Specimen Days: Plays and Operas Too

We can see how thoroughly in love with the arts Whitman was. His recounting of all the old plays he had seen as well as there performers is amazing. He remembers the plays that he saw as a child as well as the operas he enjoyed as an adult. Our poet is a lover of the arts and this shows as does his culture in his knowledge of theater. He would even read Shakespeare's plays the day before he went to go see them.

"Song of Myself" is a celebration of living surely, but also a celebration of art. As i mentioned in an earlier post Whitman defies and refuses speech but chooses poetry to share his world with us. That is because art has a power over language that simple speech does not. This power is derived from the rearranging of symbols and the balances between story/discourse being shifted. A metaphor is a strong device. But as we can see in some metaphysical poems ( such as John Donne's "The Flea" and arguably parts of "Song of Myself") those metaphors become more powerful and changed in a way that a metaphor, presented in regular speech, does not.

That is why theater is so powerful. It shows an aspect of the world in a heightened state that elicits a special connection. We recognize the artifice, but that artifice is a mirror that helps us view ourselves and humanity more clearly. Whitman's early love of theater and later love of opera just goes to show us how much our poet was embedded in the arts. It even makes me think of some parts of "Song of Myself" as theatrical.