'Song of Myself' and the class struggle in language

Abstract

This article examines 'Song of Myself' as, in Whitman's own words, a " language experiment.' Whitman's poetry struck contemporaries like Charles Eliot Norton as a strange "compound' or mixture of high and low styles: of New England transcendentalism and "New York rowdyism.' In this article, I argue that such linguistic mixtures function not as the sign of "democratic' fusion or 'heteroglossia,' but of class antagonism. Whitman's strategy of juxtaposing elevated and common languages is the legacy of his involvement with the radical-democratic 'Locofoco' movement of the 1830s, political activity in which he attacked aristocratic pretension and rights of ownership. The article examines a series of linguistic-political clashes in 'Song of Myself': between the languages of Concord transcendentalism and carpentry, Augustan decorum and sensational fiction, opera and urban insurrection. Whitman's satiric intent is to deflate the high and elevate the low, but his position is made problematic by his position as a lower-middle-class autodidact: while he wants to ridicule elite culture he also needs its glow of distinction.