It is the endless delusion | Whitman Archive

Whitman Archive Title: It is the endless delusion
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00800
Repository ID: MS q 6
Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in the Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
Date: Between 1850 and 1855
Genre: prose, poetry
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View Images: 1 | 2
Content: This prose manuscript includes a thought similar to one from the poem that was eventually titled "Song of Myself." Whitman writes that "The noble soul steadily rejects any liberty or privilege or wealth that is not open on the same terms to every other man and every other woman." This idea is phrased more memorably in the first poem in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass —"By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms" (29)—suggesting a date for the manuscript of 1855 or earlier. Other ideas and words from this manuscript are similar to ideas and words that appeared in the preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass . See, for instance, the line: "the melancholy prudence of the abandonment of such a great being as a man is to the toss and pallor of years of moneymaking with all their scorching days and icy nights and all their stifling deceits and underhanded dodgings, or infinitessimals of parlors, or shameless stuffing while others starve . . " (1855, p. x). The reverse (duk.00261) contains ideas and language related to what eventually became section 41 of "Song of Myself."