Song of Myself

“Song of Myself” is a quintessentially American poem in its incredible diversity of influences. Like the United States itself, “Song of Myself” is a melting pot. As a journalist, writer, and voracious self-learner, Whitman was not only widely read: He recognized this aspect of himself as supremely “American,” and was motivated to weave all his realms of knowledge together into a pastiche of American life. This section will discuss three of the major literary influences on “Song of Myself”: epic poetry, the Bible, and poetic movements of Whitman’s day, primarily Romanticism and Transcendentalism.

Whitman broadcasts his intent to interact with the epic genre in the very first line of his poem: “I celebrate myself, and sing myself.” The format recalls famous openings lines of ancient Greek and Roman epic poems: Homer’s “Sing, goddess, the wrath of Peleus’ son Achilles” and “Sing to me, Muse, a man of twists and turns” and Virgil’s “I sing of arms and a man.” While Whitman’s opening line immediately situates “Song of Myself” in the epic tradition, he deploys other epic devices too, the most famous being his liberal use of the epic catalogue (for more on catalogues, see Literary Devices).

In antiquity, the epic genre explored two major themes: the concept of heroism and the founding of nations. To again use the examples of Homer and Virgil, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey focus on heroes (Achilles and Odysseus), while Virgil’s Aeneid focuses both on a hero (Aeneas) and the mythological founding of the Rome. Both of these themes are highly relevant to Whitman’s purpose in writing “Song of Myself.” First, in Section 24, Whitman fashions himself—and the idea of self in general—as the prototypical American hero. In most epics, heroes like Achilles and Odysseus possess qualities beyond that of the common man. Whitman radically posits that he and, by extension, every individual, every American “self,” is heroic in some way. This aim is clear in Section 41, where Whitman heroizes and even deifies everyday laborers. In language that could easily describe Homer’s Achilles, Whitman observes boys working on a firetruck, “their voices peal through the crash of destruction […] their white foreheads whole and unhurt out of the flames.”

Second, Whitman was intent on producing a national epic for America. Like the Roman poet Virgil, who in writing his Aeneid sought to create a uniquely Roman epic, telling a uniquely Roman foundation story. Whitman believed that to define the present, he must look to America’s past. As an epic poem, “Song of Myself” was intended to synthesize the identity of a young nation, to identify what set America apart from the rest.

To accurately paint a national portrait of America, Whitman looked to another important literary influence: Judeo-Christianity. Many passages in “Song of Myself” show clear influence from Judeo-Christian texts, particularly Scripture. While Whitman was not a practicing Christian as an adult, he had deep familiarity with the most popular translation of the Bible in his day, the King James Bible. Whitman’s innovations in free verse may have been inspired, in fact, by the varying line lengths and meters of the more poetic books of the Old Testament (like Psalms). Whitman also occasionally inhabits a God-like persona in “Song of Myself; moments like his empathy for a sex worker in Section 15 and his proclamation of his own Ten Commandments in Section 48 make the connection between Whitman and Christ clear. While Whitman was intent on the separation of church and state, he recognized that these religious texts and thoughts are crucial players in the story of America.

Finally, Whitman was influenced by poetic movements of his own day, including Romanticism and Transcendentalism. Like the Romantic lyric poets of the generation prior, such as John Keats ("Ode on a Grecian Urn," "The Eve of St. Agnes"), Lord Byron ("Prometheus," "She Walks in Beauty"), and Percy Shelley ("Ozymandias," "Queen Mab"), Whitman values rest in nature as vital for the composition of poetry. “Song of Myself” is mobilized not by action, but by a leisurely day outdoors: “I lean and loafe at my ease,” Whitman writes in Section 1, “observing a spear of summer grass.” He fixates too on the interior, emotional experience of the individual and in connecting with others through radical empathy, interests shared between Romanticism and Transcendentalism. Like his literary hero, the transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson ("Self Reliance," "Nature"), Whitman focuses on finding divinity in the mundane. He also argues for the inherent goodness and value of every person, particularly people who are independent and in harmony with nature. The Transcendentalists believed that human nature itself is pure; it is society and its institutions which corrupt (as Whitman frequently argues, e.g. Section 4 and Section 20).