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American literature must become distinct

About This Item

  • Title: American literature must become distinct
  • Date: Between 1845 and 1855
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: rut.00010
  • Source: Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. 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 manuscript includes ideas similar to those found in the 1855 prose preface to Leaves of Grass, suggesting that the date is likely before or early in 1855. Floyd Stovall suggests that some of Whitman's ideas in this manuscript came from an article entitled "Thoughts on Reading" that appeared in the American Whig Review in May 1845 ("Notes on Whitman's Reading," American Literature 26.3 [November 1954]: 352). The manuscript is held at Rutgers University Library along with several similar manuscripts that are numbered sequentially and probably date from around or before 1855: see "dithyrambic trochee," "The only way in which," "The money value of real," and "ground where you may."
  • Notes written on manuscript: On leaf 1 recto, in unknown hand: "1"
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "American literature must become distinct." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: rut.00010.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] 1

American literature must become distinct from all others.—American writers of must become national, idiomatic, free from the genteel laws—America herself appears (she does not at all appear hitherto) in the spirit and the form of her poems, and all other literary works.—

The greatest poets submits only to himself. Is nature wild and rude, free, irregular? If nature be so, I & you to too will be so. Do you suppose Nature keeps has nothing more under those beautiful terrible irrational forms?   [begin leaf 1 verso]
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