Song of Myself

In the first line of the poem, Walt Whitman boldly declares its subject: himself. Indeed, “Song of Myself” is, on one level, an unabashed celebration of Whitman the individual. The poet draws on real details of his life and personal experiences. He mentions his roots in Manhattan (Section 24); he alludes to the ambiguity of his sexual desires throughout the text. He even plucks a war story from his family history in Section 35. Readers have taken his point to heart. Throughout its reception history, “Song of Myself” has been closely identified, for better or for worse, with Walt Whitman himself.

But Whitman’s concept of self is more nuanced than it seems at first glance. It is true that the poem is about Whitman, but as the poet explains in the earliest lines, “Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you” (Section 1). When Whitman writes of himself, he writes of you, of me, of all of humanity. Whitman’s vision of self is informed by radical, democratic empathy.

Throughout “Song of Myself,” Whitman clarifies and revisits this idea. “In all people I see myself,” he writes in Section 20, “None more and not one a barley-corn less.” He is “no stander above men and women or apart from them” (Section 24), he is a member of a body politic made reality. And as Whitman radically accepts and loves every part of his physical body, so he accepts and loves every member of American society. His fellow man is not just his brother; he is an aspect of Whitman’s self.

Whitman did not shy away from making the point political. The implications of Section 13, in which Whitman paints a vignette of a Black cart driver, are particularly striking. The poet describes the man’s loose and open shirt, his glance “calm and commanding,” how he “tosses the slouch of his hat away from his forehead.” The pose and attitude are familiar: Whitman may be describing this famous image of himself, one which was printed in the first edition of Leaves of Grass. In 1855, before the Civil War even began, Whitman overtly mirrored himself with an African American man. In Section 10, a white frontiersman marries a Native American woman, and a white person shelters a runaway slave into his home. In Whitman’s view, a true democracy should invite all to the feast (Section 19), though materialistic capitalism may try to deny admittance (Section 42). In the last line of Section 50, Whitman makes clear his interpretation of Thomas Jefferson’s famous line in the Declaration of Independence: In America, every person should be entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.