The Evolution of Section 1 of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself"

I have long known that the first edition of Walt Whitman's seminal book of poetry Leaves of Grass, published in 1855, was much shorter than the final edition (the so-called "death-bed edition" of 1891-1892.) (The first edition had twelve poems in it; the last (depending on how you count) ten or more times that.) I was less focused on the fact that, in addition to poems being added, the older poems were rewritten as the editions went on. And only in the last day or two have I taken note of the fact that that rewriting was a gradual process, as various poems I've come to know and love in their final forms only took those final forms in the 1881-1882 edition. (The death-bed edition was unchanged, save for a number of poems added as "annexes" at the end.)

In this post I thought I'd trace the changes in the first section of "Song of Myself" -- probably Whitman's most famous,* and arguably his greatest, poem, and certainly the most famous and greatest one from the first edition of Leaves of Grass. And, not incidentally, my personal favorite too.

(Note: all the texts here are from the astonishing Walt Whitman Archive, which has both text and scanned-page-image versions of all the editions of Leaves of Grass, as well as a really amazing amount of Whitmania. If you're at all interested in Whitman, check it out.)

First I should mention that, the title of the work underwent several changes. In the 1855 edition, the poem later known as "Song of Myself" was basically untitled.** There were no numbers (the final text was divided into 52 sections). The opening words were:

I CELEBRATE myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease . . . . observing a spear of summer grass.

And that's it: there's then another stanza break, and the next words are the words that (in the final text) start section two ("Houses and rooms are full of perfumes"). Note that the ellipsis in the final line above is in the original.

In the second edition of 1857, a mere two years later, the poem has acquired a title: "Poem of Walt Whitman, an American.". Its opening is as follows:

I CELEBRATE myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass.

That is, substantially the same, but the ellipsis is gone.

In the 1860 edition, the poem's title has been shortened to "Walt Whitman". The text is unchanged -- save for the addition of a capital letter on soul's s -- but each subsection is now numbered:

1 I CELEBRATE myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.

2 I loafe and invite my Soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass.

These numbers do not correspond to the section numbers of the final text; one is given to each stanza, so there are 366 in total, far more than the 52 sections of the final text.

In the 1867 edition, the only difference is that the commas at the end of the first, second and fourth lines have become semi-colons. In the 1871 edition, nothing at all has changed in the opening.

Then, in the 1881-1882 edition, there are a host of changes, as the poem takes on its final form. First, it first takes on the title "Song of Myself", by which it has since been known. Secondly, the poem is now divided into 52 sections rather than numbering each stanza. And the first section takes on its final form:

I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

The commas are back. And the first line is filled out -- "I celebrate myself" has become "I celebrate myself, and sing myself". I definitely prefer the latter, but I don't know if it's because it was the first I got to know well.

But there are two wholly new stanzas, adding a substantial amount of text between the "spear of summer grass" and the "houses and rooms" which starts section 2.

They are not, however, original to the 1881 edition. Rather, they were moved to "Song of Myself" from a different poem -- the poem that would become known as "Starting from Paumanok".

"Starting from Paumanok" does not exist in any form in either 1855 or the 1857 editions. In the 1860 edition, however, a set of prefatory stanzas -- numbered, as were the stanzas of "Walt Whitman" (aka "Song of Myself"); there were 66 total -- were added before the words "I celebrate myself", which had previously been the first words of the first poem. In the 1860 edition those prefatory verses were titled "Proto-Leaf", and the 11th and 12th stanzas were as follows:

11 In the Year 80 of The States,
My tongue, every atom of my blood, formed from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here,
From parents the same, and their parents' parents the same,
I, now thirty-six years old, in perfect health, begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

12 Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while, sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
With accumulations, now coming forward in front,
Arrived again, I harbor, for good or bad—I permit to speak,
Nature, without check, with original energy.

Close to the two stanzas that would be added to section one of "Song of Myself", but not identical -- a few lines never made it into "Song of Myself" -- particularly the first line ("In the Year 80 of The States") and the middle of the second stanza ("With accumulations, now coming forward in front,/Arrived again..."). And there are some minor changes of punctuation and line formatting.

"The Year 80 of The States", incidentally, is presumably dated to the Declaration of Independence, which would place it from July 14, 1856 - July 13, 1857. Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, so for most of that year he was 37 years old, turning 38 shortly before the end of the period. Nevertheless, in this version Whitman describes himself as "thirty-six years old"; he wouldn't update (correct?) that until the 1881-1882 edition (at which point he was 62). Oh, and it was Balboa, not Cortes, Mr. K.***

In the 1867 edition, the prefatory verses had become "Starting from Paumanok", and is divided into sections, although each stanza is still individually numbered. Section 4 of the newly-titled poem reads:

11 In the Year 80 of The States,
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here, from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-six years old, in perfect health, begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

12 Creeds and schools in abeyance,
(Retiring back a while, sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,)
I harbor, for good or bad—I permit to speak, at every hazard,
Nature now without check, with original energy.

The extra lines from the second of those two stanzas are gone. As if in compensation, the final line gains the word "now". And the punctuation is still different -- the second line is in parentheses, there's the m-dash in the third, and a few commas are different. The first stanza is changed largely in line breaks and punctuation (including, oddly, the previously normal word "formed" becoming here "form'd").

The 1871 edition made no changes in those verses.

Then, in 1881-1882, they are not only given a few changes, but are translated from the fourth section of "Starting from Paumanok" to being the second half of the first section of (the newly christened) "Song of Myself".

Which I've already quoted.

I haven't yet read through all the various versions side by side, or even the 1855 version and the final 1881-1882 text side-by-side, to see how this goes through the whole poem. My sense is that, given the transposed stanzas, this section goes through larger changes than most. But I don't know. I do know that a fair number of Whitman scholars apparently prefer the 1855 version -- and that, based on this little exercise, I -- so far -- don't.

Still, it's all interesting. At least to people given to Nortonian pedantry (are you reading the footnotes?)

_________________________
* Its only competitor for this title, I think, is O Captain! My Captain!, which is widely taught in schools -- but which is also utterly uncharacteristic of Whitman, as atypical a work (at least in form) as he ever wrote (at least in his mature period).

** It was headed with the words 'Leaves of Grass', the title of the book of the whole, as were half of the dozen poems included, but it's not really a title and has never been taken as such.

*** Or was it? It seems there are counter-arguments to this oft-made puff of Nortonian pedantry (who knew?): see C. V. Wicker, "Cortez-Not Balboa", in College English, Vol. 17, No. 7 (Apr., 1956), pp. 383-387, expanded on in Charles J. Rzepka, "'Cortez: Or Balboa, or Somebody like That': Form, Fact, and Forgetting in Keats's 'Chapman's Homer' Sonnet", in Keats-Shelley Journal , Vol. 51, (2002), pp. 35-75. (Links to stable JSTOR cites for those with library-granted access.) I only skimmed the first of them, but it seems to me like Wicker has a pretty decent argument.