Whitman Daze: Past, Present, and Future
Walt Whitman’s birth into American literature was a direct result of Ralph Waldo
Emerson’s essay: “The Poet.” Emerson writes that “Dante’s praise is that he dared to write his
autobiography in colossal cipher.” (Emerson, p.238) During Emerson’s time, we had yet to find
an author in America to do such a thing. Walt Whitman was just that author. Whitman’s eruption
into poetry and history was a tumultuous one. He made people uncomfortable with his
controversial topics. He conveyed his ideas through a variety of techniques, but his most
identifiable “Whitman-esque” trait is speaking in contradictions. What made his poetry even
better yet, (or worse, depending on the reader) was his tone. His awe for life poured from his
mouth in formless, scheme-less free verse. Walt Whitman’s style is timeless, and is echoed
perfectly by Michael Cunningham in his modern novel, Specimen Days. His flair for controversy
and devastating subject matter also mirrors him with Whitman. Cunningham makes social
commentary through the use of his fictional characters, all of whom appear in his daringly staged
three part novel. Both Whitman and Cunningham address the themes of the inevitability of death,
the reality of human mortality, the beauty of nature, the existence and necessity of sexuality and
the enjambment of scientific evidence and the truths in feelings and experiences. Whitman’s
literary identity shines through the decades in authors like Cunningham. Each author portrays
these themes with some similarities and some differences, but all effective.
Walt Whitman is considered the father of modern poetry for many reasons, including his
style of writing, his subject matter, and his use of language. Nothing came before Leaves of
Grass that was similar. Leaves of Grass is taboo and intense, conveying content too controversial
for people to handle. Whitman brought forth a new way of using language. He writes eloquently
and sporadically, seemingly recording whatever came to mind. Written in the 1850s, Leaves of
Grass was tempting and provocative and it lures in some readers and repulses others. In his
poem, “Pent Up Aching Rivers,” Whitman writes openly about a sexual experience, which is
deemed crass and frowned upon. He writes, “From the long sustain’d kiss upon the mouth or
bosom.” (Whitman, p.80) The havoc something like this sentence must have wreaked was
unfathomable. This was a time where the private life was still private and though sex was
occurring, it was not something the tightly-corseted members of Whitman’s society spoke of.
Whitman, however, was all about unveiling this private life and accepting the raw and real side
of humanity. His arms were open to everyone and this caused such an upset. Life is not one way
or the other. Things aren’t black and white. Whitman thrived off of the gray area.
In true Whitman form, he speaks in paradox, even saying “Do I contradict myself? Very
well then, I contradict myself.” (p.77) He’s upfront, telling the reader where he stands (or doesn’t
stand). Whitman writes contradictory statements like “I am of old and young, of the foolish as
much as the wise,” (p.39) and “Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not
my soul.” (p.28) Whitman jumps back and forth frequently because he doesn’t want to commit to
one solid idea, spiritual or physical. He likes the fluid movement between multiple ideas, giving
him the chance to explore all options. He also switches standpoints because he wants to express
that he belongs to everyone and everyone belongs to him; that we are all a part of life, therefore a
part of each other. He discusses all aspects of life because it would be phony to only speak of the
beautiful things. You cannot have beauty without ugliness; you cannot have life without death.
Whitman’s paradoxical pairings imitate reality, which may be another reason why people were
so uncomfortable with his poetry.
Whitman forces people into realizing that the existence of sexuality was prevalent and
that not all of our knowledge of life was sacred, however, he didn’t believe it to be wholly
secular either. In “Song of Myself,” Whitman also enforces the idea that the difference between
the physical world and the spiritual world are not as largely divided, as commonly thought. He
performs perhaps the ultimate sacrilege by comparing himself to something holy in “Song of
Myself.” He says “Divine am I inside and out/ and I make holy whatever I touch/…scent of these
armpits aroma finer than prayer.” (p.46). He makes an investment in the secular, not trying to
drive people away from faith, but simply toward their own instincts and experiences.Whitman
was looking to confuse everything you’ve been taught to be true and replacing it with lessons on
how to rely on your feelings and experiences to discover. He writes “I am the poet of the Body
and I am the poet of the Soul.” (p.43) This quote shows Whitman representing the combination
of the two in one man, dwindling down the wall dividing the two. He combines religion and
science, showing that making sense and logic out of everything through scientific reasoning is
not the only way to live, nor is blind faith the only way. He says “Gentlemen, to you the first
honors always!/Your facts are useful, and yet they are not my dwelling,/I but enter by them to an
area of my dwelling.” (p.45) Whitman is acknowledging the scientific community, and their
importance. He’s saying that it’s okay to take what they say into consideration, but not to base
your whole opinion on life from these formed by their research. Take it into consideration, but in
turn, do your own research. Whitman doesn’t even want you to hold everything he says to be
wholly true. “All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own./Else it were time lost
listening to me.” (p.41) He says:
“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, not take things/
from me.
