Walt Whitman, ‘Abstract yourself from this book’ (prose fragment)

PDF above.

Abstract yourself from this book; realize where you are at present located, the point you stand that is now to you the centre of all. Look up overhead, think of space stretching out, think of all the unnumbered orbs wheeling safely there, invisible to us by day, some visible by night … . Spend some minutes faithfully in this exercise. Then again realize yourself upon the earth, at the particular point you now occupy … [thinks of four directions]. Seize these firmly in your mind, pass freely over immense distances. Turn your face a moment thither. Fix definitely the direction and the idea of the distances of separate sections of your own country, also of England, the Mediterranean sea, Cape Horn, the North Pole, and such like distant places.

— Walt Whitman, “? Outset of Lecture,” IN Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, Volume IV, edited by Edward F. Grier ( New York University Press , 1984)

This quote from Whitman’s notes to himself is, in my opinion, highly significant – in that it reveals the type of thinking and perspective that went into the writing of his great poems, notably the early ones.

— posted by Roger W. Smith

   March 2023