Walt
Whitman's status as poetic innovator and father to American
verse is undisputed today; but, while alive, he enjoyed little
public acclaim, only minor distribution—and much notoriety.
Public and chattering classes aside, however, Whitman was critically
acclaimed from his début; Ralph
Waldo Emerson, so-called "father of American literature",
wrote to the poet, upon receipt of Leaves
of Grass, proclaiming "I greet you at the beginning
of a great career", and later described Whitman's poetry
as "a remarkable mixture of the Bhagvat
Ghita and the New
York Herald".
Lauded and republished around the world—especially so in England—Whitman
never saw a broad appeal or readership at home, the main subject
of—and intended audience for—the majority of his poetry—albeit
in a single poem of which, ironically, the poet, himself, thought
very little: "O
Captain! My Captain!"
|
O
Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done; |
|
The
ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is
won; |
|
The
port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, |
|
While
follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring. |
|
But
O heart! heart! heart! |
|
O
the bleeding drops of red! |
|
Where
on the deck my Captain lies, |
|
Fallen
cold and dead. |
With layout set deliberately to resemble a ship approaching
a destination, "O Captain! My Captain!" is a masterful
but rare example of rhymed, rhythmically regular verse by a
poet renowned for innovative form and structure. There's no
doubt the use of rhyme was intentional; written as immediate
response to the assassination of Abraham
Lincoln, in 1865, it served to create a fittingly somber,
exalted effect; a bittersweet elegy of commiseration and commemoration.
The poem was published to immediate acclaim in the New York
City Saturday Press, and was widely anthologized during
Whitman's lifetime. He would be asked to recite the poem in
public lectures and readings so often that he's quoted as saying
"I'm almost sorry I ever wrote [it]," although it
had "certain emotional immediate reasons for being".
Envisioning Lincoln as archangel captain, the poet is said to
have dreamed, the night before that president's murder, of a
ship entering harbor under full sail (an image dominant throughout),
and the poem was deliberately typeset to appear on page as a
vessel approaching its port of call.
It could be argued that, in Lincoln, Whitman saw the living
embodiment of his poetic ideals: uniter of the nation, kindred
opponent of slavery, harbinger of a golden future—a future
of universal freedom and brotherhood, which the poet imagined
as American destiny and tangible reality:
|
I
am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise, |
|
Regardless
of others, ever regardful of others, |
|
Maternal
as well as paternal, a child as well as a man, |
|
Stuff'd
with the stuff that is coarse and stuff'd with the stuff
that is fine, |
|
One
of the Nation of many nations, the smallest the same and
the largest the same |
| |
|
-from
"Song of Myself" |
Poet Sri
Chinmoy succinctly describes Walt Whitman's poetic and national
vision as interchangeable:
|
"When
the wind and storm of today bring in the golden Tomorrow,
Whitman will shine forth, haloed in a new glory on the
new horizon. His poems and his nation's consciousness
are inseparable." |
Lincoln's
death was a violent blow to Whitman's American vision and confident
proclamation. Already traumatized by the division of the just
ended Civil
War, "O Captain!" was written at a time of great
despondency and personal soul-searching.
The poem saw its first official publication as an addition to
Whitman's "Drum-Taps Civil War" poems, one of a grouping
of poems under the title When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard
Bloom'd and Other Pieces—name also to a more critically
significant piece dedicated to Lincoln, preferred, by the poet,
to the more conventional, populist "O Captain!"
Ever the perfectionist, Whitman revised "O Captain!"
in 1866 and, then again, in 1871, a trademark practice of continual
revision and never-ending improvement. His life work, Leaves
of Grass, was recurringly revised from first publication
in 1855 until 1892—the year of his death; the name for
the final, definitive version, which included "O Captain!",
is thus 'the Deathbed edition'.
