In turning away from Europe to write distinctly American poetry, Whitman would turn westward. The first edition of Leaves of Grass, published in 1855, arrived at a time of United States westward expansion. Whitman's visionary poetry can be both characteristic of his time and place in the nineteenth-century America and transcendent of his time.
In the poem "Song of Myself," one can see the individual pride and the nationalism that would take on more destructive forms in the twentieth-century. One can see the nineteenth century American rationale of manifest destiny as a precursor to the twentieth-century German rationale of Lebensraum. While one can see the individual pride that would become central to our present consumer culture, there is also in Whitman, I believe, that which remains transcendent and relevant to our current democratic society. Continuing on the Whitman trail, I believe we can discover that which can unite us.
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