[I do not expect to see myself]
| I do
He does
not expect to see myself |
|
in the present
[three letters deleted, illegible]
magazines, |
|
pulpits, reviews, schools, pulpits |
|
and legislatures—but presently |
|
I expect to see myself |
|
in magazines, schools, and |
|
legislatures—or that my friends |
|
after me will see me there, |
|
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Date
- The date of this manuscript is unknown, though it seems likely that it is from the 1870s based on the handwriting. In addition, in the 1870s, Whitman repeatedly complained about how he was treated by American magazines. He sometimes exaggerated his neglect, as in the third-person account "Walt Whitman's Actual American Position, West Jersey Press (January 26, 1876). He argued there that he had been all but banned from American magazines.
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Editorial note
- We have not identified a direct relationship between this manuscript and any of Whitman's published writings, if any exists. The manuscript was first published in 1899 in Notes and Fragments, edited by Richard Maurice Bucke, one of Whitman's literary executors.
- This manuscript was probably drafted after 1855 and before 1860, a time when Whitman was rethinking his initial claim in the Preface to the first edition that the "proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it." As early as 1856, in "Poem of Many in One" (later, "By Blue Ontario's Shores"), he had come to realize that the "proof of a poet shall be sternly deferred till his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it."The verso of the manuscript leaf is blank.
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Location
- I do not expect to see myself | The Walt Whitman Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin.
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Whitman Archive ID
- tex.00023
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