... Traubel also sifted through the heap of manuscripts, letters, books, envelopes, magazines, and slips of paper strewn all over Whitman’s second-floor bedroom. “I live here in a ruin of debris—a ruin of ruins,” Whitman sheepishly admitted. If he proposed to burn or tear up a letter, Traubel intervened, and whenever the young man asked for some document, Whitman handed it over without protest....I'm blogging this because "a ruin of ruins" fits with something I've been thinking about: the rhetorical device seen a few days ago in the phrase "Shen’s cult following on social media had a cult following on social media." In the comments to my blog post, I said:
This could be the kind of joke I've seen many times over the years. I remember hearing it long ago when some character on TV (I think it was Gidget's unattractive female friend [Larue]) said she was so excited her "goosebumps have goosebumps."Clearly, "a ruin of ruins" is another example.
I was trying to think of other examples of the form. One would be: "My dog's fleas have fleas."
Anyway... I'm interested in Walt Whitman too. I liked this from the article:
Traubel was a committed socialist, which Whitman decidedly was not. “How much have you looked into the subject of the economic origin of things we call vices, evils, sins?” Traubel gently needled his friend. Smiling, Whitman replied with good humor, “You know how I shy at problems, duties, consciences: you seem to like to trip me with your pertinent impertinences.”And there's a big excerpt from the book, "Walt Whitman Speaks: His Final Thoughts on Life, Writing, Spirituality, and the Promise of America" (which you can buy at that link). I'll give you an excerpt of the excerpt.
This is all on a topic very much in the news these days. Can it change your mind?
America must welcome all—Chinese, Irish, German, pauper or not, criminal or not—all, all, without exceptions: become an asylum for all who choose to come. We may have drifted away from this principle temporarily but time will bring us back. The tide may rise and rise again and still again and again after that, but at last there is an ebb—the low water comes at last. Think of it—think of it: how little of the land of the United States is cultivated—how much of it is still utterly untilled. When you go West you sometimes travel whole days at lightning speed across vast spaces where not an acre is plowed, not a tree is touched, not a sign of a house is anywhere detected. America is not for special types, for the caste, but for the great mass of people—the vast, surging, hopeful, army of workers. Dare we deny them a home—close the doors in their face—take possession of all and fence it in and then sit down satisfied with our system—convinced that we have solved our problem? I for my part refuse to connect America with such a failure—such a tragedy, for tragedy it would be.
America has its purpose: it must serve that purpose to the end: I look upon the future as certain: our people will in the end read all these lessons right: America will stand opposed to everything which means restriction—stand against all policies of exclusion: accept Irish, Chinese—knowing it must not question the logic of its hospitality.
पोस्ट्स
४६ टिप्पण्या:
Chinese and Irish, sure. Muzzies, no.
Maybe all newcomers should get homesteads in those vast untilled fields. Wonder how that would go over?
America is full. Thanks for understanding.
Apres Walt, Le Deluge...
"Ruins" huh. Whitman was from Camden, NJ and it hasn't changed much since he was there.
Walt Whitman died in 1892.
I always giggle when Lefties cite some 19th Century cultural icon in an attempt to justify open borders. Those guys sure as hell weren't talking about the Mussulman. They'd be freakin' appalled.
So little has changed since 1890. We need water troughs for horses installed from sea to sea as well. And a good five cent cigar.
Whitman, late in life, was a patient of Sir William Osler. Osler said Whitman was, "A grand old man with a room the disorder of which filled me with envy."
According to a biography on Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman was the first man he ever kissed. I still don't think that's enough to get the bridge linking NJ and Philadelphia named after you, but there you have it.
I have to disagree. Fleas having fleas is parallel to a ruin having ruins. But a "Ruin of ruins" is a different form and has a different meaning. More poetic and, well, deep. Fleas have fleas is fun hyperbole and style. A ruin of ruins to me suggests something troubling and ominous. Something you can did into and explore, like ruins themselves.
Look to economics for the bases of morality and sin, and you get faculty position. Look to biology for the bases of morality and sin, and you are deplatformed.
Shane -
I am looking at that bridge right now!
Walt Whitman was no stranger to clutter. He contained multitudes and would have benefited from a visit with that Kondo woman.
America must welcome all
The population of the United States when he wrote this was about 40 million. Today it is more than 325 million.
Do his words change my mind? No. But I wonder if he'd still say it today.
He might.
Whitman was a nutter.
@William -- LOL. Sounds an plot for Haruki Muarkami.
It is worth remembering that Whitman was a 19th century person. There's a whiff of manifest destiny about his idea of America.
Wreck on a wreck is the term for a train running into the wreck of a previous train.
America was virtually an empty country when Whitman wrote. He believed in the country as a macrocosm where all the pieces would blend
together in a kind of kaleidoscope. There would be a fluid melting pot. His use of catalogue rhetoric and anaphora required that he mention
every detail connected to his topics, sometimes in a tedious, repititious way. When his poems were good, they were very, very good; when they were bad they were horrid. Compare his inflated rhetoric/poetics to that of Dickinson (the microcosm) and to Thoreau, the great precise observer.
Whitman really did not travel very far , and he frequently wrote descriptively of regions and scenes he never visited. He used broad
strokes. One could say that many of his poems were littered with disparate details, scraps of real images.
Sex workers for open boudoirs.
