Physical Description: number of leaves unknown, handwritten
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Content:
This manuscript, known only from a transcription published by Clifton Joseph Furness in
Walt Whitman's Workshop: A Collection of Unpublished Manuscripts
(Harvard University Press, 1928), 43, includes lines that appeared, in a slightly altered form, in the preface to the 1855 edition of
Leaves of Grass
, and later in the poem eventually titled "By Blue Ontario's Shore," first published in the 1856 edition of
Leaves
as "Poem of Many in One." The date of the manuscript is therefore probably before or early in 1855.
Content:
This manuscript is written on a green sheet used for the
endpapers of the first edition of the
Leaves of
Grass
(1855), an edition that
begins with a ten-page statement in prose, originally untitled and later
known generally as the 1855
Preface
. This manuscript seems to represent
an early attempt by Whitman to recast the 1855 prose
Preface
into poetry. The 1860–61 edition of
Leaves of Grass
introduced two new poems created in this way: "Poem of Many in One" (later "By Blue Ontario's Shore") and "Poem of the Last Explanation of Prudence" (later "Song of Prudence"). Neither of the published poems incorporates lines from this manuscript, though it and "Song of Prudence" are drawn from adjacent portions of the 1855 Preface.
Content:
This manuscript includes notes that anticipate the preface to the first (1855) edition of
Leaves of Grass
. Images and phrases in the second paragraph of the first leaf are reminscent of lines in both the poem eventually titled "Song of Myself" and the poem eventually titled "I Sing the Body Electric." Another line on the first leaf appeared in a slightly different form in "Poem of The Singers, and of The Words of Poems" in the 1856 edition of
Leaves
(a poem later titled "Song of the Answerer"). The stated desire for "satisfiers" and "lovers" (found here on the bottom of the second leaf) appears in "Poem of Many in One," also first published in the 1856 edition and later titled "By Blue Ontario's Shore."
Content:
This prose manuscript includes the line "Which is the poem or any book that is not diseased?" which appeared in a slightly altered form in "Poem of Many in One" in 1856. The poem, eventually titled "By Blue Ontario's Shore," was retained through subsequent editions of
Leaves
, although the line was dropped after 1860–1861.
Content:
The recto notes represent an early stage of lines partially incorporated in "Poem of Salutation," the new
third poem in the 1856 edition of
Leaves of Grass
, which was permanently retitled
"Salut au Monde!" in the
1860 edition. If the note or title "Europe" suggests that Whitman might have first
intended to divide his salutations into discrete sections based on the different
continents, this is a plan he did not follow in the published version(s). The more
polished (but deleted) lines on the verso represent a recasting in poetic form of
several lines from the 1855 Preface. These were further revised for the
1856 "Poem of Many in One,"
after which the first verse drafted on this page (cut off here, and beginning
"over the Texan, Mexican, Florid[ian,]/ Cuban seas...") was dropped. The two
verses below this, however, were preserved relatively unchanged through the poem's
many transformations until the text was essentially fixed under the title "By Blue Ontario's Shore" in
1881.
Content:
The words "Have I" at the beginning are inscribed on a small scrap of the same
paper, which Whitman pasted over some deleted words in the upper right corner that
cannot be discerned through the paper. Inscribed and extensively revised in
pencil, these verses were part of a larger set of lines before Whitman cut away
the rest. Although the page number and many words on the left side of the proof
have been cut away, the remaining words identify it as being from the "Poem of Many in One (1856)," which eventually became "By Blue Ontario's Shore." These unused but also
undeleted lines may have been intended for that poem or a number of other poems in
Leaves of Grass
.
Content:
Most of the lines in this manuscript amount to a poetic rendering of sentences and phrases drawn from the prose preface to the 1855
Leaves of Grass
and constitute a partial draft of the 1856 poem "Poem of Many In One," which eventually became "By Blue Ontario's Shore." The line at the bottom of this manuscript, partially cut away, was also drawn from the 1855 preface but was used in the 1856 poem "Liberty Poem for Asia, Africa, Europe, America, Australia, Cuba, and the Archipelagoes of The Sea," which Whitman titled, in its final version, "To a Foil'd European Revolutionaire." Draft lines on the back of this manuscript (upa.00005) also relate to the preface to the 1855
Leaves of Grass
.
