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Such things

About This Item

  • Title: Such things
  • Date: Undated
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.00167
  • Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Transcribed from digital images of the original. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This heavily revised manuscript consists of prose notes describing the "mental and moral connexions" between America and other lands. Whitman's use of the phrase "full sized men" suggests the composition date may have been the 1850s, as he used a similar phrase in the Preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, in his 1856 reply to Emerson's letter of praise for the first edition of Leaves, and in the poem "Song of the Broad-Axe" (first published as "Broad-Axe Poem" in 1856). However, it does not seem that this manuscript directly contributed to any of those works. The paper and ink appear to match that of another manuscript, "Still More Is Due," which Edward Grier dates to the 1850s, noting that "[t]he paper may be the yellow end paper noted in a 2nd. issue of LG 1855" by Clifton J. Furness and Fredson Bowers (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 5:1918).
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Such things." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 18 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: loc.00167.xml (TEI)

Key

Textual Feature Appearance
Overwritten brown with strikethrough
Added inline purple with double underline
Uncertain gray with wavy underline
Supplied from another source turquoise with brackets
Metamark green with triple underline
Long deletion gray background with top and bottom border
  [begin leaf 1 recto]

I have said these such ^these last things ^Such things, because I would perceive of America These The States ^that and the ^full sized men and women of The States, that they cannot begin to ^understand themselves, or fulfil themselves, unless they ^without they realizing their ^along with our their individuality, ^our their intimate mental and moral connexions ^(of others, of course, more intimate and ample every day) with all the ancestor- European lands.——perhaps all lands.—They ^Those have their forests ^stages and modes of development—We have ours.— Have we then to Are we then be to be mere repeaters? No, we I would draw the lands rapport [illegible] with other lands them are not nothing to America us, but are to be drawn close.— but out [cut away] race

  [begin leaf 1 verso]
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