Title: For remember that behind all
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: Between 1845 and 1860
Whitman Archive ID: loc.05334
Source: The Thomas Biggs Harned Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1842–1937, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Transcribed from digital images of the original. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.
Editorial note: Edward Grier notes that this scrap contains ideas similar to those found in what would become section 4 of the poem eventually titled "Song of Myself." But Grier also indicates that the manuscript could be notes for a lecture that Whitman was planning (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 6:2047). In either case, the manuscript likely dates to the 1850s.
Contributors to digital file: Kirsten Clawson, Janel Cayer, Kevin McMullen, Nicole Gray, and Kenneth M. Price
For remember that behind all this show of ostensible life, of every man and woman,—of you hearing me now [in?] these talks, amusements, dress, money, politics, &c. stands the real life of every man and woman of you who hear me now