Ok so first off I am finding this a tad hard to follow, but based on what we discussed in class today, I will give it my best shot. So I'm guessing that sense he says the word America repeatedly and because we have been discussing this theme, Whitman is once again addressing the topic of "What is an American?". And it seems like he has some pretty lofty things to say about Americans. He acknowledges the fact in the first paragraph that America has gone through quite a few things, not all of them good, and learned a lot from them. However, the American is able to leave those things in the past and find the thing that is appropriate to the present. And then he goes on to say that Americans are perfect because blah blah blah. At least that's what I'm getting out of it. Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know. He seems a bit conceded to me.
The third paragraph is the one that seems a bit more contradictory though. In class you said that Emerson was a huge influence on Whitman, but Whitman advocates that the power of America lies with the common man. Whitman says "the genius of the United States is not best or most in its.... authors or colleges[,]... but always most in the common people." Doesn't Emerson advocate that the genius of America lies in the authors and colleges? That the common people play an important role, but are really just people to do the labor and keep society functioning. That the scholars were really the ones who ran the country? I guess I'm just trying to understand how Whitman can be a supporter of Emerson but have such a major contradiction in the preface of is book?
Emerson offers the idea that the scholars are the thinking part of the creature Man. He says that everyone has a role in the functioning of this Man, but the scholars he addresses have the responsibility for telling the story of what is happening. Whitman picks up on the idea that someone must tell the story, but he says that the story is being created by the 'common man.' When stories were told of the history of previous times, one might find stories of kings and queens and nobles. This new thing that is happening in America is different, at least in part, because the important parts of the story are created by others than the legislators, presidents, professors, etc.
ReplyDeleteThe word that you are looking for in the first paragraph is 'conceited' instead of 'conceded.' And -- yes, Whitman might seem to be that way. The reason that he appears this way has to do with 'presentism' if you remember the discussion of that term from class. During the time period when Whitman is writing, a kind of pride existed because this American experiment was still new. In no other place on the earth was the common man given such opportunity as here. In no other place was such abundance of resources to be found. It was a heady time to be a part of. Perhaps it is easy for us today to lose part of the excitement. We have known nothing else but what these folks passed on to us.