Songs of Himself or Whitman, Sampled

"No one in this age of [expensive] flour and high rents can afford to be a nobody. Be somebody–biographically, poetically, or historically."– satirical editorial in The Brooklyn Eagle, October 11, 1855



Lately I've come across disturbing gaps in my education. Something will stop me short as I think, Wait, how do I not know this? Walt Whitman... Titan of American literature, Leaves of Grass, "body electric," repressed homosexuality, beard, that was nearly the sum of what I knew. So I got the Penguin Classics Collected Whitman and started on the first in my series of Why Don’t I Know This research missions.

Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch'd from,
the scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer...
If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it.

** ** **
Blind loving wrestling touch, sheath'd hooded sharp-tooth'd touch! Did it make you ache so, leaving me? Parting track'd by arriving, perpetual payment of perpetual loan, Rich showering rain, and recompense richer afterward. Sprouts take and accumulate, stand by the curb prolific and vital, Landscapes projected masculine, full-sized and golden. ---Song of Myself, 1855

I do not like reading Whitman's poetry (prose, like Specimen Days, is much more agreeable). Considering the sweeping vistas and universalism he invokes I find the reading experience leaves me clammy and oddly claustrophobic. (I'm guessing that Whitman was a close talker. Pure conjecture...) He does however, conjure a mystical rawness, an uninhibited immediacy, blatancy even, that is astounding. Especially so when thought of as being published at a time when "Victorian" morality was in ascendance. (Emily Dickinson evidently wrote in a letter, "I have never read his book– but was told that he was disgraceful," which I find enormously funny.)

Professor Harold Bloom notes that it is paradoxical that Whitman "who proclaimed his love for all men, women, and children should be so solipsistic, narcissistic, and self delighting." I suppose it is partially just this that cemented my dislike of the poetry. The mono-maniacal quality fairly shouts out.

In Whitman and the Culture of American Celebrity, David Haven Blake places the self-styled "good grey poet" against the backdrop of America's developing intellectual identity and popular culture. A very good read. The 1850s was a time of lecture societies, and an expanding awareness of a specifically American intellectual identity. The search for a "native American" literary style, independent of European models, was a cultural imperative. Whitman felt he was the answer to that call. It was also the time of Barnum and the rise of consumer culture. Whitman offered himself, seemingly, as an entity (or commodity) that would effect happiness and harmony with the world.

Far more interesting to me than the poetry was Whitman's sheer audacity. He craved attention. He self-published Leaves of Grass then published reviews of his own work anonymously ("An American bard at last!"). Later he compiled various laudatory comments and reviews and included these as an addendum to later editions of the book. Throughout his life, it seems, Whitman was compelled to ceaselessly promote himself. "The public is a thick skinned beast," he confided to a friend,"and you have to keep whacking away it its hide to let it know you're there."

David Haven Blake's point, which was a new angle to me at least, was that celebrity in the mid-19th century could be seen as a true democratic phenomenon. Fame (and possible subsequent wealth) created and bestowed by the people– rather than by birth, class or inheritance–was, in a sense, sanctioned by popular vote. The celebrity was the embodiment of a culture sanctioned by the people, and an affirmation of the great American experiment.
images: “a 2/3 length with hat outdoor rustic”--This 1877 photograph was Whitman's favorite and caused much to-do with acolytes and early scholars who argued about this butterfly. Whitman tried to foster the idea that the creature was real and had somehow alighted upon his finger... in the midst of a photo studio. In 1995, someone found the butterfly in a cache of Whitmaniana that had gone missing from the Library of Congress in 1942. If you look carefully at the mottled patterning of the paper wing, however, it does NOT match that of the wing in the portrait... Further mystery?

Addendum: The WW cultishness was bizarre. The New York Times ran nearly continuous bulletins of his health topped by absurd headlines:
"Walt Whitman Still Alive" January 4, 1892
"Whitman Helpless" January 6
"Walt Whitman Eats and Drinks" January 14

