The Disembodied Thoughts of a Profound, Poetic Thinker

Step 1: While exploring Walt Whitman's journals, one thing is clearly evident: Whitman's scattered thoughts and rushed scrawling embody Mrs. G's catch phrase "to jot down a few thoughts." His scribble comes across as profound yet muddled, intelligible thoughts written in an unintelligible form. This shows that Whitman would catch glimpses of world-understanding, of philosophical realizations, and quickly pencil them in before the thought fled. Often times his scrawl would rhythmically resemble poetry, but mostly they would resemble sentence fragments. Also, towards the end of the text, Whitman scribbled pictures of who I would guess to be himself, Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington. One drawing of Lincoln appeared dark, with Lincoln's face in a shadow, which commonly symbolizes evil. The image of George Washington looks like he is stuck through the heart with a sword. Both images suggest that Whitman's mind has reached a dark state, that these revered men must have done something that, to Whitman, damaged their image.

For example, in his journals, Whitman rambles on about a ship. In several different contexts he mentions a "ship of liberty," a "ship of the world,"a "ship of humanity," a "ship of promise," and a "ship of the ages." He uses this ship metaphor in order to explore one particular aspect of life: trials and tribulations. He says later, "welcome the storm, welcome the trial, let the waves... why now I shall see what the old ship is made of... anybody can sail with a fair wind, a smooth sea... watch them tremble and turn pale, let them... I welcome this menace, I welcome this with joy." The rough waters and trembling waves he describes symbolize life's trials and hardships, and the ship represents people and their resilience and strength when thrown into life's sea storm. This extended metaphor tells us that Whitman faced many trials, eagerly, in his own life and could recognize their value.

Step 2: What I originally believed to "liberty," actually turned out to be "libertad." The description notes this word, as it is the Spanish word for liberty, and ponders the purpose behind this language change. Why did Whitman use the Spanish word for liberty here, and why did he use Spanish words in many of his other English poems? I wonder if it has something to do with the pronunciation or the flow of the poetry. Of course, it could also be used to reach a different target audience, Spanish-American readers, or it could also have a slightly different, untranslatable connotation in Spanish that Whitman thought was more accurate.

Also, though I did not mention this line in my initial investigation, The New York Times interestingly points out one phrase at the end of one page that says, in reference to the "ship of liberty," "I shall see the crash." They said that Whitman added the word "perhaps" to his musing in order to give the reader hope, and to not give the impression that the looming cataclysm is not inevitable. I find this fascinating--Whitman has no desire to look upon the world with pessimism and has no need to be blatantly negative with his audience.

Also, The New York Times helpfully connects the line "anybody can sail with a fair wind, a smooth sea" to Whitman's imaginary dialogue with Lincoln. He hints at Lincoln's upcoming challenges surrounding the civil war, and ponders the fact that Lincoln will face harrowing hardships never before experienced by his presidential predecessors. He also refers to the disheartening fate of the United (rather the not-so-united) States when he describes "black clouds, clouds of death."

Finally, The New York Times informs us that the drawings in the back of the notebook are almost surely not by Whitman. Folsam says, "He was known to pull out his notebooks and jot things down and pass them around." I find that fascinating! It tells me that he understands one of my favorite anonymous aphorisms: Nobody ever learned anything by listening to the sound of their own voice. This seemingly small comment, to me, is a testament to Whitman's character and appreciation for the things his peers may have known that he could have learned simply by sharing his notebook. That's awesome! Besides that, my guess as to what the drawings were was completely off. All of the men represented Whitman, except the last one. In the last one, a figure of a man being impaled between night day symbolized the state of limbo our nation found herself in throughout the Civil War.