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Advance shapes like his shape

About This Item

  • Title: Advance shapes like his shape
  • Date: Between 1854 and 1860
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: tex.00028
  • Source: The Walt Whitman Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin. 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: The ellipses would suggest that this is an early manuscript, probably written in the mid- to late-1850s. It is an adaptation of notes Whitman took about Egypt, almost certainly from his reading of Sir John Gardner Wilkinson's Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, 3 vols. (London: John Murray, 1837). Related information about Sesostris appears on page 29 of the first volume in Wilkinson's collection, though Whitman may have been reading a different edition. Whitman used the information in his article "One of the Lessons Bordering Broadway: The Egyptian Museum," published in Life Illustrated on December 8, 1855. Similar descriptions of Sesostris appear in several of Whitman's other notes and manuscripts, including "Immortality was realized" and "Abraham's visit to Egypt," two sets of manuscript notes about Egypt that Edward Grier dates to between 1855 and 1860 (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 5:1922; 6:2022); and the notebook "women," including the fragments from that notebook that Whitman reused to create the larger page "Chronological."
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Advance shapes like his shape." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: tex.00028.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] 10 ½ Advance shapes like his shape—the 
  king of Egypt's shape, Shapes that tally Sesostris—gigantic 
  in stature, polished, wholesome, clear-eyed, Six feet ten inches high— tall—of noble head 
  and bearded face, Every limb, every part and organ in 
  proportion—strong, ^bearded, supple, Conqueror of two continents in nine years, Lover most of those that repelled 
  him sternest . . . . builder to them 
  of phallic memorials, Ruler of his race men wisely and friendlily 
  for sixty-two years, . . . . accepter  
 , Accepter of all religions—preferer of none, Freer of slaves . . . . —,giver to farmers of  
  their own homesteads. divider among 
  them of homesteads not . . . . maker of 
  farmers.—   [begin leaf 1 verso]
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