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.” (p.27)
Whitman’s entire philosophy on how we should discover is wrapped up in that brief but
powerful quotation. He later states that “logic and sermons never convince./ The damp of the
night drives deeper into my soul.” (p.50) He wants you to form your own opinions, theories, and
judgments, and experience life, death, sexuality, nature and beauty for yourself.
Michael Cunningham also stirs up feelings in his novel, written in 2005, Specimen Days.
Cunningham addresses some of the darker parts of American history and human nature, while
also fast forwarding to the future and portraying the desolation and heartache, making it the only
thing we have to look forward to in the future. Cunningham has no qualms with using foul
language in the text; his writing mirrors how we speak as a culture. He addresses feelings and
events that make readers feel uncomfortable, even today, even though our society is much more
accepting (or so we’d like to think) than the polite, Victorian society of Whitman and Leaves of
Grass. Cunningham is daring in his use of language. To some, the language is lewd and comical,
but it is effective in demonstrating the time period. The average thirteen year old now does not
encounter half of the obstacles that thirteen year old Lucas does in the “past” section of Specimen
Days. Lucas is subjected to Catherine’s poor life choices when she says “I’m a whore, Lucas.”
(Cunningham, p.69). The word whore is not offensive, it’s how people spoke; it’s how people
speak. In the final section of the novel, Simon, who is a robot programmed to recite Whitman’s
poetry, says “We are so fucked up.” (p.230) Though such a line is humorous because it catches
readers off guard, it’s not completely unexpected. Fuck is a part of everyone’s vernacular now.
It’s a common staple in the school room, in cyber space and at the dinner table. Cunningham
uses modern language that helps readers relate to the plot and understand his sense of sarcasm.
Cunningham’s language through Lucas also resembles Walt. In the first section of
Specimen Days, Lucas comments and questions everything through the eyes of a child. We get a
childlike take on everything, including when Lucas meets Walt. Walt asks him what it is he’s
searching for, and Lucas thinks to himself: “Saying “money” to Walt would be like standing in
Catherine’s hallway, blazing with love, and receiving a lambs neck and a bit of potato.” (p.74)
He’s honest and youthful, yet so insightful about the heavy burdens of life at such a young age.
Another instance of this childlikeness we get is through Lucas’s belief that Simon’s soul was
trapped in the machine that killed him, and that maybe other machines held the souls of other
men. This was an imaginative rationalization that would come from a child. “The dead returned
in machinery. They sang seductively to the living as mermaids sang to sailors…”(p.49) His
theory is creepy and gothic, but something fantastic that a child might create in his head. Another
great characteristic of Whitman’s writing is his child-like tone. His awe for everything can be
likened to that of a child, learning about the world for the first time, gazing at it with curious
eyes. There is no better example of this than one of his most memorable quotes from stanza six:
“A child said What is the grass? Fetching it to me with full hands;/
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any/
More than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful/
green stuff woven…
I guess the grass itself a child, the produced babe of the/
Vegetation…
And now it seems to me the beautiful hair of uncut graves.” (p.30)
Because Walt did not know what grass was, exactly, other than green vegetation, he couldn’t
offer any solid answer to the child, only justifications thought up in his head. Two other
examples of his child-like questioning habits are later in the poem. In stanza twenty, he writes
“How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?” (p.41) and “What is a man any how? what am
I? what are you?” (p.41) Whitman’s questioning is similar to a child asking “Why?” over and
over and over again, out of pure curiosity and amazement in how the world, and how our very
own bodies work.
Another example of Cunningham’s stellar use of language is his social commentary
through sarcasm in the final section of the book. What Simon (the robot) lacks in emotion and
feelings, he makes up in sarcasm and disdain toward the world. Simon explains the Free
Territories and their inhabitants to Catereen by saying “They’re the people who didn’t quite work
out in civilized society. Some of them are evangelicals. Some of them are criminals.” (p.258)
Simon is saying that there are all kinds of people out there who aren’t fit to live in a civilized
area, including someone who falsely wears a good mask and someone who commits heinous
crimes. The cockiness comes in here because evangelicals condemn and damn everyone who
doesn’t fit into their picture, yet in this dystopian society, the evangelicals are even outcasts.
Also, when Catareen tells Simon that she is to “Die in Denver” (p.293) he responds, snarky:
“Okay,” he said. “End of discussion. Your plan is to die in Denver. You could probably also get
a job as a waitress, if dying doesn’t work out.” (294) Cunningham’s sarcasm is funny and
effective because once again, it shows us how we behave and speak to one another in our culture.
