BY ALIDA ORZECHOWSKI
an American Poet - a voice In 1855, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a letter that was so encompassing that would become one of the most famous and powerful that it could be pieces of correspondence in American representative of the country literary history. as a whole. That year was a difficult time for the “The poet is the person adolescent country. Already sharply in whom these powers are divided over the issue of slavery, “free in balance, the man without soilers” and pro-slavery factions were impediment, who sees and quickly disintegrating into bloody violence. handles that which others The ongoing gold rush and westward dream of, traverses the whole expansion was continuing to displace native scale of experience, and is populations, while the same year, and representative of man, in without irony, a white, anti-immigrant party virtue of being the largest in Cincinnati would attack a local Germanpower to receive and to American neighborhood for being foreigners. impart,” he wrote. In Concord, Emerson’s wife Lidian protested In that tense July of 1855, the state of the Union and slavery by hanging Emerson felt he had finally black bunting from their house on the 4th of found his Poet and a few days July. Thoreau was ill almost that entire year later wrote to the 36-year-old and Waldo fretted about his friend’s decline. Whitman, saying “I greet you Hawthorne and his family were away in at the beginning of a great England, and the Alcotts were scattered, still career…I am not blind to the worth of the a few years away from taking up residence at wonderful gift of Leaves of Grass…” Emerson what would become Orchard House. then delivered his highest In this anxious compliment, stating “I find environment it the most extraordinary Emerson piece of wit and wisdom received a thin that America has yet book of poems, contributed.”1 anonymously sent from New The letter would eventually York, but bearing be published (without the name Walter Emerson’s knowledge) and Whitman along would serve to ensure the Walt Whitman, with that of the book’s success. In later publisher. This was years, there would be some Song of Myself XXXI the first edition backtracking by both men of Leaves of Grass. with Emerson asking the poet To Emerson, that little book of poetry was a to tone down some of the volume’s explicit direct answer to a call that was issued more sexual references, and with Whitman later than a decade previously. denying Emerson was ever an influence, In his 1844 Essays: Second Series, Emerson despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. had included an essay called The Poet, in Regardless of their eventual disagreements, which he expressed the need and desire for the gentle transcendentalist and the rough
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars
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Discover CONCORD
| Summer 2020
Walt Whitman
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The Concord Sage and an American Poet
New York native were now inextricably linked to each other and to American literary history. The Sage of Concord called, and was answered by the first “poet of democracy” - a man who spoke not as himself, but as the voice of the country, in all its horror and glory, its beauty and sorrow. Or as Whitman famously put it in Song of Myself, his epic ode to America, Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) ————————————————————————— Alida Vienna Orzechowski has served as the Director of Marketing and historic interpreter at The Old Manse, Board Member of Thoreau Farm Trust, and a member of the Concord Historical Collaborative. She is the founder of Concord Tour Company and is a licensed Concord guide. Letter, Ralph Waldo Emerson to Walt Whitman extolling Whitman’s poetry, 21 July 1855. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mcc.012/.
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