On The Themes Of Whitman’s Poetry

Walt Whitman (1819--1892) was a well-known American national poet in thenineteenth century. His poetic collection "Leaves of Grass" expressed his desire forliberty, democracy and also confidence in the future of America; in style, Walt Whitmanbravely employed the free verse,thus won him world-wide popularity. In the collection,there are many famous pieces such as "Song of Myself""I sing the body electric""OCaptain" contained many philosophical ideas. These ideas gave the world a lot ofspiritual fortune. Whitman was a poet with a strong sense of modern concern andnational concern. In the collection "Leaves of Grass", he sang for the achievements of theAmerican industry, scientific development and material civilization, he considered this asymbol of human being in development.Whitman said that America needed a kind ofpoetry which could embrace everything, the poetry absolutely could not ignore scienceand trend, but inspired by the development in both science and trend. Whitman for thefirst time put scientific development, the prosperity of cities and the development ofmaterialistic development in the poetic creation.This application of method made himone of the modern poets. A century has already passed, but his influence on poets bothhome and abroad was profound and there were no other poets who could compete withhim.The thesis of "On the Themes of Walt Whitman’s Poetry", first, gave a generalintroduction to Walt Whitman’s life and main works. The poet’s main creation-"Leavesof Grass" was significant in American literature because of its description of the outlineof the new world, reflected the American image in history, and summarized colorful lifeand profound thoughts. The thesis of "On the Themes of Walt Whitman’s Poetry" probedinto the themes of democracy and freedom, expressed the poet’s desire toward the idealsociety and the affection on people, thus revealed that the significance of the poet did notlie in his fame but his ideas.The thesis of "On the Themes of Walt Whitman’s Poetry"mainly consists of threeparts:Chapter I Analyzes "Leave of Grass" from the perspective of democracy andindividualism. There was one theme throughout "Leaves of Grass" and that is the poet’sdemocratic spirit. If we would like to summarize the features of all the parts of "Leavesof Grass","democracy" was more than proper. Indeed,"Leaves of Grass" was thedeclaration of capitalists in pursuit of democracy. The poet hoped to build up a societywith no oppression,no social classes, equality between male and female, people as themain and basic of the society.In Whitman’poetry, he made full use of free verse and his idea of democracy whichbroke the binding of the old doctrines and freed people from the binding of puritanismand Aesthetic movement.Then he turned his focus on the people of America. He promotedthe American authors to get rid of the reliance of the western culture and createdindependent literature. His democratic spirit and universal love encouraged people tomove forward.Walt Whitman considered that the individualism to be the outstanding feature in thewestern culture. In America, the typical representatives of individualism were theexplorers in early times, they were brave to do whatever they wanted, they cherishedindividual rights, this spirit could be considered as the core of the whole nation. Theembodiment of individualism was mainly shown in the singing of "Song of Myself""Song of Road" and so on. He was the poet himself, and also the representative of allhuman beings.The poet sang of the beauty of the body via "Song of Myself", sang for theordinary people, and sang the harmony between human beings and nature in working.Individualism in "Leaves of Grass" did not mean to be radical. On the contrary, the ideaof equality and democracy matched with each other.In the collection of "Leaves of Grass","Myself" includes three kinds "individualmyself""American myself""universal myself". In "individual myself", Walt Whitmanthought that body and spirit reached the perfect balance could form the individual myself.In "American myself",Walt Whitman thought that democracy was part of Americanfeature. He thought that only in a free society, individual could realize myself. To"universal individual",Walt Whitman thought this myself could show individualismmost vividly. To Walt Whitman, any American could be considered as an individual,American and universal individual. In the Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman tried tointegrate nature and individual thus realize "myself" in a higher level. Chapter Two mainly analyzes the famous creation in "Leaves of Grass"---"Song ofMyself"."Song of Myself" was the famous piece that Walt Whitman created. When weanalyzes "Song of Myself", we could feel the energy,life and the understanding of themasterpiece, so that we can understand the works by the poet from different aspects.Chapter Three mainly analyzes the influence by Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman, as anAmerican poet, not only American, but the world’s as well. So here we can say that theworks by Walt Whitman not only exerted great influence to the United States but thewestern world as well. In ancient east, Walt Whitman exerted enormous influence onChina,and gave a strong push to the absorption of western culture in China. It madecontribution to the enlightenment of people and the development of society.