Else why should all men listen to his songs?
At first sight, on the contrary, Whitman seems the most personal of poets, or at least the most sincere of egotists. Is he not the proud author of the Song of Myself? His very first line is this:
One’s-self I sing, a simple separate person.[1]
And again he says:
I celebrate myself, and sing myself.[2]
His own personality recurs frequently in his songs, and not under the abstract and indeterminate title I, but with the face and the clothes of Walt Whitman:
Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,
Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding.[3]
Behold this swarthy face, these gray eyes,
This beard, the white wool unclipt upon my neck,
My brown hands and the silent manner of me without charm.[4]
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch’d from …
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.[5]
But it would be a mistake to regard this adoration of the self as a proof of Whitman’s individualism. He adores the self because he adores
