A personal reflection on why narrative matters to me
One of the most poignant lessons I learned came in a second-year English seminar. While we studied a few 18th and 19th century American authors, it was our class discussion on the narrative form of each text that stood out to me the most.
A particularly powerful poem has stuck with me over the years, and has ultimately transformed the way I read, write, and perceive literature. Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is a monumental text that revolutionized American literature. Whitman worked on Leaves of Grass for many years, and once it was published for the first time in 1855 (with a beautiful and mesmerizing preface), he continued to work on the text throughout the entirety of his career. The text, then, fused with the enigma and personality of Whitman himself, who altered and changed passages of crucial poems within Leaves of Grass as his own life changed. The notion of working on a single text for your entire lifetime and constantly changing it along the way is extremely significant, because it demonstrates the dynamic nature of poetry and the fluidity of narrative.
Perhaps it is wrong of me to think of Whitman’s pivotal text in this manner, however, the material, physical text itself has inevitably become a part of the narrative the textprojects. In a way, Whitman’s nitpicking and his constantly changing sentences, verses, or stanzas, contribute to one of the most prevalent themes in Leaves of Grass. Specifically, Whitman’s powerful idea of fluidity and affection closes the generational gap between readers in the 19th century and contemporary readers of our day and age. The poem, and through the narrative structure of Leaves of Grass, which is constantly dipping in the ebb and flow of Whitman’s prophetic river, illuminates the powerful capability of narrative to transform and create meaning in a truly impactful way.
One particular poem within Leaves of Grass, titled “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” demonstrates a crucial moment in which it seems Whitman is speaking forwards towards other generations, bridging that gap between physical proximity and intimacy. Somehow, Whitman invites the reader to his world and urges them to see the same curious faces of people he is presently seeing. “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” is one of Whitman’s shorter poems throughout the text, it provides readers with the opportunity to catch of a glimpse of the humanity of which Whitman dreams. The narrative structure of the poem is worthy of its own editorial, however, I’d like to borrow only a few lines from the poem in an attempt to further demonstrate the significance of this poem to me.
In the fifth stanza of the poem, Whitman writes, “What is it, then, between us? / What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us? / Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not.”
These short lines are quite powerful to me, because they signal a shift in my academic thinking. If I had to categorize my education at university, I’d confidently label my first couple of years as pre-Whitman, and the later years as post-Whitman. Thankfully, I still like to think I am living in the post-Whitman era. Notions of distances, longevity, and intimacy all propel forward within these few simple lines in “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” Whitman asks us, as readers, what is between us? While Whitman did reside in Brooklyn for a majority of his life, the “between” he is referring to transcends the restrictions of physical space. The pivotal question Whitman is asking us refers to a deeper and more intimate realm of humanity. Essentially, Whitman is speaking to future generations of people, who will ultimately view and experience similar landscapes, facial expressions, and complex emotions.
In the closing section of the poem, Whitman builds upon his interaction with future generations and concludes the poem with a mixture of intimacy and uncertainty. Whitman writes:
“You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers, / We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward, / Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us, / We use you, and do not cast you aside—we plant you permanently within us, / We fathom you not—we love you—there is perfection in you also, / You furnish your parts toward eternity, / Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.”
Whitman’s passage evokes a sense of longing and sentiment in an attempt to communicate with others who are not physically present. Whitman is aware of the triviality of his endeavours—he has no idea how future generations will react to his work, or how they will interact with one another while on a ferry. That being said, Whitman utilizes the lack of certainty in his idea and attempts to reassure the reader of a larger, broader idea that concerns us all—the essence of what is between us. For Whitman, the soul remains the only thing that is constant and certain between humans, and whether we choose to engage with Whitman’s work 100 years from now or not, his recognition of something common and inherent between humans of different generations proves to indicate a powerful message.
Ultimately, Leaves of Grass is a crucial poetic text whose unique and fluid narrative structure contributes to the overall message of the text itself. Through investigating the narrative form of Whitman’s text, we are able to draw parallels between the ways each individual poem functions in the book and the larger thematical concerns of the poet himself.
Whitman’s pivotal Leaves of Grass meaningfully changed the way I read and write. The text continues to be prevalent in my life and continues to influence me whenever I recollect about the powerful concepts the narrative form is able to convey.