Walt Whitman’s style is another reason why he is breaking bread with the greatest poets
of all time. His steam-of-consciousness, free verse style is signature to him and broke all barriers
of poets before him. His words did not rhyme, they seemed to be random outbursts of thoughts
that he wrote as they came. This free flow was demonstrated in his use of lists, as Emerson
predicted in “The Poet.” Emerson writes that “America is a poem in our eyes,”(Emerson, p.238)
He’s calling for someone to marvel in all of the great things that America has to offer and he
himself lists some great aspects of America:
“Our log rolling, our stumps and their politics, our fisheries, our negroes and
Indians, our boats and our repudiations, the wrath of rogues and the pusillanimity
of honest men, the northern trade, the southern planting, the western clearing,
Oregon and Texas, are yet unsung.” (p.238)
This line gives reason to Whitman’s seemingly nonsensical tangents, in which he lists things for
lines upon lines. He writes in “Song of Myself”:
“A Yankee bound my own way ready for trade, my joints the
Limberest joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth,
A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deer-skin
A boatman over lakes or bays or along coasts, a Hoosier
Badger, Buckeye;” (p.39, lines 336-341)
He goes on for lines and does this often with a multitude o topics from the Long Island Sound, to
the jungle (with alligators, rattlesnakes and panthers), to the great and vast plains. In capturing
every minute detail of such different scenes, he’s revering everything.
Michael Cunningham reflects Walt’s attention to detail, and his use of style is almost
unheard of. He begins the novel by saying in the author’s note that “Any writer who sets part or
all of a novel in an identifiable time and place faces the question of veracity.” (Cunningham)
This being said, Cunningham sets the novel in the past, present and future, demonstrating
Whitman’s spirit, ever loving, inviting and rejoicing, becoming timeless. It is easy to write a
novel set in the past, with tons of books preceding your own on the topic. (And really, how many
new ways can you spin a book about the civil war?) It’s even easier to set a novel in the present,
where any questions about popular culture are answered at the will of your fingertips via Google,
Wikipedia, and even social media sites like Facebook or Twitter. However, to write a novel set
in the future is difficult. The future is unknown. There are no search engines or text books or
gossip rag magazines that tell you what the future holds, and if they attempt to, they’re educated
guesses at best. Yet, Cunningham accepts this challenge and pulls it off flawlessly. In order to
create a futuristic world, the author has to commit and Cunningham does. There are no questions
that go unanswered about how anything works in this dystopian society he’s imagined in his
mind. Reader’s aren’t left to wander Cunningham’s ‘New’ New York searching for how
transportation works or why the Nardinians are on Earth in the first place. Cunningham’s ability
to peer into the future and vividly create insights to what may be is comparable to the works of
his predecessors such as Orwell with 1984 and Ray Bradbury with Fahrenheit 451.
The imagery Cunningham uses to describe the ever-changing New York in Specimen
Days is part of what makes the novel so well done. The second section of the novel, set in a post-
911 devastation is relatable and appealing because this scenery is average to us today. Whether
it’s restaurants filled with people, news stations covering crazy stories (from American soldiers
torturing POWs to Senator sex scandals to things a miniscule as the world’s largest pumpkin) or
even as every-day as a messy apartment. The way Cunningham describes everything makes the
past and the future worlds both believable. In the first section of the novel, he describes
Washington Square, and readers get a sense for what it would have been like to stroll down the
Square in the 1850s. He writes that the Square is “like Broadway, …part of a city within the
city,…a place where men and women strolled in great dress coats…where a child waved a
scarlet pennant.”(p.65) He describes everything you might see there, including the homeless, the
beggars, men and women going to see shows, and even ladies of the night. He keeps this up
throughout the novel, and in the last section Cunningham has Simon describe Catareen (a
Nardinian) when she emerges from the water. Catareen, being a lizard-creature, is a foreign
concept to us, yet, his description of her gives readers a lasting imagine of what she may look
like. He writes: “Catareen naked was all sinew, with thin, strong arms and legs, tiny breast-buds,
and a small, compact rise of bony square-ish pelvis.” (p.287) He then compares her to a
sculpture. He thinks she’s beautiful, and at this point, a reader gets a sense for why. This newly
defined beauty is reminiscent of Whitman, who found beauty in everything – twenty-eight naked
men by the shore, a strong negro carriage driver, prostitutes, nuns – they were all beautiful to
Whitman.
Whitman’s attitude toward life and all its functioning parts makes him as a writer.
