10. The Wound Dresser Flashcards
Context
In 1865, Whitman published Drum-Taps, a book of poems about the Civil War.
Whitman presents, often in innovative ways, his emotional experience of the Civil War. The sequence as a whole traces Whitman’s varying responses, from initial excitement (and doubt), to direct observation, to a deep compassionate involvement with the casualties of the armed conflict. The mood of the poems varies dramatically, from excitement to woe, from distant observation to engagement, from belief to resignation. Written ten years after “Song of Myself,” these poems are more concerned with history than the self, more aware of the precariousness of America’s present and future than of its expansive promise.
In “Drum-Taps” Whitman projects himself as a mature poet, directly touched by human suffering, in clear distinction to the ecstatic, naive, electric voice which marked the original edition of Leaves of Grass….
“Those three years I consider the greatest privilege and satisfaction, (with all their feverish excitements and physical deprivations and lamentable sights,) and, of course, the most profound lesson of my life.” -WW, Three Years Summ’d Up from Specimen Days.
“The marrow of the tragedy [was] concentrated in those Army Hospitals—(it seem’d sometimes as if the whole interest of the land, North and South, was one vast central hospital, and all the rest of the affair but flanges)” -WW, The Real War Will Never Get into the Books from Specimen Days.
Themes
- Empathy, Compassion and Love
- Brotherhood
- Civil War
- The Harrowing Reality of War
To Tell a War Story- O Brien
In O Brien’s ‘To Tell a War Story’ if the media conveys honor, valor, bravery and greatness; it is not real. You can tell a real war story from its absolute and unflinching allegience to obscenity and evil.
“But in silence… and mirth goes on”
May allude to the Hindu concept of ‘maya’ or illusion. We live in an appearance and it is quickly not just forgotten but erased, as if of no importance by the tides of times.
Maturity of Whitman
In Song of Myself’s latter sections, younger WW’s attempts to become a super hero or a pre Nietzchean ubermensch strikes as too rhetorical. Whitman adopts the mantle of Christ too easily, unearned.
Nothing of the sort occurs here, just profoundest sort of human compassion, a response to the direct conctact with human suffering.
Amputation
So many amputations occured in the civil war that the number one budget was for artificial limbs in missisippi, 1868.
Paul Zwieg’s ‘Walt Whitman: The Making of a Poet’
Zwieg believed that Whitman felt awkward about his attraction to men. Working in hospitals enabled him to overcome his awkwardness. He ministered these men because they needed him and embraced him because he cared. These embraces are well beyond the sexual. It was the physical manifestation of brotherly love.
M. Wynn Thomas
“[Whitman] tried whenever possible to set potentially demeaning & humanly devastating suffering in a redeeming context, emphasizing the transfiguring courage of the sufferer, the love & care that attended him.”
M. Jimmie Killingsworth
“war becomes a matter not of struggle & glory on the field of battle […] but rather the struggle of the body to live & adjust to injuries, illness & death itself.”
