"Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle"

Gray Catbird

Whitman's "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" relates a boy's discovery of a mockingbird nest and the perceived sorrow of the male partner upon losing his mate. Here is what the Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior says about the breeding habits of the mimid family of birds, to which the mockingbird belongs:

"All North American mimids are essentially monogamous; the few reports of polygyny [one male with multiple partners] are mainly limited to the Northern Mockingbird.  Pair-bonding usually occurs at the onset of the breeding season, especially in migrant species such as the Gray Catbird, but can occur at any season in some of the resident [nonmigratory] thrashers. In some species, particularly Le Conte's and Curve-billed Thrashers, pairs can bond for several years."

The poem, like many of the others in Leaves of Grass, show Whitman's long and abiding connection to the natural world.

Photo by Matthew Petroff ( http://www.mpetroff.net/archives/2012/06/11/cats-and-catbirds).

Whitman Walked These Streets

I once asked our Huntington Town Historian Robert Hughes what he considered to be the most significant event that ever took place in Huntington. His reply: "Walt Whitman was born here." Our June meeting will be about Whitman's poem "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," from his signature work, Leaves of Grass. Walt Whitman is a Favorite Son of Huntington. This spring we've read him in the company of Montaigne, Pascal, Emerson.

Whitman founded the Long Islander newspaper in Huntington Village. This is what the Long Islander building on Main Street looked like yesterday. The inscription at the top reads "Long Islander, 1836, 1884, 1889"

The Long Islander is an award-winning community newspaper that still publishes weekly.  The masthead of the paper displays Whitman's portrait.

Steel engraving of Walt Whitman that appeared in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass.

"Self-Reliance": Passages for Textual Analysis

Pages 182 to 185: Emerson's numbered list, beginning  "1. In what prayers do men allow themselves ... and ending with "bullet point" #4 on page 185. (At least I think it end on page 185, it's a legitimate question as to exactly where this section ends!).

Pages 186 ("Society is a wave") until the end of the essay.

Missing Epigraphs to "Self-Reliance"

For whatever reason, the editors of Great Conversations I omitted the Latin saying and the two pieces of poetry that preface Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance" in other editions.  I offer them below. Whoever can give us a translation of the Latin at our meeting on Monday gets a prize.

"Ne te quaesiveris extra."

"Man is his own star; and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man,
Commands all light, all influence, all fate;
Nothing to him falls early or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still."
           Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortune

Cast the bantling on the rocks,
Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat;
Wintered with the hawk and fox,
Power and speed be hands and feet.

Where's Waldo?

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

According to the chronology of Ralph Waldo Emerson's life contained in the Library of America edition of his Essays and Lectures, Emerson decided in his junior year at Harvard that he wanted to be known as "Waldo," not "Ralph." Hence the title of the present "Author of the Month" post.

"Where's Waldo?" It's a good question, just as last month we might have asked "Where's Blaise?" How do we situate the "greats." We learn in school that Emerson was (a) a minister, (b) the first American intellectual of international caliber, (c) an American Romantic (Romanticist?), (d) a Transcendentalist.  In these two latter capacities he influenced Henry David Thoreau and the great son of Huntington, Walt Whitman, among many others.

We also know he published a number of essays that became famous, such as "Nature," "Compensation," and this month's selection, "Self-Reliance." Emerson is a disciple of Montaigne in that regard. I believe, however, that Emerson deserves to be received as a preacher delivering an inspiring sermon, as he was at one time at the Unitarian Second Church in Boston.

I would recommend that you seek out a sound recording of "Self-Reliance" and give it a listen. It just might afford a different take on Emerson's deep thoughts and beautiful language. If you find Waldo, tell us where.

"Pensées": Passages for Textual Analysis

Our discussion next Monday will focus on the following "Pensées" of Pascal:

136, 44, 978, 512, 199, 200, 678, 148, 110, 423, 418

These accord with the questions on pages 164 and 165 in the Reader.

I hope you find them diverting!

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

Pascal with pages of his pensées below to his right by Augustin Pajou (1730-1809).

The biographical essay that accompanies this month's selection from Pascal's Pensées in Great Conversations I concludes, "Of lasting interest [is] ... his challenge to those who think that studied skepticism is a worthy substitute for a vigorous lifelong pursuit of truth."

Chief among "those" who thought this was Montaigne, two of whose essays we discussed last month. The philosophical school of skepticism, which dates back to the ancient Greek philosopher Pyrrho, suspends judgement on all belief.  In Montaigne's case, skepticism was accompanied by a light-hearted attitude towards life. In the end, he couldn't bring himself to worry too much about "deep" questions.

Pascal was quite a different type of philosopher, although in the context of the history of French letters, Pascal's beliefs were formed in a Montaignian crucible. As Sarah Bakewell has written in her fine How to Live or a Life of Montaigne, "If La Boétie hovered over Montaigne's page as his invisible friend, Montaigne hovered over Pascal's writings as his ever-present enemy and co-author."

Pascal, an accomplished scientist and mathematician, employs rigorous logic to crush doubt. He was devoutly Catholic, and the Pensées were written as fragmentary drafts for a larger defense of his faith. Pascal's untimely death prevented him from writing that work, and the Pensées stands as one of the great unintended classics of all time.