Content:
These pages were written by Whitman in the early to mid-1850s. William White described the pages as "torn from a tall notebook" (
Daybooks and Notebooks
[New York: New York University Press, 1978], 773–777). White noted a relationship between these pages and the poems "Who Learns My Lesson Complete?," "By Blue Ontario's Shore," "Song of the Answerer," and "There Was a Child Went Forth." Some of the ideas and language being worked out here also appear in the poem eventually titled "Song of Myself." For a discussion of the dating and importance of this notebook, see Matt Miller,
Collage of Myself: Walt Whitman and the Making of Leaves of Grass
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010), 11–16.
Content:
A notebook Whitman used for various purposes in the mid-1850s. Edward F.
Grier, in his edition of Whitman's
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose
Manuscripts,
6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1984), 1:226–243, noted that the notebook contains lines and phrases that relate to
several poems: "Song of the
Broad-Axe,"
"Crossing Brooklyn
Ferry,"
"I Sing the Body
Electric,"
"Starting from
Paumanok,"
"A Song for
Occupations,"
"By Blue Ontario's
Shore,"
"Salut au Monde!,"
"To One Shortly to
Die," and "A
Woman Waits for Me."
Content:
A manuscript draft of the opening passage of "Poem of Many in One," first published in the 1856 edition of
Leaves of Grass
. The final title of the poem,
"By Blue Ontario's
Shore," first appeared in the 1881/1882 edition of
Leaves
. The reverse side of this leaf (duk.00886) contains both prose and verse that appears to be a draft of "Salut Au Monde!"
Content:
This manuscript entitled "Inscription" appears to be a revision of other "Inscriptions" Whitman gathered in a notebook, along with prose drafts for a never-finished introduction to
Leaves of Grass,
and attached to his copy of the 1855 paper-bound edition. (The entire collection of draft "inscription" and introductory material is currently housed at the New York Public Library.) In the 1867
Leaves of Grass
Whitman culled material from this poem and the other "Inscription" poems to create an italicized "Inscription" that he placed before "Starting from Paumanok" at the beginning of the book; in that edition he also transferred part of verse 2 to "As I Sat Alone by Blue Ontario's Shore" (later the line was dropped and the title was revised to "By Blue Ontario's Shore"). From 1872 onward, this poem, revised and retitled "One's-Self I Sing," was printed as the first of several poems in the "Inscriptions" cluster that opened the book. In the 1888
November Boughs
, however, Whitman reprinted the 1867 version as "Small the Theme of my Chant." Note: This manuscript draft may have been written before the Civil War, since it does not include the 1867 line "My Days I sing, and the Lands—with interstice I knew / of hapless War."
Whitman Archive Title: Produce great persons and the producers
Content:
Manuscript and clipping. On one side of the manuscript leaf (see the first image linked above) are several prose
notes, including two versions of a paragraph that was later revised to
become a line in "Poem of Many
In One," published in
Leaves of Grass
(1856), and eventually titled "By Blue Ontario's Shore."
The phrase "savage and luxuriant," which appears toward the bottom of this
side, was used in Whitman's open letter to Emerson, published in an appendix
to the 1856
edition of
Leaves of Grass.
On the other side of the leaf is a partial draft of "Poem of The Singers, and of the
Words of Poems," also first published in 1856. In the final edition of
Leaves of Grass
this
and another poem, which had been included in every edition since 1855, were
combined to form "Song of the
Answerer." Whitman pasted at least two newspaper clippings on the
manuscript, one on each side. However, markings on both sides of the leaf indicate that Whitman potentially pasted a third, unidentified, newspaper clipping on this manuscript. One of these, which had covered Whitman's paragraphs but has since been detached, is included in the file; another is still pasted to the manuscript.
