Whitman’s career was secured.
Reflecting on Leaves of Grass to Traubel, Whitman remarked that the book, which he had since edited and revised many times since its first publication, was widely misunderstood. Poems such as “Song of Myself” and “I Sing the Body Electric” were not just the unbridled thoughts of Whitman; they were an attempt to capture the spirit of antebellum America in one voice. “All I have written there is written with reference to America — to the larger America — to an America so inclusive, so sufficient, no phase of life, no nationality — can escape it,” Whitman said.
This desire to find “the larger America” marks the best of Whitman’s work. He saw it most in Lincoln, whom he eulogized shortly after his assassination with “O Captain! My Captain!,” an elegy he later told Traubel he regretted writing. The poem’s popularity bothered Whitman because he felt it wasn’t his best work.
But Whitman could never shake the image of Lincoln as captain from his mind. “Lincoln is like the Bible — you can read anything in him,” he said. In Lincoln, Whitman saw the melancholy, philosophy, and humor which combined made him the archetype of a great American man.
“Lincoln was not a specifically great man, as greatness runs in the average mind,” Whitman told Traubel. “He minds me most of a captain — a great captain — chosen for a tempestuous voyage — everything against him — wind, tide, current, terrible odds — untried seas, never at a loss, quiet composed patient — oh how patient! — and coming out at the end, victor — no one in history more victor! How could the average men know him?”
This is Whitman in top form, understanding greatness in wide sweeps. It’s when he gets mired in details that he loses his touch. Even with Wineapple’s help, there’s a lot of trifling in Walt Whitman Speaks.
Perhaps before he published his mammoth work, Traubel would have done well to reread Whitman’s estimation of Boswell’s project: “The more I see of the book the more I realize what a roaring bull the Doctor was and what a braying ass Boswell was.”
Nic Rowan is a media analyst at the Washington Free Beacon.
