This is Just to Say

Words and Walt Whitman have a strange relationship in "Song Of Myself". I will list a few instances in which words or speech come up. Yet I know that there is certainly more in the poem. The quotes that will be shown are more directly about speech.

"The sound of the belched words of my voice . . . . words loosed to the eddies of the wind,"(1)

"I have heard what the talkers were talking . . . . the talk of the beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end." (2)

"Not words, not music or rhyme I want . . . . not custom or lecture, not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice." (3)

"What living and buried speech is always vibrating here . . . . what howls restrained by decorum,"(6)

"Endless unfolding of words of ages!
And mine a word of the modern . . . . a word en masse.
A word of the faith that never balks,
One time as good as another time . . . . here or henceforward it is all the same to me.
A word of reality . . . . materialism first and last imbueing."(16)

"My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach,
With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds."(19)

"Speech is the twin of my vision . . . . it is unequal to measure itself."(19)

"My final merit I refuse you . . . . I refuse putting from me the best I am.
Encompass worlds but never try to encompass me,
I crowd your noisiest talk by looking toward you." (19)

"Man or woman! I might tell how I like you, but cannot,
And might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot,
And might tell the pinings I have . . . . the pulse of my nights and days.
Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity,
What I give I give out of myself."(32)

"My words are words of a questioning, and to indicate reality;"(35)

"I too am not a bit tamed . . . . I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."(43)

Apologies for the long list of quotes. The four I will talk about will be the ones in bold.

Whitman has a lot to say about speech. Set up by Whitman are two modes of speech set in a hierarchy. The narrator's "belched words of [his voice]" and "barbaric yawp" take a priority in the hierarchy of language for the narrator. "I too am untranslatable" is what the narrator tells us right before sounding the yawp. But how is it possible that he be untranslatable? We are reading these words, we are understanding them, right? Yet this is not the same as translation. That is why the narrator sounds his yawp. Because that sound, the yawp, is one without form.
The burden of concise words and symbols is what the narrator is trying to get away from. Our words have direct definitions attached to them and that is precisely the problem.

The narrators "speech is the twin of [his] vision....it is unequal to measure itself". Speech is born of the same origin as his vision but because of this it is unable to accurately measure itself. Speech is unable to differentiate itself from the vision. Speech cannot show the vision because the vision is in the speech. The narrator rejects speech because, since it cannot differentiate from the vision, it is inadequate. His "final merit" is that of refusing speech. The narrator states that speech may "encompass worlds but never try to encompass [him]". Speech may show his vision but it cannot show the narrator himself. Speech cannot show all that is our narrator or his vison.

So What? Well these two modes of speech show us something that Whitman struggles with throughout the whole of "Song of Myself". He cannot, and is aware of it, make his words express what he is actually writing about. Many times throughout the poem he makes statements about all that he encompasses ("I skirt the sierras....my palms cover continents."(23)). This is because Whitman, or the narrator, is coming to terms about showing all that is his vision of the beauty of life. He attempts to be everywhere with his long lists and his all encompassing experiences tinged with a hint of omnipotence. It is because there is something ineffable about the idea Whitman strives to express. His love for words that do not belong to the mind but are "barbaric" or "belched" shows this ineffability. When Whitman does venture into the realm of higher words, words wrought by the brain, he recognizes their contradictory and often failing nature. Whitman's narrator can "crowd your noisiest talk by looking toward you". Whitman's language of the body is more powerful than words. Understanding that, we can look at the poem and search out its most visceral moments about the body and see their importance.

In short, don't read this poem with a lens of cold objectivity. Whitman meant for these words to be felt by your body, felt in your heart, felt subjectively. To deny that is deny the song Whitman is singing.