ANIMALS (First Flight)

By Walt Whitman

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
So they show their relations to me and I accept them,
They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession

I wonder where they get those tokens,
Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them?

WALT WHITMAN [From ‘Song of Myself ’ in Leaves of Grass ]
Placid- not easily upset or excited.
Demented- suffering from dementia. Behaving irrationally due to anger, distress, or excitement
Tokens- something that you do, or a thing that you give someone, to express your feelings or intentions.
Evince- to reveal the presence of a feeling.

1. Notice the use of the word ‘turn’ in the first line, “I think I could turn and live with animals...”. What is the poet turning from?
This turning is symbolic of the poet's detachment from human beings and their nature and his appreciation of the animal kind.
2. Mention three things that humans do and animals don’t.

Animals do not cry and complain over their conditions. They do not commit sins and therefore do not weep for them. They are also very satisfied creatures and have no desire to possess material things. Humans on the contrary, complain all the time, commit all sorts of sins and are affected with the madness of owning things. 

3. Do humans kneel to other humans who lived thousands of years ago? Discuss this in groups.
Yes, humans kneel to other humans who lived thousands of years ago. They worship their ancestors and pray by kneeling in front of their portraits. They hold religious sermons and ceremonies in their memory. But here Walt Whitman is talking about slavery. He wanted to abolish slavery. He wants all humans to be equal.
4. What are the ‘tokens’ that the poet says he may have dropped long ago, and which the animals have kept for him? Discuss this in class. (Hint: Whitman belongs to the Romantic tradition that includes Rousseau and Wordsworth, which holds that civilisation has made humans false to their own true nature. What could be the basic aspects of our nature as living beings that humans choose to ignore or deny?)

They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession. 

Animals keep on showing their love and relationship with the poet. They reveal all token of noble virtues that are present in the poet. They show that they possess all these virtues in plenty. The poet says that animals always reciprocate whereas humans do not. The basic aspect of human beings are love and purity but for the sake of survival and materialistic possessions they ignore these qualities. 

The token that the poet says he might have dropped long ago, and which the animals have kept for him, is his true nature as a human. While humans came close to civilisation, they gradually moved away from their true nature. All these three poets are revolutionaries. Their ideologies were same. Their writings were inspired by French Revolution. 

Walt Whitman is one of the most famous American poets of the 19th century.( Born: May 31, 1819 in West Hills, New York Died: March 26, 1892 in Camden, New Jersey Published Works: Leaves of Grass, Drum-Taps and Democratic Vistas.) His publication “Leaves of Grass” on July 4, 1855 was to revisit the story of what Whitman called the “deep, vast, emotional, real affinity” between America and France as it is represented in his work. As a journalist and Democratic Party radical Whitman’s impassioned commitment to the struggle of freedom against slavery, labour against capital in the antebellum United States was inspired by the signs of revolutionary ferment he saw spreading in Europe. 

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, (born June 28, 1712, Geneva, Switzerland—died July 2, 1778,in France), Swiss-born philosopher, writer, and political theorist whose essays and novels inspired the leaders of French revolution and the Romantic generation. A Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, was the winning response to an essay contest conducted by the Academy of Dijon in 1750. In this work, Rousseau argues that the progression of the sciences and arts has caused the corruption of virtue and morality. This discourse won Rousseau fame and recognition. The central claim of the work is that human beings are basically good by nature, but were corrupted by the complex historical events that resulted in present day civil society. 

William Wordsworth, (born April 7, 1770 England—died April 23, 1850), English poet whose lyrical ballad (1798), written with Samuel Coleridge Tylor helped launch the English Romantic movement. While touring Europe, Wordsworth came into contact with the French Revolution. This experience as well as a subsequent period living in France, brought about Wordsworth's interest and sympathy for the life, troubles, and speech of the "common man." The French Revolution and Romanticism are two cardinal movements which have produced great politicians, thinkers, dramatists and poets; the former is political the latter literary and philosophical. This paper discusses the impact of the French Revolution on the poetry of Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge-the older generation of the Romantics; their poems reflected the spirit of the age; the French Revolution is a dramatic event in the human history which inspired the intelligentsia of literary, political and artistic circles. Following the destruction of the Bastille, its effects hit first the French and then the event impacted England and the rest of the world. This paper also analysis this impact on the poems under scrutiny; namely, Blake’s The French Revolution (1791), Wordsworth’s The Prelude and Coleridge’s “The Destruction of the Bastille”.

Click for the Chapter included in Unit 6 of First Flight