Whitman’s contemporaries found his extravagant optimism, despite a bleak society, annoying.
Yet, his wonderstruck tone is what makes him such a loveable author to readers. He is just in
awe of everything that life has to offer. He didn’t want to waste any of it. He writes: “The
smallest sprout shows there really is no death, and if ever there was it led toward life, and does
not wait at the end to arrest it.” (Whitman, p. 31) He’s appreciating even the smallest things, as
Annie Dillard does, as Ralph Waldo Emerson does, and as Henry David Thoreau does. He
writes, “Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born?/ I hasten him or her it is just as lucky to die.”
(p.31) Though speaking in contradiction, he is only admiring all aspects of life and death;
revering both as miracles. He is so enamored by everything, especially life and beauty of nature.
Perhaps one of his most memorable lines from “Song of Myself” conveys this feeling the best:
“The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless/It is for my
mouth forever, I am in love with it” (p.26) He even loves the air! Another memorable line is
when he is talking about his connection and closeness toward people. He writes: “To touch my
person to someone else’s is about as much as I can stand.” (p.50) If people could love something,
anything, the way that Walt loves everything, perhaps this world, this life wouldn’t seem so
terrible.
Cunningham emulates Whitman’s tone in Specimen Days, despite the dark setting
throughout the entire novel. Cunningham’s fictional characters represent different parts of
Whitman and when reviewed as a whole, they resemble “Song of Myself,” which is a
celebration. Lucas, in the first section, is optimistic toward creating a better life and finding love
despite the poor life-hand he’d been dealt. People need to believe in something, and while most
people find comfort in their faith or the veracity of science, Lucas believed in Walt’s book, even
comparing God to Walt, saying “He could not help believing that God must resemble Walt.”
(Cunningham, p.11) In the end of the first section, Lucas’s heart explodes. It’s almost as if life
were too much for him, and that he loved so much that his heart couldn’t take it. In a way, Lucas
resembled Walt; his heart was open for all opportunities and it was about as much as he could
stand. While majority of the novel maintains this Whitman-esque optimism, the last section
seems almost not to fit Whitman’s way of thinking. It goes against everything he stands for in his
time. The tone is melancholy rather than inspiring. But just when you think that the only thing
that relates Simon and Whitman is his programming, Whitman shines through in the end when
Simon can finally feel something for Catareen. When reunited with his creator, Simon and
Emory have a conversation, discussing why Simon feels as though something is just not quite
right.
“Lately I have these strange sensations. Like when my anti-aggression override
kicks in but different. Softer or something” (Simon)
“I’ve always wondered if actual emotions might start springing up in you. If your
connections might start firing, given the proper stimuli” (p.307)
Though it seems impossible, Simon, as a robot may have started adapting to human emotions,
causing him to warm to Whitman’s poetry, rather than just recite it. Earlier in the final section,
Simon is beginning to sense something is wrong, and he says to Catareen that he feels “like there
is something terrible and wonderful and amazing that’s just beyond my grasp…I want either to
have it or to be free of it.” (p.253) Because he is a robot, he couldn’t develop and harbor feelings,
nothing phased him. This is so anit-Whitman, because Whitman is impacted by everything and
can’t help gush it all. Again, this returns back to the idea that connection to another is about as
much as he can take. This feeling that Simon is beginning to have is making him mad with
emotion, and for someone or something to experience that for the first time, it can be frightening.
Throughout this section, Simon begins to slowly understand beauty and hold his own opinions of
it, among other feelings, such as love and admiration, which is all Walt asks of anyone.
On the surface, it may seem that the only thing that Specimen Days and Walt Whitman
have in common is that Whitman lends his words to the characters in the novel for random
ejaculation of poetry. After a closer look, it is apparent that Walt’s words apply to situations
from the past, in the present and to the future, furthering the sense that Whitman will live on
forever. Whitman gave birth to a new type of writing and because of that, novels like Specimen
Days and authors like Michael Cunningham can exist because there are no longer boundaries on
authors in regards to form, content and language. Cunningham exudes many characteristics of
Walt’s writing, including his tendency to speak in contradictions. But most importantly is his
optimism amid a society robed in poverty and destruction. Emerson challenged authors to
become to poet that this country, and world, so desperately sought and needed. Whitman
answered. Whitman then offers up his own challenge: Missing me in one place, search another/ I
stop somewhere waiting for you.” (p.78) To this, Cunningham answers, and explains how he
found Walt and basks in his timeless knowledge in Specimen Days, paying forward his lessons
learned on trusting your instincts and beliefs, never investing too much in another’s opinion, and
questioning your boundaries and convictions to forge, perhaps, a new path to understand and
reverence of all life.