[Two powerful & perhaps paradoxical]

Whitman Archive Title: [Two powerful & perhaps paradoxical]
Whitman Archive ID: tex.00314
Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in the Walt Whitman Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin
Series: Works, 1846-1913 and undated
Date: about 1876
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View Images: 1
Content: The idea that democracy includes the two seemingly opposite forces of individualism and group identity, expressed in this manuscript fragment, can be found in many of Whitman's published works. The comparison to centrifugal and centripetal physical forces suggests that this manuscript possibly contributed to "Nationality—(and Yet.)," which was first published in Two Rivulets (1876). It was later republished in Specimen Days & Collect (1882–83) and in Complete Prose Works (1892). The leaf has been pasted to a backing sheet, rendering the verso inaccessible.