It Fooled the Cat

John Frederick Peto [1854-1907]
Reminiscences of '65

William Michael Harnett [1848-1892]
The Letter Rack
The Faithful Colt

John Haberle [1856-1933]
A Bachelor's Drawer (and 2 details)
The Slate

I just finished The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum by James W. Cook. He examines the curious strain in 19th century popular culture of illusionism (the self conscious aesthetic and cultural mode that "exists on the boundary between fact and fiction") and artful deception (which employs illusionism but purports to be real). Illusionism pervaded a range of 19th century entertainment, from Barnum's "humbugs," like the Feejee Mermaid, to Paul Phillipoteaux's Gettysburg Cyclorama, through all sorts of magic lantern displays, wax figures and sleights-of-hand. I imagine Cook could include the rage for seances, mediums and spirit images as well, though he doesn't go into these. In Cook's view, the public's passion for deceptive spectacle was influenced by the new "discourse" of advertising, social hierarchies and the expansion of the middle class, and the scientific inquiries of the time. Why was it though, that in a time of exacting definitions of propriety, when morality was strictly parsed and appearances were de facto comments on pedigree, society was thrilled by the questionable, and the ambiguous?

I was particularly interested in his chapter on trompe l'oeil painting--a genre which relied on spectacle. Numerous notices of the time described audiences that gathered to argue, gape at and dispute the nature of the paintings. Many of these paintings were run-away pop-cultural hits.
Art critics of any standing, though, customarily dismissed trompe l'oeil work, likening it to the "curiosities" that garnered crowds at dime museums– vulgar and without merit. The work was easily employed in aesthetic and social judgments: if you like this stuff you are a philistine or a rube.

Harnett, Haberle, and Peto --three of the most successful trompe l'oeil painters–often used commercial packaging and other ephemera in their work (like the Dadaists would literally do 20-40 years later). But they were consummate nostalgia-peddlars (a pretty new idea at the time, the sentimental as cottage industry) who incorporated emblems of the West and cowboy life, Civil war paraphernalia, souvenir images of Lincoln, even recalling the good old days beside Grandma's Hearthstone. They played to growing anxieties in contemporary society that modernity was erasing a way of life.

The heyday of trompe l'oeil was essentially contemporaneous with Impressionism, or maybe a bit after. Most people think of latter as the aesthetic break-- edgy and avant garde while the former was populist and easily digested. An idea that intrigued me in the book was that trompe l'oeil, while not leading to Modernism, was never-the-less part of a changing visual mode. These sorts of perceptual 'experiments' lead to visual education and redefined the viewer as subjective participant. Visual doubt, essentially, was part of the lead up to modernity.

Also worth noting is the fact that yesterday's avant garde (Impressionism) is today's greeting card art, while the overlooked populist work is the stuff of art historical criticism.

Victor Prevost

Originally from France, Prevost (1820-1881) established a photography studio at 627 Broadway in New York around 1854. He worked in the calotype method which produced a waxed paper negative and allowed multiple image copies to be made– as opposed to the popular daguerreotype which created a single unique image. His studio failed rather quickly but he continued to photograph around New York City for years.

These ethereal, ghostly views of New York are, of course, misleading: The city was bustling and experiencing tremendous manufacturing expansion. The camera was fixed on the stable, unmoving buildings as people, carriages, horses and carts moved through the image, the exposure being too long to capture their presence. And now, in most cases, the buildings have moved on as well, their presence proving, essentially, momentary.

The exhibition of these images and other of Prevost's work is at the New-York Historical Society until October 19th.

From top:

Engine room at the Crystal Palace, 1854

Gurney’s Daguerrean Gallery, undated, 349 Broadway corner of Leonard Street
There were more than 100 daguerreotype saloons in New York City in the mid-nineteenth century and Jeremiah Gurney, "photographist," operated one of the most succesful ones. The Illustrated News (12 November 1853) reported that, “Mr. Gurney’s establishment consists of nine spacious rooms, devoted exclusively to his art.”

Old Herring’s Safe Factory, undated, Hudson Street between 12th and 13th Streets
Portions of the building remain today. I love the type on this building.

Ringuet-Leprince, Marcotte & Co. showroom, 1854, 343-347 Fourth Avenue
A favorite of the elite in mid-nineteenth century New York City, eminent French furniture manufacturers Ringuet-Leprince, Marcotte & Co. (1849–60), produced Louis XVI and "Renaissance Revival" style piles of walnut, satin and marquetry. [Note the signs– where did all those beautiful hand-painted wooden signs and letters go...]

Marble Working Establishment of P. Gori, undated, Broadway and 20th Street.
Lord & Taylor would move to this building in 1872.

Clothing Store of Alfred Munroe & Co., 1854, at 441 Broadway between Grand Street and Howard Street, just north of Canal Street.