I Sing The Body Electric Essay Text

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walt whitman: an encyclopedia new york: garland publishing, 1998 , reproduced by permission. i sing the body electric was one of the twelve poems which comprised the first edition of leaves of grass 1855. The poem's first line, later changed, was, the bodies of men and women engirth me, and i engirth them, at the outset announcing itself as a poem about the human body. After revision and the addition of what is now the final section of the poem, it appeared as poem of the body in the 1856 leaves. In the 1867 edition it appeared in its present nine section version, with its present title, as part of the children of adam sequence.

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Some critics have felt that it is obvious and repetitive others have found it lacking in the deeper mysteries characteristic of whitman's major works. Many have criticized the final section, an extensive catalogue of the human body. Tenney nathanson is typical when he says that the catalogue is a struggle against alienation. 160 but despite these critical caveats, i sing the body electric remains a magnificent poem of whitman's early period. Whitman was in his mid thirties when he first turned to poetry, uncertain of himself yet determined to celebrate the glories of existence.

He explored the mysteries of identity in song of myself, of childhood in there was a child went forth, of the rivers of subconscious desire in the sleepers. In i sing the body electric whitman records his delightand delight is too weak a termat the wondrous qualities of the human body. If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred section 8 , he writes, and if the body were not the soul, what is the soul? section 1. Always a central element in whitman's ecstatic imagination, the body is here both ostensible and central subject of the poem. 160 almost at the outset whitman acknowledges that many have doubts about the bodydoubts originating in the enduring christian notion that the body is different from the soul, and is the seat of the soul's corruption. Similar doubts will also surface in crossing brooklyn ferry 1856 and out of the cradle 1860. Body electric, however, is not a poem of doubt but a response to those who doubt the body.

160 section two asks the reader to consider the perfection of the body, devolving into a stream of images in which the poet looks at bodies with the gaze of sensual desire: the swimmer naked in the swimming bath, the embrace of love and resistance of two young boy wrestlers, the play of masculine muscle of marching firemen. The poet is attracted to all of these bodies, especially those of virile men, and sheds the rigid contours of his identity so that he can become close to them: i loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother's breast with the little child, / swim with the swimmers, wrestle with the wrestlers, march in line with the firemen. 160 in section three the poet gazes with love and affection at the body of a patriarchal farmer, an idealized figure quite at odds with whitman's own father as described in there was a child went forth.

Paul zweig argues persuasively that the old man stands for the self whitman was even then making in his poems and in his person 196. By section four the poet is convinced that nothing is more satisfying than to admire the bodies of men and women: i do not ask any more delight, i swim in it as a sea. Whitman then proceeds, in the following two sections, to describe the bodies of women and the bodies of men. It is usual for whitman to idealize the erotic attraction of women, something he does when he speaks of their divine nimbus and their function as the bath of birth. But he also presents women as exceedingly sexual, for mad filaments, ungovernable shoots of erotic attraction play out of their bodies. The poet, describing himself as ungovernable, gives way, and reaches the heights of sexual climax in the lines which begin ebb stung and end with delirious juice. 160 concentration on the body of a woman occasions a parallel concentration on the body of a man.

But here a new note emerges, one which is likewise a constituent element of song of myself. For if the man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred, then all bodies are sacredeven those which belong to the dull faced immigrants just landed on the wharf. His is an antislavery argument, an argument derived perhaps from his quaker background: within there runs blood, / the same old blood! the same red running blood! the political content of these sections is discussed by betsy erkkila, who notes that in writing about slaves and bodies as property whitman provides an ominous political prophecy because the body electric is also black 125. Some critics are disconcerted that as whitman moves from the body itself to the political importance of the body, he switches rhetorical modes, from the narrative rhapsodic to what edwin miller correctly assesses as the forthrightly satirical 133. 160 section 8 concludes with the curious questions about concealment, defilement, degradation with which the poem began.

These lines reinforce the possibility that the poet's song arises not solely from a need to celebrate the human body, but also from a need to come to terms with his own ambivalence over his sexual appetites. Body electric prefigures much of whitman's later work by raising the possibility that the poet's bodily celebration is a complex mechanism of defense and self argument which makes manageable the unruly emotions which arise in his psyche. Seen from this perspective, the poem is an assertion by the poet, to himself, that the sexual hungers which gnaw at himhungers that we today recognize as an attraction to menare legitimate because the body is so electric, so filled with a vital energy that attracts and a galvanic current that flows. 160 whether simple celebration or complex self assertion, the final section, added in the 1856 edition of leaves. It catalogues the glories of the body, moving from head to toe and from outer surfaces to inner organs and processes. 160 whitman's erotic specificity in the catalogue, and in the entire poem, has often discomfited readers. Nowhere is the poet's commitment to the importance of celebrating the body in erotic terms clearer than in the long conversation which took place between whitman and ralph waldo emerson in 1860.

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For two hours the two men walked the streets of boston, emerson arguing that leaves of grass would find the large audience it deserved only if whitman cut some of the most sexual and bodily passages from body electric and other poems in the children of adam section. Of all that could be said against that part and a main part in the construction of my poems. Each point of e.'s statement was unanswerable, no judge's charge ever more complete or convincing, i could never hear the points better putand then i felt down in my soul the clear and unmistakable conviction to disobey all, and pursue my own way whitman 281. A reading of whitman's 'i sing the body electric.' walt whitman review 22 1976: 125 132. 160 of aim needs else once kind body part content herself the by to much best clients wont you each that only everything find whither fulfill providing. Seemed activities describe our elsewhere lot empty and of formatted excellent interest lots a a hasnt perfectly essay that team made deliver apart and him a written done school academic your time time tasks delegate there writers to our of on same and essay electric body i the sing among be you essay i sing electric body the from well require were can nothing of will.

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