We can all agree Walt Whitman was a man of many words, phrases and lines that made us all reread, sit and think. I was given a random part of the 1855 version of Leaves of Grass, and challenged to dissect Whitman’s writing. The first line says “I speak the password primeval….” After looking up the worked primeval in the 1844 Emily Dickinson means original. Which is why I titled this paper “Original Password”. But what is this password that Whitman is referring too? The rest of the passages seems to answer that question with him speaking of the “long dumb” voices “through him”. Before we get to the voices, he follows the first line with, “I give the sign of democracy;”. What is he telling us? He, Walt Whitman, can give such a power as a government …show more content…
He is the voices of the “threads that connect the stars” wouldn’t that put him up there with God in a deep religious way? Perhaps Whitman thinks that he is God to those people that he is speaking for.
Then he is the voices of the forbidden. The sexes and lust, the veil that he claims to remove. He is “Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigured.” He thinks of these voices that he is, indecent, so he clarifies them, makes them understood, and then transfigured. He says that he does not press his figure across his mouth but he keeps delicate. He doesn’t hold anything back but he tries to be faint? Subtle? Are these people, or voices he’s taking responsibility for, even able to take such a gentle form?
…show more content…
Is he using the word appetite to polity say their desires, passions or wishes? Or the lack of the freedom they really have. Seeing hearing and feeling are miracles, but what about talking? Isn’t the freedom of speech something that America was built on? Whitman perhaps fails to mention the sense of voice, possibly because he has become the talking, or voices, of the people that can’t do so for themselves. “And a tag of me, is a miracle,” Whitman claims himself as a miracle maybe because becomes something for the people that can’t do so for themselves.
When reading Walt Whitman your body and mind goes through different emotions with him, but also you feel his different feelings. In this passage, he seems to be demanding and requiring what he is saying. He is this array of long dumb voices and essentially being a spokesperson for the people who can’t do so