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1881?. Charles H. Spieler, Philadelphia. Saunders #101. Courtesy
Alderman Library, University of Virginia. This was the
frontispiece to the Complete Poems and Prose of Walt Whitman
1855 . . . 1888. Whitman came to call this photo the
"Spieler
profile," and he sent copies to friends. Whitman's friend Thomas
Donaldson remembers an anti-slavery anniversary celebration in
Philadelphia in December 1883 when Whitman brought a copy of the
photo for John Greenleaf Whittier, who never showed up. In
1888, when deciding on this photo for the frontispiece to his
Complete Poems and Prose, Whitman said, "It was made
seven or eight
years ago--made by Spieler. I think I am the only one who
likes it. . . ." Once he even called it "the
best picture. . . .
not only as a work of art (where it is effective,
refined),
but because so thoroughly characteristic of me--of the
book--
falls in line with the purposes we had in view at the
start."
One of those purposes had to do with the nature of the
profile
itself: "It is appropriate: the looking out : the face
away from
the book. Had it looked in how different would have
been its
significance. . . . I am after nature first of all:
the out
look of the face in the book is no chance." Whitman felt
this
portrait "resembles the beautiful medallions we
sometimes see."
He was disappointed that the original print had been
touched up
and that a "top-knot and Romeo Italian curls" had been
added
(he instructed the photoengraver that "Walt Whitman
never has
had, has not now, Italian curls--or the semblance of
'em"), and
he was relived when they were successfully removed. He
worked
at reading the significance of this photo: "What does
it
express? . . . it says nothing in particular--suggests,
what?
Not inattention, not intentness, not devil-may-care,
not
intellectuality: then what is it? . . . It is
truth--that is
enough to say: it is strong--it preserves the features:
yet it
is also indefinite with an indefiniteness that has a
fascination of its own. I know this head is not
favored, but I
approve it--have liked it from the first."
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