Remember also that there was no such thing as a welfare state when Walt Whitman was writing this.
Twas on a pile of debris that I found her
Beneath the shade of an old walnut tree
Oh I can still see the flowers blooming round her
Where we met on that pile of debris
SDaly - I always loved that bridge on the way to Phillies' games! Not such an automatic on the way home. I biked halfway across the Ben Franklin Bridge back in 1982. Didn't realize until I just about reached the crest that the cement flooring wasn't anything more than about eight foot long slabs. I looked down, saw the river, and my belly flipped. I jumped off and walked it across the rest of the way.
April 14-15 is the 154th anniversary of Lincoln's assassination, occasion of one of Whitman's greatest poems: When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
Too many unexamined and unevidenced assumptions in the paean to open borders to take it seriously. (The The New Colossus shares the same woolly and sentimental errant premises, but at least it's slightly less wordy.)
April 14-15 is also 107th anniversary of Titanic sinking, Garden State racetrack burning down, Pete Rose and my brother Jon's birthdays
Walt Whitman, consensus pick as greatest poet in American History (with Emily Dickinson keeping company) and yet I wonder how many read him today except for academic pay or credit.
The amount and rate of change are important, and can be the difference between a useful addition to the country and utter destruction. At present we take in far too many immigrants than we can usefully accept.
Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)
Favorite Whitman poems —
“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed”
Most of the “Drum Taps” poems. Check out “Beat, Beat Drums.”
He probably wrote the best American Civil War poems.
Whitman was a nutter.
He worked as a nurse with Union casualties in the war, Most nurses then were men. Florence Nightengale outraged Victorian society by taking women nurses to Istanbul. Dorothea Dix had some female nurses in the war,
Speaking of rhetoric and ruins ... https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D339I16XoAMFjw3?format=jpg&name=900x900
"fleas have fleas" -- fractal.
"ruin of ruins" -- like "king of kings", a possessive superlative hinting at orders of being.
@aec
4/11/19, 2:09 PM
readering said...
Walt Whitman, consensus pick as greatest poet in American History (with Emily Dickinson keeping company)
I prefer Carl Sandburg.
April 12 , 1955 is the most famous date in life saving vaccination history. The U of Michigan announced that Salk had defeated polio. Infantile Paralysis had become a greater enemy than Germany and Japan combined because it killed or destroyed 50,000 of our children every summer. FDR dedicated a Foundation and gave the first money, and many wealthy men added to it to conduct the greatest mass test in Public Health history. And Jonas Edward Salk won the battle for all of us o live.
Agreed with commenters above about the superb "When Lilacs Last in The Dooryard Bloom'd", but on the whole, I greatly prefer Dickenson (my favorite poet).
Walt probably never met a Mohammedan, but if he had, he probably would not have survived to tell the tale. He was sentimental in some ways (fatal when making public policy) and clearly assumed that immigrants shared our values and would assimilate. As well noted above, this was before the welfare magnet was energized. (It seems to be morphing into a welfare black hole by and by.)
On the subject of "things upon things", for lack of a better term, consider the words of Dr. Swift:
So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite ’em;
And so proceed ad infinitum.
The Irish? Definitely Not.
That sort of dumb "Hey, let them all come" made a minimal amount of sense back in 1870, when we had an empty continent and 35 million people. It also made sense when people thought "Immigration" meant Western Europeans, some Mexicans, and a few Chinese laborers here an there.
But letting in 40 million or Muslims or Zulus in a crowded country of 320 million people with zero need for unskilled labor is crazy. Besides, all this immigration sentimentality is just a cover for the Left wanting votes, and Big Business wanting cheap labor.
And I've never been a Walt Whitman fan. Too much of a gassy windbag for my taste. Admire his Civil war service though.
You know who was a big Walt Whitman fan? Bill Clinton. 'nough said.
Huh? Guilt by association because Bill Clinton seduced women with a book of poems written 100 years ago? Suppose Bill used Shakespeare plays, would that make Will from Stratford on the Avon into a blowhard too.
Jealousy of Walt Whitman's amazing writing talent is no excuse.
"Jealousy of Walt Whitman's amazing writing talent is no excuse."
Yeah, 'cause the only reason to dislike a writer, musician, or artist is jealousy. Oh wait, you're being sarcastic. Cool.
AA: OK, after 40 comments, do you think anyone's mind has been changed?
And to get all final exam on you, if so, why so, and if not, why not? (Just kidding.)
Heck, the Romans (or at least the Catholics) were doing it long ago: saecula saeculorum.
"I Sing the Body Electric" was a great Twilight Zone episode. Wasn't until decades later that I knew where the title came from.
--gpm
Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/394f1627-2ae9-475f-b3a5-5f38c12f0007
The immigration debate usually fails fails fails to discuss why, since WW II, so many lousy (S*hole?) countries have failed to get better.
The way to do it is clear from Hong Kong, Singapore; even Ireland.
Low taxes, low regulations on business, and small gov't, but big enough to enforce property rights and have minimal corruption.
Bangladesh, now the 6th(?) most populous country, has moved up to less developed from undeveloped -- thanks to successful sweatshops and taking so many first ladder steps.
Haiti should do the same, but doesn't; neither does much of Mexico & other Latin countries.
Fielding Mellish: I object, Your Honor! This trial is a travesty! It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham!
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