Witty Whitman

Step One

Walt Whitman's notebook is small, compact, and very worn.  Despite its ragged appearances, the notebook seems to be a prized item.  The book is black leather and is bound with a simple, yet elegant design.  The outside of this book is just as meaningful as the inside of the book.  Whitman kept his thoughts in secrecy, or perhaps safety, by closing the pages within the cover.  The worn appearance shows that despite the books once pleasant appearance, Whitman used it fairly often to record his thoughts.  

Each page within the notebook is a page number, ranging in number from 503 to 944.  That is a lot of pages.  There is a wide range of content shown on each page, showing the unique and varied origins of his poetry and works.  Whitman has recorded names, dates, addresses, thoughts, events, questions, and drawings.   Many of these pages also have a red stamp that says "The Library of Congress".  This stamp doesn't say much about Whitman himself, but rather the life of the notebook after it was no longer in its author's possession.  

While I am not able to decipher the exact message of each page, due to quite a few messy scribbles, I have noticed a trend in the amount of question marks used.  On quite a few of his written entries, Whitman poses at least one question.  This stands out to me because of the format Whitman uses within many of his poems, that being he poses a question and offers guidance as an answer.  Noticing his questioning, leads to many questions of my own.  I wonder if Whitman actually has an answer to the questions he poses within his poetry at the time he thinks of them, or if the poems he writes are not only guidance for the readers, but also for conclusions he has made himself. 

I am, however, able to decipher the meanings and messages of the drawings made within the notebook (to an extent).  Most of the images shown are depictions of a man, each showing him from the side.  When looking even more closely, it is safe to say the same man is being drawn numerous times.  I do not know the story behind this man, but I am, from this, able to make conclusions about Whitman's use of imagery.  The pictures drawn are not how these individuals actually appear (due to their cartoonish features), but rather how Whitman sees and then writes about them.  This shows the relevance of visual aspects to Whitman's works.  

Step Two

The content of Whitman's notebook itself was majorly centered around the Civil War, specifically Abraham Lincoln.  This aligns with the themes of many of Whitman's works, both literally and figuratively.  Subsequently, many of the thoughts and ideas written down were about humanity and the state of the world.  Some of Whitman's thoughts on this were written as an early draft of a poem, rather than being formatted simply as a thought.  

The word "Libertad" is extremely prevalent in these excerpts of Whitman's work.  The word itself is a Spanish translation of "liberty", which is some what odd due to the author's origin.  The reasoning of this choice is unclear, but has many options and messages that can be speculated.  Despite the motivations behind the choice, the use of the word is used very often.  Many times, Whitman uses the word in the phrase "Ship of Libertad".  The image of Liberty as a ship aligns closely with the imagery often used in Whitman's poems.  The ship imagery is used to describe liberty in the context of the Civil War.